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THE 


MODERN 


BRITISH ESSAYISTS. 


VOL. VIII. 


SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. 


PHILADELPHIA: 


CAREY AND HART. 


1846. 



THE 



MISCELLANEOUS WORKS 



OF 



THE RIGHT HONOURABLE 



SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. 



THREE VOLUMES, 

COMPLETE IN ONE. 



PHILADELPHIA: 
CAREY AND HART. 

1848. 



n 

u 



ADVERTISEMENT TO THE LONDON EDITION, 

BY THE EDITOR. 



These Volumes* contain whatever (with the exception of his History of England) is 
Delieved to be of the most value in the writings of Sir James Mackintosh. Something of 
method, it will be observed, has been attempted in their arrangement by commencing 
with what is more purely Philosophical, and proceeding through Literature to Politics j 
each of those heads being generally, though not quite precisely, referable to each volume 
respectively. With such selection would naturally have terminated his responsibility ; 
but in committing again to the press matter originally for the most part hastily printed, 
the Editor has assumed — as the lesser of two evils — a larger exercise of discretion in the 
revision of the text than he could have wished to have felt had been imposed upon him. 
Instead, therefore, of continually arresting the eye of the reader by a notification of almost 
mechanical alterations, he has to premise here that where inaccuracies and redundancies 
of expression were obvious, these have been throughout corrected and retrenched. A few 
transpositions of the text have also been made ; — as where, by the detachment of the 
eleventh chapter of what the present Editor, on its original publication allowed to be called, 
perhaps too largely, the " History of the Revolution of 1688," a stricter chronological order 
has been observed, at the same time that the residue — losing thereby much of its frag- 
mentary character — may now, it is hoped, fairly claim to be all that is assumed in its new 
designation. Of the contributions to periodical publications, such portions only find place 
here as partake most largely of the character of completeness. Some extended quota- 
tions, appearing for the most part as notes on former occasions, have been omitted, with a 
view to brevity, on the present; while, in addition to a general verification of the Author's 
references, a few explanatory notes have been appended, wherever apparently needful, 
by the Editor. 

R. J. MACKINTOSH. 

* The Miscellaneous Works of the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh, 3 vols. 8vo., Lon- 
don: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1846. 



COITENTS. 



PAGE 

On the Philosophical Genius of Lord Bacon and Mr. Locke 17 

A Discourse on the Law of Nature and Nations 27 

Life of Sir Thomas More 43 

Appendix 81 

A Refutation of the Claim on behalf of King Charles I. to the Authorship of the EIKQN 

BA2IAIKH 82 

Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, chiefly during the Seventeenth and 

Eighteenth Centuries 94 

Introduction ib. 

Section I. Preliminary Observations 96 

II. Retrospect of Ancient Ethics - 99 

III. Retrospect of Scholastic Ethics 104 

IV. Modern Ethics Ill 

V. Controversies concerning the Moral Faculties and the Social Affections 117 

VI. Foundations of a more just Theory of Ethics 131 

VII. General Remarks 175 

Notes and Illustrations 188 

A.n account of the Partition of Poland 198 

Sketch of the Administration and Fall of Struensee 217 

Statement of the Case of Donna Maria da Gloria, as a Claimant to the Crown of Por- 
tugal 225 

Character of Charles, First Marquis Cornwallis 235 

Character of the Right Honourable George Canning 238 

Preface to a Reprint of the Edinburgh Review of 1755 242 

On the Writings of Machiavel .' , 245 

Review of Mr. Godwin's Lives of Edward and John Philips, &c. &c 249 

Review of Rogers' Poems 254 

Review of Madame de Stael's (: De L'Allemagne" 260 

Review of the Causes of the Revolution of 1688 271 

CHAPTER I.— General state of affairs at home.— Abroad.— Characters of the 
Ministry. — Sunderland. — Rochester. — Halifax. — Godolphin. — Jeffreys. — Fever- 
sham. — His conduct after the victory of Sedgemoor. — Kirke. — Judicial pro- 
ceedings in the West. — Trials of Mrs. Lisle. — Behaviour of the King. — Trial 
of Mrs. Gaunt and others. — Case of Hampden. — Prideaux. — Lord Brandon. — 

Delamere ib 

CHAPTER II.— Dismissal of Halifax.— Meeting of Parliament.— Debates on the 
Address. — Prorogation of Parliament. — Habeas Corpus Act. — State of the Ca- 
tholic Party.— Character of the Queen. — Of Catherine Sedley. — Attempt to 
support the Dispensing Power by a Judgment of a Court of Law. — Godden V. 
Hales. — Consideration of the Arguments. — Attack on the Church. — Establish- 
ment of the Court of Commissioners for ecclesiastical causes. — Advancement 

of Catholics to offices. — Intercourse with Rome 284 



mii CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

CHAPTER III.— State of the Army.— Attempts of the King to convert it.— The 
Princess Anne. — Dryden. — Lord Middleton and others. — Revocation of the 
Edict of Nantes. — Attempt to convert Rochester. — Conduct of the Queen. — 
Religious conference. — Failure of the attempt. — His dismissal 299 

CHAPTER IV. — Scotland. — Administration of Queensberry .— Conversion of Perth. 
— Measures contemplated by the King. — Debates in Parliament on the King's 
letter. — Proposed bill of toleration — unsatisfactory to James. — Adjournment of 

Parliament. — Exercise of prerogative. Ireland. — Character of Tyrconnel. — 

Review of the state of Ireland. — Arrival of Tyrconnel. — His appointment as 
Lord Deputy. — Advancement of Catholics to offices. — Tyrconnel aims at the 
sovereign power in Ireland. — Intrigues with France 307 

CHAPTER V. — Rupture with the Protestant Tories. — Increased decision of the 
King's designs. — Encroachments on the Church establishment. — Charter-House. 
—Oxford, University College.— Christ Church.— Exeter College, Cambridge.— 
Oxford, Magdalen College. — Declaration of liberty of conscience. — Similar at- 
tempts of Charles. — Proclamation at Edinburgh.— Resistance of the Church. — 
Attempt to conciliate the Nonconformists. — Review of their sufferings. — Bax- 
ter. — Bunyan. — Presbyterians. — Independents. — Baptists. — Quakers. — Ad- 
dresses of thanks for the declaration 319 

CHAPTER VI. — D'Adda publicly received as the Nuncio.— Dissolution of Parlia- 
ment. — Final breach. — Preparations for a new Parliament. — New charters. — 
Removal of Lord Lieutenants.— Patronage of the Crown.— Moderate views of 
Sunderland.— House of Lords.— Royal progress.— Pregnancy of the Queen.— 
London has the appearance of a Catholic city 337 

CHAPTER VII.— Remarkable quiet.— Its peculiar causes.— Coalition of Notting- 
ham and Halifax.— Fluctuating counsels of the Court.— "Parliamentum Pacifi- 
cum."— Bill for liberty of conscience.— Conduct of Sunderland.— Jesuits 350 

CHAPTER VIII.— Declaration of Indulgence renewed.— Order that it should be 
read in Churches.— Deliberations of the clergy.— Petition of the Bishops to the 
King.— Their examination before the Privy Council, committal, trial, and ac- 
quittal.— Reflections.— Con version of Sunderland.— Birth of the Prince of Wales. 
—State of Affairs 359 

CHAPTER IX.— Doctrine of obedience.— Right of resistance.— Comparison of 
foreign and civil war.— Right of calling auxiliaries.— Relations of the people of 

England and of Holland 38 ° 

Memoir of the Affairs of Holland, 1667—1686 384 

Discourse read at the opening of the Literary Society of Bombay • 398 

Vindica Gallicas :— A Defence of the French Revolution and its English Admirers, 
against the accusations of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, including some 
Strictures on the late Production of Mons. de Calonne 404 

Introduction * " 

Section I. The General Expediency and Necessity of a Revolution in France. ... 406 
II. Of the composition and character of the National Assembly 424 

III. Popular excesses which attended the Revolution 430 

IV. New Constitution of France 436 

V. English admirers vindicated 44 ° 

VI. Speculations on the probable consequences of the French Revolution 

in Europe 4 * ' 

Reasons against the French War of 1793 461 

On the State of France in 1815 466 

On the Right of Parliamentary Suffrage 472 

A Speech in Defence of John Peltier, accused of a Libel on the First Consul of France 484 

A" Charge, delivered to the Grand Jury of the Island of Bombay, on the 20th July, 181 1 504 
Speech on the Annexation of Genoa to the Kingdom of Sardinia, delivered in the 

House of Commons, April 27, 1815 508 



CONTENTS. ifii 

PAGE 

Speech on moving for a Committee to inquire into the State of the Criminal Law ; 

delivered in the House of Commons, March 2, 1819 524 

Speech on Mr. Brougham's Motion for an Address to the Crown, with Reference to the 
Tria 1 and Condemnation of the Rev. John Smith, of Deraerara ; delivered in 
the House of Commons, June 1, 1824 534 

Speech on presenting a Petition from the Merchants of London for the Recognition of 
the Independent States, established in the Countries of America, formerly sub- 
ject to Spain; delivered in the House of Commons, June 15, 1824 549 

Speech on the Civil Government of Canada ; delivered in the House of Commons, 

May 2, 1828 564 

Speech on moving for Papers relative to the Affairs of Portugal ; delivered in the 

House of Commons, June 1, 1829 569 

Speech on the second Reading of the Bill to amend the Representation of the People 

of England and Wales; delivered in the House of Commons, July 4, 1831. . . . 580 
Appendix 591 



ON THE 



PHILOSOPHICAL GENIUS 



LORD BACON AND MR. LOCKE.* 



"History," says Lord Bacon, "is Natural, 
'Civil or Ecclesiastical, or Literary ; whereof 
of the three first I allow as extant, the fourth, 
I note as deficient. For no man hath pro- 
pounded to himself the general state of learn- 
ing, to be described and represented from 
age to age, as many have done the works of 
Nature, and the State civil and ecclesias- 
tical; without which the history of the world 
seemeth to me to be as the statue of Poly- 
phemus with his eye out; that part being 
wanting which doth most show the spirit 
and life of the person. And yet I am not 
ignorant, that in divers particular sciences, as 
of the jurisconsults, the mathematicians, the 
rhetoricians, the philosophers, there are set 
down some small memorials of the schools, 
— of authors of books ; so likewise some bar- 
ren relations touching the invention of arts 
or usages. But a just story of learning, con- 
taining the antiquities and originals of know- 
ledges, and their sects, their inventions, their 
traditions, their divers administrations and 
managings, their oppositions, decays, depres- 
sions, oblivions, removes, with the causes 
and occasions of them, and all other events 
concerning learning throughout the ages of 
the world, I may truly affirm to be wanting. 
The use and end of which work I do not so 
much design for curiosity, or satisfaction of 
those who are lovers of learning, but chiefly 
for a more serious and grave purpose, which 
is this, in few words, '• that it will make learned 
men wise in the use and administration of 
learning? "t 

Though there are passages in the writings 
of Lord Bacon more splendid than the above, 
few, probably, better display the union of all 
the qualities which characterized his philo- 
sophical genius. He has in general inspired 
a fervour of admiration which vents itself in 
indiscriminate praise, and is very adverse 
to a calm examination of the character of 
his understanding, which was very peculiar, 
and on that account, described with more than 
ordinary imperfection, by that unfortunately 

* These remarks are extracted from the Edin- 
burgh Preview, vol. xxvii. p. ISO ; vol. xxxvi. p. 
229.— Ed. 

t Advancement of Learning, book ii. 
3 



vague and weak part of language which at- 
tempts to distinguish the varieties of mental 
superiority. To this cause it may be as- 
cribed, that perhaps no great man has been 
either more ignorantly censured, or more un- 
instructively commended. It is easy to de- 
scribe his transcendent merit in general terms 
of commendation ; for some of his great 
qualities lie on the surface of his writings. 
But that in which he most excelled all other 
men, was the range and compass of his in* 
tellectual view and the power of contemplat- 
ing many and distant objects together without 
indistinctness or confusion, which he himself 
has called the "discursive" or "comprehen- 
sive" understanding. This wide ranging in- 
tellect was illuminated by the brightest 
Fancy that ever contented itself with the 
office of only ministering to Reason : and 
from this singular relation of the two grand 
faculties of man, it has resulted, that his phi- 
losophy, though illustrated still more than 
adorned by the utmost splendour of imagery, 
continues still subject to the undivided su- 
premacy of Intellect. In the midst of all 
the prodigality of an imagination which. 
had it been independent, would have been 
poetical, his opinions remained severely ra- 
tional. 

It is not so easy to conceive, or at least to 
describe, other equally essential elements of 
his greatness, and conditions of his success. 
His is probably a single instance of a mind 
which, in philosophizing, always reaches the 
point of elevation whence the whole prospect 
is commanded, without ever rising to such a 
distance as to lose a distinct perception of 
every part of it.* It is perhaps not less singu- 

* He himself who alone was qualified, has de- 
scribed the genius of his philosophy boih in respect 
to the degree and manner in which he rose from 
particulars to generals: " Axiomata infima non 
multum abexperientia nuda discrepant. Suprema 
vero ilia et generalissima (quae habentur) notionalia 
sunt et abstracta, et nil habent solidi. At media 
sunt axiomata ilia vera, et solida, et viva, in quibus 
humanas res et fortunae sitae sunt, et supra haec 
quoque, tandem ipsa ilia generalissima. talia scili- 
cet quae non abstracta sint, sed per haec media 
vere limitantur." — Novum Organum, lib. i. apho- 
ris. 104. 

B 2 17 



18 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



lar, that his philosophy should be founded at 
once on disregard for the authority of men, 
and on reverence for the boundaries pre- 
scribed by Nature to human inquiry ; that he 
who thought so little of what man had done, 
hoped so highly of what he could do ; that so 
daring an innovator in science should be so 
wholly exempt from the love of singularity 
or paradox ; and that the same man who re- 
nounced imaginary provinces in the Empire 
of science, and withdrew its landmarks with- 
in the limits of experience, should also exhort 
posterity to push their conquests to its utmost 
verge, with a boldness which "'ill be fully 
justified only by the discoveries of ages from 
which we are yet far distant. 

No man ever united a more poetical style 
to a less poetical philosophy. One great end 
of his discipline is to prevent mysticism and 
fanaticism from obstructing the pursuit of 
truth. With a less brilliant fancy, he would 
have had a mind less qualified for philoso- 
phical inquiry. His fancy gave him that 
power of illustrative metaphor, by which he 
seemed to have invented again the part of 
language which respects philosophy J and it 
rendered new truths more distinctly visible 
even to his own eye, in their bright clothing 
of imagery. Without it, he must, like others, 
4iave been driven to the fabrication of uncouth 
technical terms, which repel the mind, either 
by vulgarity or pedantry, instead of gently 
leading it to novelties in science, through 
agreeable analogies with objects already fa- 
miliar. A considerable portion doubtless of 
the courage with which he undertook the re- 
formation of philosophy, was caught from the 
general spirit of his extraordinary age, when 
the mind of Europe was yet agitated by the 
joy and pride of emancipation from long 
bondage. The beautiful mythology, and the 
poetical history of the ancient world, — not 
yet become trivial or pedantic, — appeared 
before his eyes in all their freshness and lus- 
tre. To the general reader they were then a 
discovery as recent as the world disclosed by 
Columbus. The ancient literature, on which 
his imagination looked back for illustration, 
had then as much the charm of novelty as 
that rising philosophy through which his rea- 
son dared to look onward to some of the last 
periods in its unceasing and resistless course. 

In order to form a just estimate of this 
wonderful person, it is essential to fix stead- 
ily in our minds, what he was not, — what he 
did not do, — and what he professed neither 
to be, nor to do. He was not what is called 
a metaphysician : his plans for the improve- 
ment of science were not inferred by ab- 
stract reasoning from any of those primary 
principles to which the philosophers of 
Greece struggled to fasten their systems. 
Hence he has been treated as empirical and 
superficial by those who take to themselves 
the exclusive name of profound speculators. 
He was not, on the other hand, a mathema- 
tician, an astronomer, a physiologist, a chem- 
ist. He was not eminently conversant with 
the particular truths of any of those sciences 



which existed hxhjs time. For this reason, 
he was underrated "even by men themselves 
of the highest, merit, and by some who had 
acquired the most just reputation, by adding 
new facts to the stock of certain knowledge. 
It is not therefore very surprising to find, 
that Harvey, "though the friend as well as 
physician of Bacon, though he esteemed him 
much for his wit and style, would not allow 
him to be a great philosopher:" but said to 
Aubrey, < ; He writes philosophy like a Lord 
Chancellor," — " in derision,'" — as the honest 
biographer thinks fit express]}' to add. On 
the same ground, though in a manner not so 
agreeable to the nature of his own claims on 
reputation, Mr. Hume has decided, that Ba- 
con was not so great a man as Galileo, be- 
cause he was not so great an astronomer. 
The same sort of injustice to his memory has 
been more often committed than avowed, by 
professors of the exact and the experimental 
sciences, who are accustomed to regard, as 
the sole test of service to Knowledge, a pal- 
pable addition to her store. It is very true 
that he made no discoveries: but his life 
was employed in teaching the method by 
which discoveries are made. This distinc- 
tion was early observed by that ingenious 
poet and amiable man, on whom we. by our 
unmerited neglect, have taken too severe a 
revenge, for the exaggerated praises be- 
stowed on him by our ancestors : — 

" Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last, 
The barren wilderness he past, 
Did on the very border stand 
Of the blest promised land ; 
And from the mountain top of his exalted wit, 
Saw it himself, and showed us it."* 

The writings of Bacon do not even abound 
with remarks so capable of being separated 
from the mass of previous knowledge and 
reflection, that they can be called new. This 
at least is very far from their greatest dis- 
tinction : and where such remarks occur, 
they are presented more often as examples 
of his general method, than as important 
on their own separate account. In physics, 
which presented the principal field for dis- 
covery, and which owe all that they are, or 
can be, to his method and spirit, the experi- 
ments and observations which he either made 
or registered, form the least valuable part of 
his writings, and have furnished some cul- 
tivators of that science with an opportunity 
for an ungrateful triumph over his mistakes. 
The scattered remarks, on the other hand, of 
a moral nature, where absolute novelty is 
precluded by the nature of the subject, mani- 
fest most strongly both the superior force 
and the original bent of his understanding. 
We more properly contrast than compare 
the experiments in the Natural History, with 
the moral and political observations which 
enrich the Advancement of Learning, the 
speeches, the letters, the History of Henry 
VII., and, above all, the Essays, a book 
which, though it has been praised with equal 



Cowley, Ode to the Royal Society. 



ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL GENIUS OF BACON AND LOCKE. 



10 



fervour by Voltaire, Johnson and Burke, has 
never been characterized with such exact 
justice and such exquisite felicity of expres- 
sion, as in the discourse of Mr. Stewart.* It 
will serve still more distinctly to mark the 
natural tendency of his mind, to observe that 
his moral and political reflections relate to 
these practical subjects, considered in their 
most practical point of view ; ami that he 
has seldom or never attempted to reduce to 
theory the infinite particulars of that "-civil 
knowledge.'' which, as he himself tells us, 
is, " of all others, most immersed in matter, 
and hardliest reduced to axiom .[' 

His mind, indeed, was formed and exer- 
cised in the affairs of the world : his genius 
was eminently civil. His understanding was 
peculiarly fitted for questions of legislation 
and of policy ; though his character was not 
an instrument well qualified to execute the 
dictates of his reason. The same civil wis- 
dom which distinguishes his judgments on 
human affairs, may also be traced through 
his reformation of philosophy. It is a prac- 
tical judgment applied to science. What he 
effected was reform in the maxims of state, 
— a reform which had always before been 
unsuccessfully pursued in the republic of 
letters. It is not derived from metaphysical 
reasoning, nor from scientific detail, but from 
a species of intellectual prudence, which, 
on the practical ground of failure and dis- 
appointment in the prevalent modes of pur- 
suing knowdedge, builds the necessity of 
alteration, and inculcates the advantage of 
administering the sciences on other princi- 
ples. It is an error to represent him either 
as imputing fallacy to the syllogistic method, 
or as professing his principle of induction to 
be a discovery. The rules and forms of ar- 
gument will always form an important part 
of the art of logic ; and the method of induc- 
tion, which is the art of discovery, was so 
far from being unknown to Aristotle, that it 
was often faithfully pursued by that great 
observer. What Bacon aimed at, he accom- 
plished ; which was, not to discover new 
principles, but to excite a new spirit, and to 
render observation and experiment the pre- 
dominant characteristics of philosophy. It 
is for this reason that Bacon could not have 
been the author of a system or the founder 
of a sect. He did not deliver opinions ; he 
taught modes of philosophizing. His early 



* "Under the same head of Ethics, may be 
mentioned the small volume to which he has given 
the title of 'Essays,' — the best known and most 
popular of all his works. It is also one of those 
where the superiority of his genius appears to the 
greatest advantage ; the novelty and depth of his 
reflections often receiving a strong relief from the 
triteness of the subject. It may be read from be- 
ginning to end in a few hours ; and yet, after the 
twentieth perusal, one seldom fails to remark in 
it something unobserved before. This, indeed, is 
a characteristic of all Bacon's writings, and is only 
to be accounted for by the itiexhaus tilde aliment 
they furnish to our own thoughts, arid the sympa- 
thetic activity they impart to our torpid faculties." 
Encyclopaedia B^'annica, vol. i. p. 36. 



immersion in civil affairs fitted him for this 
species of scientific reformation. His politi- 
cal course, though in itself unhappy, proba- 
bly conduced to the success, and certainly 
influenced the character, of the contemplative 
part of his life. Had it not been for his ac- 
tive habits, it is bkely that the pedantry and 
quaintness of his age would have still more 
deeply corrupted his significant and majestic 
style. The force of the illustrations which 
he takes from his experience of ordinary life, 
is often as remarkable as the beauty of those 
which he so happily borrows from his study 
of antiquity. But if we have caught the 
leading principle of his intellectual character, 
we must attribute effects still deeper and 
more extensive, to his familiarity with the 
active world. It guarded him against vain 
subtlety, and against all speculation that was 
either visionary or fruitless. It preserved 
him from the reigning prejudices of contem- 
plative men, and from undue preference to 
particular parts of know ledge. If he had been 
exclusively bred in the cloister or the schools, 
he might not have had courage enough to 
reform their abuses. It seems necessary that 
he should have been so placed as to look on 
science in the free spirit of an intelligent 
spectator. Without the pride of professors, 
or the bigotry of their followers, he surveyed 
from the world the studies which reigned in 
the schools ; and, trying them by their fruits, 
he saw that they were barren, and therefore 
pronounced that they were unsound. He 
himself seems, indeed, to have indicated as- 
clearly as modesty would allow, in a case 
that concerned himself, and where he de- 
parted from an universal and almost na- 
tural sentiment, that he regarded scholastic 
seclusion, then more unsocial and rigorous 
than it now can be, as a hindrance in the 
pursuit of knowledge. In one of the noblest 
passages of his writings, the conclusion " of 
the Interpretation of Nature," he tells us, 
"That there is no composition of estate or 
society, nor order or quality of persons, which 
have not some point of contrariety towards- 
true knowdedge ; that monarchies incline 
wits to profit and pleasure ; commonwealths 
to glory and vanity ; universities to sophistry 
and affectation ; cloisters to fables and unpro- 
fitable subtlety; study at large to variety; 
and that it is hard to say whether mixture of 
contemplations with an active life, or retiring 
wholly to contemplations, do disable or hin- 
der the mind more." 

But, though he was thus free from the 
prejudices of a science, a school or a sect, 
other prejudices of a lower nature, and be- 
longing only to the inferior class of those who* 
conduct civil affairs, have been ascribed to 
him by encomiasts as w-ell as by opponents. 
He has been said to consider the great end 
of science to be the increase of the outward 
accommodations and enjoyments of human 
life : we cannot see any foundation for this 
charge. In labouring, indeed, to correct the 
direction of study, and to withdraw it from 
these unprofitable subtleties, it was neces- 



20 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



sary to attract it powerfully towards outward 
acts and works. He no doubt duly valued 
" the dignity of this end, the endowment of 
man's life with new commodities ;" and he 
strikingly observes, that the most poetical 
people of the world had admitted the inven- 
tors of the useful and manual arts among 
the highest beings in their beautiful mytho- 
logy. Had he lived to the age of Watt and 
Davy, he would not have been of the vulgar 
and contracted mind of those who cease to 
admire grand exertions of intellect, because 
they are useful to mankind: but he would 
certainly have considered their great works 
rather as tests of the progress of knowledge 
i than as parts of its highest end. His im- 
portant questions to the doctors of his time 
were : — " Is truth ever barren 1 Are we the 
richer by one poor invention, by reason of all 
the learning that hath been these many 
hundred years'?" His judgment, we may 
also hear from himself: — "Francis Bacon 
thought in this manner. The knowledge 
whereof the world is now possessed, espe- 
cially that of nature, extendeth not to magni- 
tude and certainty of works." He found 
knowledge barren ; he left it fertile. He did 
not underrate the utility of particular inven- 
tions; but it is evident that he valued them 
most, as being themselves among the high- 
est exertions of superior intellect, — as being 
monuments of the progress of knowledge, — 
as being the bands of that alliance between 
action and speculation, wherefrom spring an 
appeal to experience and utility, checking 
the proneness of the philosopher to extreme 
refinements ; while teaching men to revere, 
and exciting them to pursue science by these 
splendid proofs of its beneficial power. Had 
he seen the change in this respect, which, 
produced chiefly in his own country by the 
spirit of his philosophy, has made some de- 
gree of science almost necessary to the sub- 
sistence and fortune of large bodies of men, 
he would assuredly have regarded it as an 
additional security for the future growth of 
'the human understanding. He taught, as he 
tells us, the means, not of the "amplification 
of the power of one man over his country, nor 
of the ampl ification of the power of that coun- 
try over other nations ; but the amplification 
of the power and kingdom of mankind over 
the world," — "'a restitution of man to the 
sovereignty of nature,"* — "and the enlarg- 
ing the bounds of human empire to the ef- 
fecting all things possible. "t — From the 
enlargement of reason, he did not separate 
the growth of virtue, for he thought that 
"truth and goodness were one. differing but 
as the seal and the print ; for truth prints 
goodness."! 

As civil history teaches statesmen to profit 
by the faults of their predecessors, he pro- 
poses that the history of philosophy should 
teach, by example, " learned men to become 



* Of the Interpretation of Nature. 

t New Atlantis. 

+ Advancement of Learning, book i. 



wise in the administration of learning." Early 
immersed in civil affairs, and deeply imbued 
with their spirit, his mind in this place con- 
templates science only through the analogy 
of government, and considers principles of 
philosophizing as the easiest maxims of po- 
licy for the guidance of reason. It seems 
also, that in describing the objects of a his- 
tory of philosophy, and the utility to be de- 
rived from it, he discloses the principle of 
his own exertions in behalf of knowledge ; — 
whereby a reform in its method and maxims, 
justified by the experience of their injurious 
effects, is conducted with a judgment analo- 
gous to th* civil prudence which guides a 
wise lawgiver. If (as may not improperly 
be concluded from this passage) the reforma- 
tion of science was suggested to Lord Bacon, 
by a review of the history'of philosophy, it 
must be owned, that his outline of that history 
has a very important relation to the general 
character of his philosophical genius. The 
smallest circumstances attendant on that out- 
line serve to illustrate the powers and habits 
of thought which distinguished its author. It 
is an example of his faculty of anticipating, 
— not insulated facts or single discoveries, — 
but (what from its complexity and refinement 
seem much more to defy the power of pro- 
phecy) the tendencies of study, and the 
modes of thinking, which were to prevail in 
distant generations, that the parts which he 
had chosen to unfold or enforce in the Latin 
versions, are those which a thinker of the pre- 
sent age would deem both most excellent 
and most arduous in a history of philosophy; 
— "the causes of literary revolutions; the 
study of contemporary writers, not merely as 
the most authentic sources of information, 
but as enabling the historian to preserve in 
his own description the peculiar colour of 
every age, and to recall its literary genius 
from the dead." This outline has the un- 
common distinction of being at once original 
and complete. In this province, Bacon had 
no forerunner; and the most successful fol- 
lower will be he, who most faithfully ob- 
serves his precepts. 

Here, as in every province of knowledge, 
he concludes his review of the performances 
and prospects of the human understanding, 
by considering their subservience to the 
grand purpose of improving the condition, the 
faculties, and the nature of man, without 
which indeed science would be no more than 
a beautiful ornament, and literature would 
rank no higher than a liberal amusement. 
Yet it must be acknowledged, that he rather 
perceived than felfr the connexion of Truth 
and Good. Whether he lived too early to have 
sufficient experience of the moral benefit of 
civilization, or his mind had early acquired too 
exclusive an interest in science, to look fre- 
quently beyond its advancement; or whether 
the infirmities and calamities of his life 
had blighted his feelings, and turned away 
his eyes from the active world : — to what- 
ever cause we may ascribe the defect, cer- 
tain it is, that his works want one excellence 



ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL GENIUS OF BACON AND LOCKE. 



21 



of the highest kind, which they would have 
possessed if he had habitually represented 
the advancement of knowledge as the most 
effectual means of realizing the hopes of 
Benevolence for the human race. 

The character of Mr. Locke's writings can- 
not be well understood, without considering 
the circumstances of the writer. Educated 
among the English Dissenters, during the 
short period of their political ascendency, he 
early imbibed the deep piety and ardent spirit 
of liberty which actuated that body of men ; 
and he probably imbibed also, in their schools, 
the disposition to metaphysical inquiries 
which has every where accompanied the 
Calvinistic theology. Sects, founded on the 
right of private judgment, naturally tend to 
purify themselves from intolerance, and in 
time learn to respect, in others, the freedom 
of thought, to the exercise of which they owe 
their own existence. By the Independent 
divines who were his instructors, our philoso- 
pher was taught those principles of religious 
liberty which they r were the first to disclose 
to the world.* When free inquiry r led him 
to milder dogmas, he retained the severe mo- 
rality which was their honourable singulari- 
ty, and which continues to distinguish their 
successors in those communities which have 
abandoned their rigorous opinions. His pro- 
fessional pursuits afterwards engaged him in 
the study of the physical sciences, at the mo- 
ment when the spirit of experiment and ob- 
servation was in its youthful fervour, and 
when a repugnance to scholastic subtleties 
was the ruling passion of the scientific world. 
At a more^mature age, he was admitted into 
the society of great wits and ambitious poli- 
ticians. During the remainder of his life, he 
was often a man of business, and always a 
man of the world, without much undisturbed 
leisure, and probably with that abated relish 
for merely abstract speculation, which is the 
inevitable result of converse with society 
and experience in affairs. But his political 
connexions agreeing with his early bias, made 
him a zealous advocate of liberty in opinion 
and in government ; and he gradually limited 
his zeal and activity to the illustration of such 
general principles as are the guardians of 
these great interests of human society. 

Almost all his writings (even his Essay it- 
self) were occasional, and intended directly 
to counteract the enemies of reason and free- 
dom in his own age. The first Letter on 
Toleration, the most original perhaps of his 

* Orme's Memoirs of Dr. Owen, pp. 99 — 110. 
In this very ■nbie volume, it is clearly proved that 
the Independents were the first teachers of reli- 
gions liberty. The industrious, ingenious, and 
tolerant writer, is unjust to Jeremy Taylor, who 
had no share (as Mr. Orme supposes) in the per- 
secuting councils of Charles TI. It is an import- 
ant fact in the history of Toleration, that Dr. 
Owen, the Independent, was Dean of Christ- 
church in 1651, when Locke was admitted a mem- 
ber of that College, " under a fanatical tutor," as 
Antony Wood says. 



works, was composed in Holland, in a retire- 
ment where he was forced to conceal him- 
self from the tyranny which pursued him 
into a foreign land ; and it was published in 
England, in the year of the Revolution, to 
vindicate the Toleration Act, of which he 
lamented the imperfection.* 

His Treatise on Government is composed 
of three parts, of different chaiacter, and 
very unequal merit. The confutation of Sir 
Robert Filmer, with which it opens, has long 
lost all interest, and is now to be considered 
as an instance of the hard fate of a philoso- 
pher who is compelled to engage in a conflict 
with those ignoble antagonists who acquire a 
momentary importance by r the defence of 
pernicious falsehoods. The same slavish ab- 
surdities have indeed been at various times 
revived : but they never have assumed, and 
probably never will again assume, the form 
in which they were exhibited by Filmer. 
Mr. Locke's general principles of government 
were adopted by him, probably without much 
examination, as the doctrine which had for 
ages prevailed in the schools of Europe, and 
which afforded an obvious and adequate jus- 
tification of a resistance to oppression. He 
delivers them as he found them, without 
even appearing to have made them his own 
by new modifications. The opinion, that 
the right of the magistrate to obedience is 
founded in the original delegation of power 
by the people to the government, is at least 
as old as the writings of Thomas Aquinas :t 
and in the beginning of the seventeenth 
century, it was regarded as the common 
doctrine of all the divines, jurists and philo- 
sophers, who had at that time examined 
the moral foundation of political authority.]: 
It then prevailed indeed so universally, 



* " We have need," says he, " of more gene- 
rous remedies than have yet been used in our 
distempers. It is neither declarations of indul- 
gence, nor acts of comprehension such as have yet 
been practised or projected amongst us, that can 
do the work among us. Absolute liberty, just and 
true liberty, equal and impartial liberty, is the 
thing that we stand in need of. Now, though 
this has indeed been much talked of, I doubt it has 
not been much understood, — I am sure not at all 
practised, either by our governors towards the 
people in general, or by any dissenting parties of 
the people towards one another." How far are we, 
at this moment [1821] , from adopting these admir- 
able principles ! and with what absurd confidence 
do the enemies of religious liberty appeal to the 
authority of Mr. Locke for continuing those re- 
strictions on conscience which he so deeply 
lamented ! , 

t " Non cujuslibet ratio facit legem, sed multi- 
tudinis, a\itpri7icipi$, vicetn multitudinis gereMis." 
— Summa Theologise, pars i. quaest 90. 

t " Opinionem jam factam commnnem omnium 
Scholasticorum." Antonio de Dominis, De Re- 
publica Ecelesiastiea, lib. vi. cap. 2. Antonio de 
Dominis. Archbishop of Spalato in Dalmatia, 
having imbibed the free spirit of Father Paul, 
inclined towards Protestantism, or at least towards 
such reciprocal concessions as might reunite the 
churches of the West. During Sir "Henry Wot- 
ton's remarkable embassy at Venice, he was pur- 
suaded to go to England, where he was made 
Dean of Windsor. Finding, perhaps, the Protest ■ 



22 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



that it was assumed by Hobbes as the basis 
of his system of universal servitude. The di- 
vine right of kingly government was a princi- 
ple very little known, till it was inculcated 
in the writings of English court divines after 
the accession of the Stuarts. The purpose of 
Mr. Locke's work did not lead him to inquire 
more anxiously into the solidity of these uni- 
versally received principles; nor were there 
at the time any circumstances, in the condi- 
tion of the country; which could suggest to 
his mind the necessity of qualifying their 
application. His object, as he says himself, 
was 'to establish the throne of our great 
Restorer, our present King William ; to make 
good his title in the consent of the people, 
which, being the only one of all lawful go- 
vernments, he has more fully and clearly 
than any prince in Christendom ; and to jus- 
tify to the world the people of England, 
whose love of their just and natural rights, 
with their resolution to preserve them, saved 
the nation when it was on the very brink of 
slavery and ruin." It was essential to his 
purpose to be exact in his more particular 
observations: that part of his work is, ac- 
cordingly, remarkable for general caution, 
and every where bears marks of his own 
considerate mind. By calling William "a 
Restorer," he clearly points out the charac- 
teristic principle of the Revolution j and suf- 
ficiently shows that he did not consider it 
as intended to introduce novelties, but to 
defend or recover the ancient laws and lib- 
erties of the kingdom. In enumerating cases 
which justify resistance, he confines himself, 
almost as cautiously as the Bill of Rights, to 
the grievances actually suffered under the 
Jate reign : and where he distinguishes be- 
tween a dissolution of government and a dis- 
solution of society, it is manifestly his object 
to guard against those inferences which would 
have rendered the Revolution a source of an- 
archy, instead of being the parent of order 
and security. In one instance only, that of 
taxation, where he may be thought to have 
introduced subtle and doubtful speculations 
into a matter altogether practical, his purpose 
was to discover an immovable foundation 
for that ancient principle of rendering the 
government dependent on the representatives 
of the people for pecuniary supply, which 
first established the English Constitution ; 
which improved and strengthened it in a 
course of ages ; and which, at the Revolution, 
finally triumphed over the conspiracy of the 
Stuart princes. If he be ever mistaken in his 
premises, his conclusions at least are, in this 
part of his work, equally just, generous, and 
prudent. Whatever charge of haste or inac- 

ants more inflexible than lie expected, he returned 
to Rome, possibly with the hope of more success 
in that quarter. But, though he publicly abjured 
his errors, he was soon, in consequence of some 
tree language in conversation, thrown into a dun- 
geon, where he died. His own writings are for- 
gotten ; but mankind are indebted to him for the 
admirable history of the Council of Trent by Fa- 
lher Paul, of which he brought '.he MSS. with him 
io London. 



curacy may be brought against his abstract 
principles, he thoroughly weighs, and mature- 
ly considers the practical results. Those who 
consider his moderate plan of Parliamentary 
Reform as at variance with his theory of 
government, may perceive, even in this re- 
pugnance, whether real or apparent, a new 
indication of those dispositions which ex- 
posed him rather to the reproach of being an 
inconsistent reasoner, than to that of being 
a dangerous politician. In such works, how- 
ever, the nature of the subject has, in some 
degree, obliged most men of sense to treat it 
with considerable regard to consequences; 
though there are memorable and unfortunate 
examples of an opposite tendency. 

The metaphysical object of the Essay on 
Human Understanding, therefore, illustrates 
the natural bent of the author's genius more 
forcibly than those writings which are con- 
nected with the business and interests of men . 
The reasonable admirers of Mr. Locke would 
have pardoned Mr. Stewart, if he had pro- 
nounced more decisively, that the first book 
of that work is inferior to the others; and 
we have satisfactory proof that it was so 
considered by the author himself, who, in 
the abridgment of the Essay which he pub- 
lished in Leclerc's Review, omits it altoge- 
ther, as intended only to obviate the preju- 
dices of some philosophers against the more 
important contents of his work.* It must be 
owned, that the very terms " innate ideas" 
and '-'innate principles," together with the 
division of the latter into " speculative and 
practical," are not only vague, but equivo- 
cal ; that they are capable of different senses; 
and that they are not always employed in 
the same sense throughout this discussion. 
Nay, it will be found very difficult, after the 
most careful perusal of Mr. Locke's first 
book, to state the question in dispute clearly 
and shortly, in language so strictly philoso- 
phical as to be free from any hypothesis. 
As the antagonists chiefly contemplated by 
Mr. Locke were the followers of Descartes, 
perhaps the only proposition for which he 
must necessarily be held to contend was, 
that the mind has no ideas which do not arise 
from impressions on the senses, or from re- 
flections on our own thoughts and feelings. 
But it is certain, that he sometimes appears 
to contend for much more than this proposi- 
tion ; that he has generally been understood 
in a larger sense ; and that, thus interpreted, 
his doctrine is not irreconcilable to those 
philosophical systems with which it has been 
supposed to be most at variance. 

These general remarks may be illustrated 
by a reference to some of those ideas which 
are more general and important, and seem 



* " J'ai tache d'abord de prouver que notre es- 
prit est au commencement ce qu'on appelle un 
tabula rasa, c'esl-a-dire, sans idees et sans con- 
noissances. Mais comme ce n'a ete que pour de- 
truire les prejuges de quclques philosophes, j'ai 
cru que dans ce petit abrege de mes principes, je 
devois passer toutes les disputes pre!iminaire9 qui 
composent le livre premier." Bibliotheque Uni- 
verselle, Janv. 1688. 



ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL GENIUS OF BACON AND LOCKE. 



more dark than any others ; — perhaps only 
because we seek in them for what is not to 
be found in any of the most simple elements 
of human knowledge. The nature of our 
notion of space, and more especially of that 
of time, seems to form one of the mysteries 
of our intellectual being. Neither of these 
notions can be conceived separately. Nothing 
outward can be conceived without space; 
for it is space which gives owmess to objects, 
or renders them capable of being conceived 
as outward. Nothing can be conceived to 
exist, without conceiving some time in which 
it exists. Thought and feeling may be con- 
ceived, without at the same time conceiving 
space ; but no operation of mind can be re- 
called which does not suggest the conception 
of a portion of time, in which such mental 
operation is performed. Both these ideas 
are so clear that they cannot be illustrated, 
and so simple that they cannot be defined : 
nor indeed is it possible, by the use of any 
words, to advance a single step towards ren- 
dering them more, or otherwise intelligible 
than the lessons of Nature have already 
made them. The metaphysician knows no 
more of either than the rustic. If we confine 
ourselves merely to a statement of the facts 
which we discover by experience concerning 
these ideas, we shall find them reducible, as 
has just been intimated, to the following; — 
namely, that they are simple ; that neither 
space nor time can be conceived without 
some other conception ; that the idea of space 
always attends that of every outward object ; 
and that the idea of time enters into every 
idea which the mind of man is capable of 
forming'. Time cannot be conceived sepa- 
rately from something else ; nor can any thing 
else be conceived separately from time. If 
we are asked whether the idea of time be 
innate, the only proper answer consists in 
the statement of the fact, that it never arises 
in the human mind otherwise than as the 
concomitant of some other perception ; and 
that thus understood, it is not innate, since it 
is always directly or indirectly occasioned 
by some action on the senses. Various modes 
of expressing these facts have been adopted 
by different philosophers, according to the 
variety of their technical language. By 
Kant, space is said to be the/onnof our per- 
ceptive faculty, as applied to outward ob- 
jects; and time is called the form of the 
same faculty, as it regards our mental ope- 
rations: by Mr. Stewart, these ideas are con- 
sidered "as suggested to the understanding'''* 
by sensation or reflection, though, according 
to him, "the mind is not directly and imme- 
diately furnished " with such ideas, either by 
sensation or reflection : and, by a late emi- 
nent metaphysician,! they were regarded as 
perceptions, in the nature of those arising 
from the senses, of which the one is attend- 
ant on the idea of every outward object, and 
the other concomitant with the consciousness 

* Philosophical Essays, essay i. chap. 2. 
+ Mr. Thomas Wedgwood ; see Life of Mack- 
intosh, vol. i. p. 289. 



of every mental operation. Each of these 
modes of expression has its own advantages 
The first mode brings forward the univer- 
sality and necessity of these two notions; the 
second most strongly marks the distinction 
between them and the fluctuating percep- 
tions naturally referred to the senses; while 
the last has the opposite merit of presenting 
to us that incapacity of being analyzed, in 
which they agree with all other simple ideas. 
On the other hand, each of them (perhaps 
from the inherent imperfection of language) 
seems to insinuate more than the mere re- 
sults of experience. The technical terms 
introduced by Kant have the appearance of 
an attempt to explain what, by the writer's 
own principles, is incapable of explanation ; 
Mr. Wedgwood may be charged with giving 
the same name to mental phenomena, which 
coincide in nothing but simplicity ; and Mr. 
Stewart seems to us to have opposed two 
modes of expression to each other, which, 
when they are thoroughly analyzed, repre- 
sent one and the same fact. 

Leibnitz thought that Locke's admission 
of "ideas of reflection" furnished a ground 
for negotiating a reconciliation between his 
system and the opinions of those who, in 
the etymological sense of the word, are more 
metaphysical; and it may very well be 
doubted, whether the ideas of Locke much 
differed from the "innate ideas" of Des- 
cartes, especially as the latter philosopher 
explained the term, when he found himself 
pressed by acute objectors. " I never said 
or thought," says Descartes, " that, the mind 
needs innate ideas, which are something dif- 
ferent from its own faculty of thinking ; but, 
as I observed certain thoughts to be in my 
mind, which neither proceeded from outward 
objects, nor were determined by my will, 
but merely from my own faculty of thinking, 
I called these 'innate ideas,' to distinguish 
them from such as are either adventitious 
(i. c. from without), or compounded by our 
imagination.- I call them innate, in the same 
sense in which generosity is irtnate in some 
families, gout and stone in others ; because 
the children of such families come into the 
world with a disposition to such virtue, or to 
such maladies.'"* In a letter to Mersenne, + 
he says," by the word 'idea,' I understand 
all that can be in our thoughts, and I dis- 
tinguish three sorts of ideas ; — adventitious, 
like the common idea of the sun ; framed 
by the mind, such as that which astronomical 
reasoning gives us of the sun ; and innate, 



* This remarkalile passage of Descartes ia to be 
found in a French translation of the preface and 
notes to the Principia Philosophise, probably by 
himself. — (Lettres de Descartes, vol. i. lett. 99.) 
It is justly observed by one of his most acute an- 
tagonists, that Descartes does not steadily adhere 
to this sense of the word "innate," but vanes it 
in the exigencies of controversy, so as to give it 
at each moment the import which best suits the 
nature of the objection with which he has then to 
contend. — Huet, Censura Philosophise Cartesi 
anas, p. 93. 

T Lettres, vol, ii. Iett. 54. 



24 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



as the idea of God, mind, bod}', a triangle, 
and generally all those which represent true, 
immutable, and eternal essences." It must 
be owned, that, however nearly the first of 
these representations may approach to Mr. 
Locke's ideas of reflection, the second devi- 
ates from them very widely, and is not easily 
reconcilable with the first. The comparison 
of these two sentences, strongly impeaches 
the steadiness and consistency of Descartes 
in the fundamental principles of his system. 

A principle in science is a proposition from 
which many other propositions may be in- 
ferred. That principles, taken in this sense 
of propositions, are part of the original struc- 
ture or furniture of the human mind, is an 
assertion so unreasonable, that perhaps no 
philosopher has avowedly, or at least perma- 
nently, adopted it. But it is not to be forgot- 
ten, that there must be certain general laws 
of perception, or ultimate facts respecting 
that province of mind, beyond which human 
knowledge cannot reach. Such facts bound 
our researches in every part of knowledge, 
and the ascertainment of them is the utmost 
possible attainment of Science. Beyond 
them there is nothing, or at least nothing dis- 
coverable by us. These observations, however 
universally acknowledged when they are 
stated, are often hid from the view of the 
system-builder when he is employed in rear- 
ing his airy edifice. There is a common 
disposition to exempt the philosophy of the 
human understanding from the dominion of 
that irresistible necessity which confines all 
other knowledge within the limits of experi- 
ence ; — arising probably from a vague notion 
that the science, without which the princi- 
ples of no other are intelligible, ought to be 
able to discover the foundation even of its 
own principles. Hence the question among 
the German metaphysicians, " What makes 
experience possible?'' Hence the very gen- 
eral indisposition among metaphysicians to 
acquiesce in any mere fact as the result of 
their inquiries, and to make vain exertions 
in pursuit of an explanation of it, without 
recollecting that the explanation must always 
consist of another fact, which must either 
equally require another explanation, or be 
equally independent of it. There is a sort 
of sullen reluctance to be satisfied with ul- 
timate facts, which has kept its ground in the 
theory of the human mind long after it has 
been banished from all other sciences. Phi- 
losophers are, in this province, often led to 
waste their strength in attempts to find out 
what supports the foundation; and, in these 
efforts to prove first principles, they inevita- 
bly find that their proof must contain an as- 
sumption of the thing to be proved, and that 
their argument must return to the point from 
which it set out. 

Mental philosophy can consist ol nothing 
but facts; and it is at least as vain to inquire 
into the cause of thought, as into the cause 
of attraction. What the number and nature 
of the ultimate facts respecting mind may 
be, is a question which can only be deter- 



mined by experience : and it is of the ut- 
most importance not to allow their arbitrary 
multiplication, which enables some indivi- 
duals to impose on us their own erroneous 
or uncertain speculations as the fundamental 
principles of human knowledge. No gene- 
ral criterion has hitherto been offered, by 
which these last principles may be distin- 
guished from all other propositions. Perhaps 
a practical standard of some convenience 
would be, that all reasoners should be required 
to admit every principle of which the denial 
renders reasoning impossible. This is only to 
require that a man should admit, in general 
terms, those principles which he must as- 
sume in every particular argument, and which 
he has assumed in every argument which he 
has employed against their existence. It is, 
in other words, to require that a disputant 
shall not contradict himself; for every argu- 
ment against the fundamental laws of thought 
absolutely assumes their existence in the 
premises, while it totally denies it in the 
conclusion. 

Whether it be among the ultimate facts in 
human nature, that the mind is disposed or 
determined to assent to some propositions, 
and to reject others, when they are first sub- 
mitted to its judgment, without inferring 
their truth or falsehood from any process of 
reasoning, is manifestly as much a question 
of mere experience as any other which re- 
lates to our mental constitution. It is certain 
that such inherent inclinations may be con- 
ceived, without supposing the ideas of which 
the propositions are composed to be. in any 
sense, 'innate'; if, indeed, that unfortunate 
word be capable of being reduced by defini- 
tion to any fixed meaning. "Innate," says 
Lord Shaftesbury, " is the word Mr. Locke 
poorly plays with : the right word, though 
less used, is connate. The question is not 
about the time when the ideas enter the 
mind, but, whether the constitution of man be 
such, as at some time or other (no matter 
when), the ideas will not necessarily spring 
up in him." These are the words of Lord 
Shaftesbury in his Letters, which, not being 
printed in any edition of the Characteristics, 
are less known than they ought to be ; though, 
in them, the fine genius and generous prin- 
ciples of the writer are less hid by occasional 
affectation of style, than in any other of his 
writings.* 

The above observations apply with still 
greater force to what Mr. Locke calls "prac- 
tical principles." Here, indeed, he contra- 
dicts himself; for, having built one of his 
chief arguments against other speculative or 
practical principles, on what he thinks the 
incapacity of the majority of mankind to en- 
tertain those very abstract ideas, of which 
these principles, if innate, would imply the 
presence in every mind, he very inconsistent- 1 

* Dr. Lee, an antagonist of Mr. Locke, has 
stated the question of innate ideas more fully than 
Shaftesbury, or even Leibnitz : he has also antici- 
pated some of the reasonings of Buffier and Reid. 
— Lee's Notes on Locke, folio, London, 1702. 



ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL GENIUS OF BACON AND LOCKE. 



25 



ly admits the existence of one innate practi- 
cal principle, — " a desire of happiness, and 
an aversion to misery."* without considering 
that happiness and misery are also abstract 
terms, which excite very indistinct concep- 
tions in the minds of " a great part of man- 
kind." It would be easy also to show, if this 
were a proper place, that the desire of happi- 
ness, so far from being an innate, is not even 
an original principle; that it presupposes the 
existence of all those particular appetites 
and desires of which the gratification is plea- 
sure, and also the exercise of that deliberate 
reason which habitually examines how far 
each gratification, in all its consequences, in- 
creases or diminishes that sum of enjoyment 
which constitutes happiness. If that subject 
could be now fully treated, it would appear 
that this error of Mr. Locke, or another 
equally great, that we have only one practical 
principle, — the desire of pleasure, — is the 
root of most false theories of morals; and 
that it is also the source of many mistaken 
speculations on the important subjects of 
government and education, which at this 
moment mislead the friends of human im- 
provement, and strengthen the arms of its 
enemies. But morals fell only incidentally 
under the consideration of Mr. Locke; and 
his errors on that greatest of all sciences were 
the prevalent opinions of his age, which can- 
not be justly called the principles of Hobbes, 
though that extraordinary man had alone the 
boldness to exhibit these principles in con- 
nexion with their odious but strictly logical 
consequences. 

The exaggerations of this first book, how- 
ever, afford a new proof of the author's 
steady regard to the highest interests of man- 
kind. He justly considered the free exercise 
of reason as the highest of these, and that 
on the security of which all the others de- 
pend. The circumstances of his life rendered 
it a long warfare against the enemies of 
freedom in philosophising, freedom in wor- 
ship, and freedom from every political re- 
straint which necessity did not justify. In 
his noble zeal for liberty of thought, he 
dreaded the tendency of a doctrine which 
might "gradually prepare mankind to swal- 
low that for an innate principle which may 
serve his purpose who teacheth lhem.' ; t He 
may well be excused, if, in the ardour of his 
generous conflict, he sometimes carried be- 
yond the bounds of calm and neutral reason 
his repugnance to doctrines which, as they 
were then generally explained, he justly re- 
garded as capable of being employed to 
shelter absurdity from detection, to stop the 
progress of free inquiry, and to subject the 
general reason to the authority of a few in- 
dividuals. Every error of Mr. Locke in 
speculation may be traced to the influence 
of some virtue ; — at least every error except 
some of the erroneous opinions generally re- 
ceived in his age, which, with a sort of pas- 

* Essay on Human Understanding, book i. 
chap. 3. $ 3. 
t Chap. 4. § 24. 



sive acquiescence, he suffered to retain their 
place in his mind. 

It is with the second book that the Essay 
on the Human Understanding properly be- 
gins; and this book is the first considerable 
contribution in modern times towards the 
experimental* philosophy of the human 
mind. The road was pointed out by Bacon; 
and, by excluding the fallacious analogies of 
thought to outward appearance, Descartes 
may be said to have marked out the limits 
of the proper field of inquiry. But, before 
Locke, there was no example in intellectual 
philosophy of an ample enumeration of facts, 
collected and arranged for the express pur- 
pose of legitimate generalization. He him- 
self tells us, that his purpose was, " in a plain 
historical method, to give an account of the 
ways by which our understanding comes to 
attain those notions of things we have." In 
more modern phraseology, this would be 
called an attempt to ascertain, by observa- 
tion, the most general facts relating to the 
origin of human knowledge. There is some- 
thing in the plainness, and even homeliness 
of Locke's language, which strongly indicates 
his very clear conception, that experience 
must be his sole guide, and his unwilling- 
ness, by the use of scholastic language, to 
imitate the example of those who make a 
show of explaining facts, while in reality they 
only "darken counsel by words without 
knowledge." He is content to collect the 
laws of thought, as he would have collected 
those of any other object of physical know- 
ledge, from observation alone. He seldom 
embarrasses himself with physiological hy- 
pothesis,! or wastes his strength on those 



* This word "experimental," has the defect of 
not appearing to comprehend the knowledge which 
flows from observation, as well as that which is 
obtained by experiment. The German word " em- 
pirical," is applied to all the information which ex- 
perience affords ; but it is in our language degraded 
by another application. I therefore must use 
"experimental" in a larger sense than its ety- 
mology warrants. 

t A stronger proof can hardly be required than 
the following sentence, of his freedom from phy- 
siological prejudice. " This laying up of our 
ideas in the repository of the memory, signifies no 
more but this, that the mind has the power in many 
cases to revive perceptions, with another percep- 
tion annexed to them, that it has had them be- 
fore." The same chapter is remarkable for the 
exquisite, and almost poetical beauty, of some of 
its illustrations. "Ideas quickly fade, and often 
vanish quite out of the understanding, leaving no 
more footsteps or remaining characters of them- 
selves than shadows do flying over a field of corn." 
— " The ideas, as well as children of our youth, 
often die before us, and our minds represent to 
us those tombs to which we are approaching ; 
where, though the brass and marble remain, yet 
the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the ima- 
gery moulders away. Pictures drawn in our 
minds are laid in fading colours, and, unless some- 
times refreshed, vanish and disappear," — book ii. 
chap. 10. This pathetic language must have been 
inspired by experience ; and, though Locke could 
not have been more than fifty-six when he wrote 
these sentences, it is loo well known that the first 
decays of memory may be painfully felt long be- 
fore they can be detected by the keenest observer. 



28 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



insoluble problems which were then called 
metaphysical. Though, in the execution of 
his plan, there are many and great defects, 
the conception of it is entirely conformable to 
the Verulamian method of induction, which, 
even after the fullest enumeration of parti- 
culars, requires a cautious examination of 
each subordinate class of phenomena, before 
we attempt, through a very slowly ascending 
series of generalizations" to soar to compre- 
hensive laws " Philosophy," asMr.Playfair 
^excellently renders Bacon, " has either taken 
much from a few things, or too little from a 
great many ; and in both cases has too nar- 
row a basis to be of much duration or utility.' 7 
Or, to use the very words of the Master him- 
self — " We shall then have reason to hope 
well of the sciences, when we rise by con- 
tinued steps from particulars to inferior 
axioms, and then to the middle, and only at 
last to the most general.* It is not so much 
by an appeal to experience (for some degree 
of that appeal is universal), as by the mode 
of conducting it, that the followers of Bacon 
are distinguished from the framers of hy- 
potheses." It is one thing to borrow from 
experience just enough to make a supposition 
plausible; it is quite another to take from it 
all that is necessary to be the foundation of 
just theory. 

In this respect perhaps, more than in any 
other, the philosophical writings of Locke are 
contradistinguished from those of Hobbes. 
The latter saw, with astonishing rapidity of in- 
tuition some of the simplest and most general 
facts which may be observed in the operations 
of the understanding; and perhaps no man 
ever possessed the same faculty of conveying 
his abstract speculations in language of such 
clearness, precision, and force, as to engrave 
them on the mind of the reader. But he 
did not wait to examine whether there might 
not be other facts equally general relating 
to the intellectual powers; and he therefore 
/: tOok too little from a great many things." 
He fell into the double error of hastily ap- 
plying his general laws to the most compli- 
cated processes of thought, without consider- 
ing whether these general laws were not 
themselves limited by other not less compre- 
hensive laws, and without trying to discover 
how they were connected with particulars, 
by a scale of intermediate and secondary 
laws. This mode of philosophising was well 
suited to the dogmatic confidence and dicta- 
torial tone which belonged to the character 
of the philosopher of Malmsbury, and which 
enabled him to brave the obloquy attendant 
on singular and obnoxious opinions. "The 
plain historical method," on the other hand, 
chosen by Mr. Locke, produced the natural 
fruits of caution and modesty ; taught him to 
distrust hasty and singular conclusions; dis- 
posed him, on fit occasions, to entertain a 
mitigated scepticism ; and taught him also 
the rare courage to make an ingenuous 
avowal of ignorance. This contrast is one 

* Novum Organum, lib. i. $ civ. 



of our reasons for doubting whether Locke 
be much indebted to Hobbes for his specu- 
lations; and certainly the mere coincidence 
of the opinions of two metaphysicians is 
slender -evidence, in any case, that either 
of them has borrowed his opinions from the 
other. Where the premises are different, 
and they have reached the same conclusion 
by different roads, such a coincidence is 
scarcely any evidence at all. Locke and 
Hobbes agree chiefly on those points in 
which, except the Cartesians, all the specu- 
lators of their age were also agreed. They 
differ on the most momentous questions, — 
the sources of knowledge, — the power of ab- 
straction, — the nature of the will ; on the two 
last of which subjects, Locke, by his very 
failures themselves, evinces a strong repug- 
nance to the doctrines of Hobbes. They dif- 
fer not only in all their premises, and many 
of their conclusions, but in their manner of 
philosophising itself. Locke had no preju- 
dice which could lead him to imbibe doc- 
trines from the enemy of liberty and religion. 
His style, with all its faults, is that of a man 
who thinks for himself ; and an original style 
is not usually the vehicle of borrowed opin- 
ions. 

Few books have coirtributed more than 
Mr. Locke's Essay to rectify prejudice ; to 
undermine established errors ; to diffuse a 
just mode of thinking ; to excite a fearless 
spirit of inquiry, and yet to contain it within 
the boundaries which Nature has prescribed 
to the human understanding. An amend- 
ment of the general habits of thought is, in 
most parts of knowledge, an object as impor- 
tant as even the discovery of new truths ; 
though it is not so palpable, nor in its nature 
so capable of being estimated by superficial 
observers. In the mental and moral world, 
which scarcely admits of any thing which 
can be called discovery, the correction of the 
intellectual habits is probably the greatest 
service which can be rendered to Science. 
In this respect, the merit of Locke is unri- 
valled. His writings have diffused through- 
out the civilized world, the love of civil lib- 
erty and the spirit of toleration and charity 
in religious differences, with the disposition 
to reject whatever is obscure, fantastic, or 
hypothetical in speculation, — to reduce ver- 
bal disputes to their proper value, — to aban- 
don problems which admit of no solution, — 
to distrust whatever cannot clearly be ex- 
pressed, — to render theory the simple ex- 
pression of facts, — and to prefer those studies 
which most directly contribute to human 
happiness. If Bacon first discovered the 
rules by which knowledge is improved, 
Locke has most contributed to make. man- 
kind at large observe them. He has done 
most, though often by remedies of silent 
and almost insensible operation, to cure 
those mental distempers which obstructed 
the adoption of these rules; and has thus 
led to that general diffusion of a healthful 
and vigorous understanding, which is at once 
the greatest of all improvements, and the 



ON THE STUDY OF THE LAW OF NATURE AND NATIONS. 



27 



instrument by which all other progress must 
be accomplished. He has left to posterity 
the instructive example of a prudent re- 
former, and of a philosophy temperate as well 
as liberal, which spares the feelings of the 
good, and avoids direct hostility with obsti- 
nate and formidable prejudice. These bene- 
fits are very slightly counterbalanced by 
some political doctrines liable to misapplica- 
tion, and by the scepticism of some of his 
ingenious followers ; — an inconvenience to 
which every philosophical school is exposed, 
which does not steadily limit its theory to a 



mere exposition of experience. If Locke 
made few discoveries, Socrates made none : 
yet both did more for the improvement of the 
understanding, and not less for the progress 
of knowledge, than the authors of the most 
brilliant discoveries. Mr. Locke will ever 
be regarded as one of the great ornaments 
of the English nation; and the most distant 
posterity will speak of him in the language 
addressed to him by the poet — 
" O Decus AngliacfBcerte, O Lux altera gentis!"* 

* Gray, De Principiis Cogitandi. 



A DISCOURSE 

ON THE 

LAW OF NATURE AND NATIONS. 



Before I begin a course of lectures on a 
science of great extent and importance, I 
think it my duty to lay before the public the 
reasons which have induced me to undertake 
such a labour, as well as a short account of 
the nature and objects of the course which I 
propose to deliver. I have always been un- 
willing to waste in unprofitable inactivity 
that leisure which the first years of my pro- 
fession usually allow, and which diligent 
men, even with moderate talents, might of- 
ten employ in a manner neither discreditable 
to themselves, nor wholly useless to others. 
Desirous that my own leisure should not be 
consumed in sloth, I anxiously looked about 
for some way of filling it up, which might 
enable me according to the measure of my 
humble abilities, to contribute somewhat to 
the stock of general usefulness. I had long 
been convinced that public lectures, which 
have been used in most ages and countries to 
teach the elements of almost every part of 
learning, were the most convenient mode in 
which these elements could be taught ; — 
that they were the best adapted for the im- 
portant purposes of awakening the attention 
of the student, of abridging his labours, of 
guiding his inquiries, of relieving the tedious- 
ness of private study, and of impressing on 
his recollection the principles of a science. 
I saw no reason why the law of England 
should be less adapted to this mode of in- 
struction, or less likely to benefit by it, than 



* This discourse was the preliminary one of a 
course of lectures delivered in the hall of Lincoln's 
Inn during the spring of i he year 1799. From the 
state of the original IVJSS. notes of these lectures, 
in the possession of the editor, it would seem that 
the lecturer had trusted, with the exception of a 
few passages prepared in extenso, to his powerful 
memory for all the aid that was required beyond 
What mere catchwords could supply. — Ed. 



any other part of knowledge. A learned gen- 
tleman, however, had already occupied that 
ground,* and will, I doubt not, persevere in 
the useful labour which he has undertaken. 
On his province it was far from my wish to 
intrude. It appeared to me that a course 
of lectures on another science closely con- 
nected with all liberal professional studies, 
and which had long been the subject of my 
own reading and reflection, might not only 
prove a most useful introduction to the law 
of England, but might also become an inter- 
esting part of general study, and an import- 
ant branch of the education of th<3se who 
were not destined for the profession of the 
law. I was confirmed in my opinion by the 
assent and approbation of men, whose 
names, if it were becoming to mention them 
on so slight an occasion, would add authority 
to truth, and furnish some excuse even for 
error. Encouraged by their approbation, I 
resolved without delay to commence the un- 
dertaking, of which I shall now proceed to 
give some account ; without interrupting the 
progress of my discourse by anticipating or 
answering the remarks of those who may, 
perhaps, sneer at me for a departure from 
the usual course of my profession, because 
I am desirous of employing in a rational and 
useful pursuit that leisure, of which the 
same men would have required no account, 
if it had been wasted on trifles, or even 
abused in dissipation. 

The science which teaches the rights and 
duties of men and of states, has, in modern 
times, been called " the law of nature and 
nations." Under this comprehensive title 



* See " A Syllabus of Lectures on the Law of 
England, to be delivered in Lincoln's Inn Hall by 
M. Nolen, Esq." 



28 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



are included the rules of morality, as they 
prescribe the conduct of private men towards 
each other in all the various relations of hu- 
man life ; as they regulate both the obedi- 
ence of citizens to the laws, and the authority 
of the magistrate in framing laws, and ad- 
ministering government ; and as they modify 
the intercourse of independent common- 
wealths in peace, and prescribe limits to their 
hostility in war. This important science 
comprehends only that part of private ethics 
which is capable of being reduced to fixed 
and general rules. It considers only those 
general principles of jurisprudence and poli- 
tics which the wisdom of the lawgiver adapts 
to the peculiar situation of his own country, 
and which the skill of the statesman applies 
to the more fluctuating and infinitely varying 
circumstances which affect its immediate 
welfare and safety. " For there are in nature 
certain fountains of justice whence all civil 
laws are derived, but as streams ; and like as 
waters do take tinctures and tastes from the 
soils through which they run, so do civil laws 
vary according to the regions and govern- 
ments where they are planted, though they 
proceed from the same fountains."* 

On the great questions of morality, of poli- 
tics, and of municipal law, it is the object 
of this science to deliver only those funda- 
mental truths of which the particular appli- 
cation is as extensive as the whole private 
and public conduct of men ; — to discover 
those "fountains of justice," without pursu- 
ing the "streams" through the endless va- 
riety of their course. But another part of 
the subject is to be treated with greater ful- 
ness and minuteness of application ; namely, 
that important branch of it which professes 
to regulate the relations and intercourse of 
states, and more especially, (both on account 
of their greater perfection and their more 
immediate reference to use), the regulations 
of that intercourse as they are modified by 
the usages of the civilized nations of Chris- 
tendom. Here this science no longer rests 
on general principles. That province of it 
which we now call the " law of nations," has, 
in many of its pails, acquired among Euro- 
pean ones much of the precision and cer- 
tainty of positive law ; and the particulars 
of that law are chiefly to be found in the 
works of those writers who have treated the 
science of which I now speak. It is because 
they have classed (in a manner which seems 
peculiar to modern times) the duties of indi- 
viduals with those of nations, and established 
their obligation on similar grounds, that the 
whole science has been called, "the law of 
nature and nations.'' 

Whether this appellation be the happiest 
that could have been chosen for the science, 
and by what steps it came to be adopted 



* Advancement of Learning, book ii. I have 
not been deterred by some petty incongruity of 
metaphor from quoting; this noble sentence. "Mr. 
Hume had, perhaps, this sentence in his recollec- 
tion, when he wrote a remarkable passage of his 
works. See his Essays, vol. ii. p. 352. 



among our modern moralists and lawyers,* 
are inquiries, perhaps, of more curiosity than 
use, and ones which, if they deserve any 
where to be deeply pursued, will be pursued 
with more propriety in a full examination of 
the subject than within the short limits of an 
introductory discourse. Names are, how- 
ever, in a great measure arbitrary; but the 
distribution of knowledge into its parts,, 
though it may often perhaps be varied with 
little disadvantage, yet certainly depends- 
upon some fixed principles. The modern 
method of considering individual and na- 
tional morality as the subjects of the same 
science, seems to me as convenient and rea- 
sonable an arrangement as can be adopted. 
The same rules of morality which hold toge- 
ther men in families, and which form families 
into commonwealths, also link together these 
commonwealths as members of the great so- 
ciety of mankind. Commonwealths, as well 
as private men, are liable to injury, and ca- 
pable of benefit, from each other; it is, 
therefore, their interest, as well as their 
duty, to reverence, to practise, and to en- 
force those rules of justice which control 
and restrain injury, — which regulate and 
augment benefit, — which, even in their pre- 
sent imperfect observance, preserve civilized 
states in a tolerable condition of security 
from wrong, and which, if they could be gen- 
erally obeyed, would establish, and perma- 
nently maintain, the well-being of the uni- 
versal commonwealth of the human race. It 
is therefore with justice, that one part of this 
science has been called "the natural law of 
individuals, 7 '' and the other "the natural law 
of states;" and it is too obvious to require 
observation, t that the application of both 
these laws, of the former as much as of the 
latter, is modified and varied by customs 



* The learned reader is aware that the "jus 
natures" and "jus gentium" of the Roman law- 
yers are phrases of very different import from the 
modern phrases, "law of nature" and " law of 
nations." "Jus naturale," says Ulpian, "est 
quod natura omnia animalia docuit." " Quod 
naturalis ratio inter omnes homines constituit, id 
apud omnes perasque custoditur; vocaturque jus 
gentium." But they sometimes neglect this subtle 
distinction — "Jure naturali quod appellatur jus 
gentium. " "Jusfeciale" was the Roman term 
for our law of nations. " Belli quidem aequitas 
sanctissime populi Rom. fecialt jure perscripta 
est." De Officiis, lib. i. cap. ii. Our learned ci- 
vilian Zouch has accordingly entitled his work, 
" De Jure Feciali, sive de Jure inter Gentes." 
The Chancellor D'Aguesseau, probably without 
knowing the work of Zouch, suggested that this 
law should be called, "Droit entre les'Gens" 
(CEuvres, vol. ii. p. 337), in which he has been 
followed by a late ingenious writer, Mr. Bentham, 
(Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Le- 
gislation, p. 324.) Perhaps these learned writers 
do employ a phrase which expresses the subject 
of this law with more accuracy than our common 
language ; but I doubt whether innovations in the 
terms of science always repay us by their superior 
precision for the uncertainty and confusion which 
the change occasions. 

t This remark is suggested by an objection of 
Vattel, which is more specious than solid. See 
, his Preliminaries. § 6. 



ON THE STUDY OF THE LAW OF NATURE AND NATIONS. 



29 



conventions, character, and situation. With 
a view to these principles, the writers on 
general jurisprudence have considered states 
as moral persons; a mode of expression 
which has been called a fiction of law, but 
which may be regarded with more propriety 
as a bold metaphor, used to convey the im- 
portant truth, that nations, though they ac- 
knowledge no common superior, and neither 
can, nor ought, to be subjected to human 
punishment, are yet under the same obliga- 
tions mutually to practise honesty and hu- 
manity, which would have bound individu- 
als, — if the latter could be conceived ever 
to have subsisted without the protecting re- 
straints of government, and if they were not 
compelled to the discharge of their duty by 
the just authority of magistrates, and by the 
wholesome terrors of the laws. With the 
same views this law has been styled, and 
(notwithstanding the objections of some writ- 
ers to the vagueness of the language) ap- 
pears to have been styled with great pro- 
priety, " the law of nature." It may with 
sufficient correctness, or at least by an easy 
metaphor, be called a "law," inasmuch as 
it is a supreme, invariable, and uncontrolla- 
ble rule of conduct to all men, the violation 
of which is avenged by natural punishments, 
necessarily flowing from the constitution of 
things, and as fixed and inevitable as the 
order of nature. It is " the law of nature," 
because its general precepts are essentially 
adapted to promote the happiness of man, 
as long as he remains a being of the same 
nature with which he is at present endowed, 
or, in other words, as long as he continues to 
be man, in all the variety of times, places, 
and circumstances, in which he has been 
known, or can be imagined to exist ; because 
it is discoverable by natural reason, and suit- 
able to our natural constitution ; and because 
its fitness and wisdom are founded on the 
general nature of human beings, and not on 
any of those temporary and accidental situ- 
ations in which they may be placed. It is 
with still more propriety, and indeed with 
the highest strictness, and the most perfect 
accuracy, considered as a law, when, accord- 
ing to those just and magnificent views 
which philosophy and religion open to us of 
the government of the world, it is received 
and reverenced as the sacred code, promul- 
gated by the great Legislator of the Universe 
for the guidance of His creatures to happi- 
ness; — guarded and enforced, as our own 
experience may inform us, by the penal 
sanctions of shame, of remorse, of infamy, 
and of misery ; and still farther enforced by 
the reasonable expectation of yet more awful 
penalties in a future and more permanent 
state of existence. It is the contemplation 
of the law of nature under this full, mature, 
and perfect idea of its high origin and tran- 
scendent dignity, that called forth the enthu- 
siasm of the greatest men, and, the greatest 
writers of ancient and modern times, in 
those sublime descriptions, in which they 
have exhausted all tne powers ot language. 



and surpassed all the other exertions, even 
of their own eloquence, in the display of its 
beauty and majesty. It is of this law that 
Cicero has spoken in so many parts of his 
writings, not only with all the splendour and 
copiousness of eloquence, but with the sen- 
sibility of a man of virtue, and with the gra- 
vity and comprehension of a philosopher.* 
It is of this law that Hooker speaks in so 
sublime a strain: — " Of Law, no less can be 
said, than that her seat is the bosom of God, 
her voice the harmony of the world ; all things 
in heaven and earth do her homage, the very 
least as feeling her care, the greatest as not 
exempted from her power; both angels and 
men, and creatures of what condition soever, 
though each in different sort and manner, 
yet all with uniform consent admiring her 
as the mother of their peace and joy."t 

Let not those who, to use the language of 
the same Hooker, "talk of truth." without 
" ever sounding the depth from whence it 
springeth," hastily take it for granted, that 
these great masters of eloquence and reason 
were led astray by the specious delusions of 
mysticism, from the sober consideration of 
the true grounds of morality in the nature, 
necessities, and interests of man. They 
studied and taught the principles of morals; 
but they thought it still more necessary, and 
more wise, — a much nobler task, and more 
becoming a true philosopher, to inspire men 
with a love and reverence for virtue. i They 
were not contented with elementary specu- 
lations : they examined the foundations of 
our duty; but they felt and cherished a most 
natural, a most seemly, a most rational en- 
thusiasm, when they contemplated the ma- 
jestic edifice which is reared on these solid 
foundations. They devoted the highest ex- 
ertions of their minds to spread that benefi- 
cent enthusiasm among men. They conse- 
crated as a homage to Virtue the most perfect 



* " Est quidem vera lex recta ratio, naturas 
congruens, diffusa in omnes, constans, sempiter- 
na ; quae vocet ad officium jubendo, vetando a 
fraude deterreat, quae tamen neque probos Irusira 
jubet aut veta't, neque improbos jubendo aut ve- 
tando movet. Huic legi n^flue obrogari fas est, 
neque derogari ex hac aliquid licet, neque tota 
abrogari potest. Nee vero aut per senatum aut 
per populum solvi hac lege possumus: neque est 
quaerendus explanator aut interpres ejus alius. 
Nee erit alia lex Romas, alia Alhenis, alia nunc, 
alia posthac ; sed et omnes gentes et omni tem- 
pore una lex et sernpiterna, et immutabilis con- 
tinebit ; unusque erit communis quasi magister et 
imperator omnium Deus, ille legis hujus inventor, 
disceptator, lalor : cui qui non parebit ipse sc 
fugiet et naturam hominis aspemabitur, atque 
hoc ipso luet maximas pcenas, etiamsi castera sup- 
plicia, quae putantur, effugerit." — De Repub. lib. 
iii. cap. 22. 

t Ecclesiastical Polity, book i. in the conclusion. 

t " Age vero urbibus constitutis, ut fidem co- 
lere et jusiitiam retinere discerent, et aliis parere 
sua voluntate consuescerent, ac non modo labores 
e.xcipiendos communis commodi causa, sed eliam 
vitam amittendam existimarent ; qui tandem fieri 
potuit, nisi homines ea, quae ratione : n i- enissei.t. 
eloqusntia persuadere potuisser.t ? :: — De Invent. 
Rhet. lib. i. cap. 2. 

C 2 



30 



MACKINTOSH^ MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



fruits of their genius. If these grand senti- 
ments of ' : the good and fair" have some- 
times prevented them from delivering the 
principles of ethics with the nakedness and 
drvness of science, at least we must own 
that they have chosen the better part, — that 
they have preferred virtuous feeling to moral 
theory, and practical benefit to speculative 
exactness. Perhaps these wise men may 
have supposed that the minute dissection 
and anatomy of Virtue might, to the ill-judg- 
ing eye, weaken the charm of her beauty. 

It is not for me to attempt a theme which 
has perhaps been exhausted by these great 
writers. 1 am indeed much less called upon 
to display the worth and usefulness of the 
law of nations, than to vindicate myself from 
presumption in attempting a subject which 
has been already handled by so many mas- 
ters. For the purpose of that vindication it 
will be necessary to sketch a very short and 
slight account (for such in this place it must 
unavoidably be) of the progress and present 
state of the science, and of that succession 
of able writers who have gradually brought 
it to its present perfection. 

We have no Greek or Roman treatise re- 
maining on the law of nations. From the 
title of one of the lost works of Aristotle, it 
appears that he composed a treatise on the 
laws of war,* which, if we had the good for- 
tune to possess it, would doubtless have am- 
ply satisfied our curiosity, and would have 
taught us both the practice of the ancient 
nations and the opinions of their moralists, 
with that depth and precision which distin- 
guish the other works of that great philoso- 
pher. We can now only imperfectly collect 
that practice and those opinions from various 
passages which are scattered over the writ- 
ings of philosophers, historians, poets, and 
orators. When the time shall arrive for a 
more full consideration of the state of the 
government and manners of the ancient 
world, I shall be able, perhaps, to offer satis- 
factory reasons why these enlightened na- 
tions did not separate from the general pro- 
vince of ethics that part of morality which 
regulates the intercourse of states, and erect 
it into an independent science. It would re- 
quire a long discussion to unfold the various 
causes which united the modern nations of 
Europe into a closer society. — which linked 
them together by the firmest bands of mutual 
dependence, and which thus, in process of 
time, gave to the law that regulated their 
intercourse, greater importance, higher im- 
provement, and more binding force. Among 
these causes, we may enumerate a common 
extraction, a common religion, similar man- 
ners, institutions, and languages ; in earlier 
ages the authority of the See of Rome, and 
the extravagant claims of the imperial crown ; 
in latter times the connexions of trade, the 
jealousy of power, the refinement of civiliza- 
tion, the cultivation of science, and, above all, 
that general mildness of character and maii- 



ners which arose from the combined and 
progressive influence of chivalry, of com- 
merce, of learning and of religion. Nor must 
we omit the similarity of those political in- 
stitutions which, in every country that had 
been overrun by the Gothic conquerors, bore 
discernible marks (which the revolutions of 
succeeding ages had obscured, but not ob- 
literated) of the rude but bold and noble out- 
line of liberty that was originally sketched 
by the hand of these generous barbarians. 
These and man)' other causes conspired to 
unite the nations of Europe in a more inti- 
mate connexion and a more constant inter- 
course, and, of consequence, made the regu- 
lation of their intercourse more necessary, 
and the law that was to govern it more im- 
portant. In proportion as they approached 
to the conditio^ of provinces of the same em- 
pire, it became almost as essential that 
Europe should have a precise and compre- 
hensive code of the law of nations, as that 
each country should have a system of mu- 
nicipal law. The labours of the learned, 
accordingly, began to be directed to this sub- 
ject in the sixteenth century, soon after the 
revival of learning, and after that regular 
distribution of power ami territory which has 
subsisted, with little variation, until our 
times. The critical examination of these 
early writers would, perhaps, not be very in- 
teresting in an extensive work, and it would 
be unpardonable in a short discourse. It 
is sufficient to observe that they were all 
more or less shackled by the barbarous phi- 
losophy of the schools, and that they were 
impeded in their progress by a timorous def- 
erence for the inferior and technical parts of 
the Roman law, without raising their views 
to the comprehensive principles which will 
for ever inspire mankind with veneration for 
that grand monument of human wisdom. It 
was only, indeed, in the sixteenth century 
that the Roman law was first studied and 
understood as a science connected with Ro- 
man history and literature, and illustrated by 
men whom Ulpian and Papinian would not 
have disdained to acknowledge as their suc- 
cessors.* Among the writers of that age we 
may perceive the ineffectual attempts, the 
partial advances, the occasional streaks of 
light which always precede great discov- 
eries, and works that are to instruct pos- 
terity. 

The reduction of the law of nations to a 
system was reserved for Grotius. It was by 
the advice of Lord Bacon and Peiresc that he 
undertook this arduous task. He produced a 
work which we now, indeed, justly deem im- 
perfect, but which is perhaps the most com- 
plete that the world has yet owed, at so early 
a stage in the progress of any science, to the 

* Cujacius, Brissonius, Hottomannus, &c, &c. 
— See Gravina Origines Juris Civilis (Lips. 1737), 
pp. 132 — 138. Leibnitz, a great mathematician as 
well as philosopher, declares that he knows no- 
thing which approaches so near to the method 
and precision of Geometry as the Roman law.— 
Op. vol. iv. p. 254. 



ON THE STUDY OF THE LAW OF NATURE AND NATIONS. 



31 



genius and learning of one man. So great is 
the uncertainty of posthumous reputation, 
and so liable is the fame even of the greatest 
men to be obscured by those new fashions 
of thinking and writing which succeed each 
other so rapidly among polished nations, that 
Grotius, who filled so large a space m the 
eye of his conteniporarii s. is now perhaps 
known to some of my readers only by name. 
Yet if we fairly estimate both his endow- 
ments and his virtues, we may justly consider 
him as one of the most memorable men who 
have done honour to modern times. He 
combined the discharge of the most impor- 
tant duties of active and public life with the 
attainment of that exact and various learning 
which is generally the portion only of the 
recluse student. He was distinguished as 
an advocate and a magistrate, and he com- 
posed the most valuable w y orks on the law 
of his own country ; he was almost equally 
celebrated as an historian, a scholar, a poet, 
and a divine ; — a disinterested statesman, a 
philosophical lawyer, a patriot who united 
moderation with firmness, and a theologian 
who was taught candour by his learning. 
Unmerited exile did not damp his patriot- 
ism ; the bitterness of controversy did not 
extinguish his charity. The sagacity of his 
numerous and fierce adversaries could not 
discover a blot on his character; and in the 
midst of all the hard trials and galling provo- 
cations of a turbulent political life, he never 
once deserted his friends when they were 
unfortunate, nor insulted his enemies when 
they were weak. In times of the most fu- 
rious civil and religious faction he preserved 
his name unspotted, and he knew how to 
reconcile fidelity to his own party, with 
moderation towards his opponents: 

Such was the man who was destined to 
give a new form to the law of nations, or ra- 
ther to create a science, of which only rude 
sketches and undigested materials were 
scattered over the writings of those who had 
gone before him. By tracing the laws of his 
country to their principles, he was led to the 
contemplation of the law of nature, which 
he justly considered as the parent of all mu- 
nicipal law.* Few works were more cele- 
brated than that of Grotius in his own days, 
and in the age which succeeded. It has, 
however, been the fashion of the last half- 
century to depreciate his work as a shape- 
less compilation, in which reason lies buried 
under a mass of authorities and quotations. 
This fashion originated among French wits 
and declaimers, and it has been, I know not 
for what reason, adopted, though with far 
greater moderation and decency, by some 
respectable writers among ourselves. As to 
those who first used this language, the most 
candid supposition that we can make with 
respect to them is, that they never read the 
work: for, if they had not been deterred 
from the perusal of it by such a formidable 

* " Proavia juris civilis." De Jure Belli ac 
Pacis, proleg. $ xvi. 



display of Greek characters, they must soon 
have discovered that Grotius never quotes 
on any subject till he has first appealed to 
some principles, and often, in my humble 
opinion, though not always, to the soundest 
and most rational principles. 

But another sort of answer is due to some 
of those* who have criticised Grotius, and 
that answer might be given in the words of 
Grotius himself.! He was not of such a stu- 
pid and servile cast of mind, as to quote the 
opinions of poets or orators, of historians 
and philosophers, as those of judges, from 
whose decision there was no appeal. He 
quotes them, as he tells us himself, as wit- 
nesses whose conspiring testimony, mightily 
strengthened and confirmed by their discord- 
ance on almost every other subject, is a 
conclusive proof of the unanimity of the 
whole human race on the great rules of duty 
and the fundamental principles of morals. 
On such matters, poets and orators are the 
most unexceptionable of all witnesses ; for 
they address themselves to the general feel- 
ings and sympathies of mankind ; they are 
neither warped by system, nor perverted by 
sophistry 5 they can attain none of their ob- 
jects, they can neither please nor persuade, 
if they dwell on moral sentiments not in uni- 
son with those of their readers. No system 
of moral philosophy can surely disregard the 
general feelings of human nature and the 
according judgment of all ages and nations. 
But where are these feelings and that judg- 
ment recorded and preserved 1 In those 
very writings which Grotius is gravely 
blamed for having quoted. The usages and 
laws of nations, the events of history, the 
opinions of philosophers, the sentiments of 
orators and poets, as well as the observation of 
common life, are, in truth, the materials out 
of which the science of morality is formed ; 
and those who neglect them are justly charge- 
able with a vain attempt to philosophise 
without regard to fact and experience, — the 
sole foundation of all true philosophy. 

If this were merely an objection of taste, 
I should be willing to allow that Grotius has 
indeed poured forth his learning with a pro- 
fusion that sometimes rather encumbers than 
adorns his work, and which is not always 
necessary to the illustration of his subject. 
Yet, even in making that concession, I should 
rather yield to the taste of others than speak 
from my own feelings. I own that such rich- 
ness and splendour of literature have a power- 
ful charm for me. They fill my mind with 
an endless variety of delightful recollections 
and associations. They relieve the under- 
standing in its progress through a vast 
science, by calling up the memory of great 
men and of interesting events. By this 
means we see the truths of morality clothed 
with all the eloquence, — not that could be 
produced by the powers of one man, — but 
that could be bestowed on them by the col- 



* Dr. Paley, Principles of Moral and Political 
Philosophy, pref. pp. xiv. xv. 
t De Jure Belli, proleg. § 40. 



32 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



lective genius of the world. Even Virtue 
and Wisdom themselves acquire new majesty 
in my eyes, when I thus see all the great 
masters of thinking and writing called to- 
gether, as it were, from all times and coun- 
tries, to do them homage, and to appeal' in 
their train. 

But this is no place for discussions of taste, 
and I am very ready to own that mine may 
be corrupted. The work of Grotius is liable 
to a more serious objection, though I do not 
recollect that it has ever been made. His 
method is inconvenient and unscientific: he 
has inverted the natural order. That natural 
order undoubtedly dictates, that we should 
first search for the original principles of the 
science in human nature ; then apply them 
to the regulation of the conduct of indivi- 
duals ; and lastly, employ them for the decision 
of those difficult and complicated questions 
that arise with respect to the intercourse 
of nations. But Grotius has chosen the re- 
verse of this method. He begins with the 
consideration of the states of peace and war, 
and he examines original principles only oc- 
casionally and incidentally, as they grow out 
of the questions which he is called upon to 
decide. It is a necessary consequence of this 
disorderly method, — which exhibts the ele- 
ments of the science in the form of scattered 
digressions, that he seldom employs sufficient 
discussion on these fundamental truths, and 
never in the place where such a discussion 
would be most instructive to the reader. 

This defect in the plan of Grotius was per- 
ceived and supplied by Puffendorff, who re- 
stored natural law to that superiority which 
belonged to it, and, with great propriety, treat- 
ed the law of nations as only one main branch 
of the parent stock. Without the genius of 
his master, and with very inferior learning, 
he has yet treated this subject with sound 
sense, with clear method, with extensive and 
accurate knowledge, and with a copious- 
ness of detail sometimes indeed tedious, but 
always instructive and satisfactory. His 
work will be always studied by those who 
spare no labour to acquire a deep knowledge 
of the subject ; but it will, in our times, I 
fear, be oftener found on the shelf than on 
the desk of the general student. In the time 
of Mr. Locke it w-as considered as the manual 
of those who were intended for active life ; 
but in the present age, I believe it will be 
found that men of business are too much occu- 
pied, — men of letters are too fastidious, and 
men of the world too indolent, for the study 
or even the perusal of such works. Far be 
it from me to derogate from the real and 
great merit of so useful a writer as Puffen- 
dorff. His treatise is a mine in which all his 
successors must dig. I only presume to sug- 
gest, that a book so prolix, and so utterly void 
of all the attractions of composition, is likely 
to repel many readers who are interested in 
its subject, and who might perhaps be dis- 
posed to acquire some knowledge of the 
principles of public law. 

Many other circumstances might be men- 



! tioned, which conspire to prove that neither 
of the great works of which I have spoken, 

J has superseded the necessity of a new at- 
tempt to lay before the public a system of 
the law of nations. The language of Science 
is so completely changed since both these 
woiks were written, that whoever was now 
to employ their terms in his moral reasonings 
would be almost unintelligible to some of 
his hearers or readers. — and to some among 
them, too, who are neither ill qualified, nor 
ill disposed, to study such subjects wdth con- 
siderable advantage to themselves. The 
learned, indeed, well know how little novelty 
or variety is to be found in scientific disputes. 
The same truths and the same errors have 
been repeated from age to age, with little va- 
riation but in the language ; and novelty of 
expression is often mistaken by the ignorant 
for substantial discovery. Perhaps, too, very 
nearly the same portion of genius and judg- 
ment has been exerted in most of the various 
forms under which science has been culti- 
vated at different periods of history. The 
superiority of those writers who continue to 
be read, perhaps often consists chiefly in 
taste, in prudence, in a happy choice of sub- 
ject, in a favourable moment, in an agreeable 
style, in the good fortune of a prevalent lan- 
guage, or in other advantages which are 
either accidental, or are the result rather of 
the secondary, than of the highest, faculties 
of the mind. But these reflections, while 
they moderate the pride of invention, and 
dispel the extravagant conceit of superior 
illumination, yet serve to prove the use, and 
indeed the necessity, of composing, from 
time to time, new systems of science adapt- 
ed to the opinions and language of each suc- 
ceeding period. Every age must be taught 
in its own language. If a man were now to 
begin a discourse on ethics with an account 
of the ■' moral entities" of Puffendorff,* he 
would speak an unknown tongue. 

It is not, however, alone as a mere trans- 
lation of former writers into modern language 
that a new system of public law seems likely 
to be useful. The age in which we live 
possesses many advantages which are pe- 
culiarly favourable to such an undertaking. 
Since the composition of the great works of 
Grotius and Puffendorff, a more modest, 
simple, and intelligible philosophy has been 
introduced into the schools ; which has in- 
deed been grossly abused by sophists, but 
which, from the time of Locke, has been 
cultivated and improved by a succession of 
disciples worthy of their illustrious master. 
We are thus enabled to discuss with pre- 
cision, and to explain with clearness, the 
principles of the science of human nature, 



* 2 do not mean to impeach the soundness of 
any part of PurTendorff's reasoning founded on 
moral entities : it may be explained in a manner 
consistent with the most just philosophy. He used, 
as every writer must do, the scientific language of 
his own time. I only assert that, to those who 
are unacquainted with ancient systems, his philo- 
sophical vocabulary is obsolete and unintelligible. 



ON THE STUDY OF THE LAW OF NATURE AND NATIONS. 



33 



which are in themselves on a level with the 
capacity of every man of good sense, and 
which only appeared to be abstruse from the 
unprofitable subtleties with which they were 
loaded, and the barbarous jargon in which 
they were expressed. The deepest doctrines 
of morality have since that time been treated 
in the perspicuous and popular style, and 
with some degree of the beauty and elo- 
quence of the ancient moralists. That phi- 
losophy on which are founded the principles 
of our duty, if it has not become more cer- 
tain (for morality admits no discoveries), is 
at least less "harsh and crabbed," less ob- 
scure and haughty in its language, and less 
forbidding and disgusting in its appearance, 
than in the days of our ancestors. If this 
progress of leaning towards popularity has 
engendered (as it must be owned that it has) 
a multitude of superficial and most mis- 
chievous sciolists, the antidote must come 
from the same quarter with the disease : 
popular reason can alone correct popular 
sophistry. 

Nor is this the only advantage which a 
writer of the present age would possess over 
the celebrated jurists of the last century. 
Since that time vast additions have been 
made to the stock of our knowledge of hu- 
man nature. Many dark periods of history 
have since been explored : many hitherto 
unknown regions of the globe have been 
visited and described by travellers and navi- 
gators not less intelligent than intrepid. We 
may be said to stand at the confluence of 
the greatest number of streams of knowledge 
flowing from the most distant sources that 
ever met at one point. We are not confined, 
as the learned of the last age generally were, 
to the history of those renowned nations who 
are our masters in literature. We can bring 
before us man in a lower and more abject 
condition than any in which he was ever 
before seen. The records have been partly 
opened to us of those mighty empires of 
Asia* where the beginnings of civilization 
are lost in the darkness of an unfathomable 
antiquity. We can make human society 
pass in review before our mind, from the 
brutal and helpless barbarism of Terra del 
Fuego, and the mild and voluptuous savages 
of Otaheite, to the tame, but ancient and 
immovable civilization of China, which be- 
stows its own arts on every successive race 

* I cannot prevail on myself to pass over this 
subject without paying my humble tribute to the 
memory of Sir William Jones, who has laboured 
so successfully in Oriental literature ; whose fine 
genius, pure taste, unwearied industry, unrivalled 
and almost prodigious variety of acquirements, — 
not to speak of his amiable manners, and spotless 
integrity, — must fill every one who cultivates or 
admires letters with reverence, tinged with a me- 
lancholy which the recollection of his recent death 
is so well adapted to inspire. I hope I shall be 
pardoned if I add my applause to the genius and 
learning of Mr. Maurice, who treads in the steps 
of his illustrious friend, and who has bewailed his 
deaih in a strain of genuine and beautiful poetry, 
not unworthy of happier periods of our English 
literature. 



of conquerors, — to the meek and servile na- 
tives of Hindostan, who preserve their inge- 
nuity, their skill, and their science, through 
a long series of ages, under the yoke of 
foreign tyrants, — and to the gross and in- 
corrigible rudeness of the Ottomans, incapa- 
ble of improvement, and extinguishing the 
remains of civilization among their unhappy 
subjects, once the most ingenious nations of 
the earth. We can examine almost every 
imaginable variety in the character, man- 
ners, opinions, feelings, prejudices, and in- 
stitutions of mankind, into which they can 
be thrown, either by the rudeness of barba- 
rism, of by the capricious corruptions of re- 
finement, or by those innumerable combina- 
tions of circumstances, which, both in these 
opposite conditions, and in all the interme- 
diate stages between them, influence or 
direct the course of human affairs. History, 
if I may be allowed the expression, is now 
a vast museum, in which specimens of every 
variety of human nature may be studied. 
From these great accessions to knowledge, 
lawgivers and statesmen, but. above all, 
moralists and political philosophers, may 
reap the most important instruction. They 
may plainly discover in all the useful and 
beautiful variety of governments and insti- 
tutions, and under all the fantastic multitude 
of usages and rites which have prevailed 
among men, the same fundamental, compre- 
hensive truths, the sacred master-principles 
which are the guardians of human society, 
recognised and revered (with few and slight 
exceptions) by every nation upon earth, and 
uniformly taught (with still fewer excep- 
tions) by a succession of wise men from the 
first dawn of speculation to the present mo- 
ment. The exceptions, few as they are, will, 
on more reflection, be found rather apparent 
than real. If we could raise ourselves to 
that height from which we ought to survey 
so vast a subject, these exceptions would 
altogether vanish ; the brutality of a handful 
of savages would disappear in the immense 
prospect of human nature, and the murmurs 
of a few licentious sophists would not ascend 
to break the general harmony. This consent 
of mankind in first principles, and this end- 
less variety in their application, which is one 
among many valuable truths which we may 
collect from our present extensive acquaint- 
ance with the history of man. is itself of vast 
importance. Much of the majesty and au- 
thority of virtue is derived from their consent, 
and almost the whole of practical wisdom is 
founded on their variety. 

What former age could have supplied facts 
for such a work as that of Montesquieu % 
He indeed has been, perhaps justly, charged 
with abusing this advantage, by the undis- 
tinguishing adoption of the narratives of 
travellers of very different degre.es of accu- 
racy and veracity. But if we reluctantly 
confess the justness of this objection ; if we 
are compelled to own that he exaggerates 
the influence of climate, — that he ascribes 
too much to the foresight and forming skill 



34 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



of legislators, and far too little to time and 
circumstances, in the growth of political con- 
stitutions, — that the substantial character 
and essential differences of governments are 
often lost and confounded in his technical 
language and arrangement. — that he often 
bends the free and irregular outline of nature 
to the imposing but fallacious geometrical 
regularity of system, — that he lias chosen a 
style of affected abruptness, sententious- 
ness, and vivacity, ill suited to the gravity 
of his subject : — after all these concessions 
(for his fame is large enough to spare many 
concessions), the Spirit of Laws will still re- 
main not only one of the most solid and du- 
rable monuments of the powers of the hu- 
man mind, but a striking evidence of the 
inestimable advantages which political philo- 
sophy may teceive from a wide survey of 
all the various conditions of human society. 

In the present century a slow and silent, 
but very substantial, mitigation has taken 
place in the practice of war ; and in propor- 
tion as that mitigated practice has received 
the sanction of time, it is raised from the rank 
of mere usage, and becomes part of the law 
of nations. Whoever will compare our pre- 
sent modes of warfare with the system of 
Grotius* will clearly discern the immense 
improvements which have taken place in 
that respect since the publication of his 
work, during a period, perhaps in every point 
of view the happiest to be found in the his- 
tory of the world. In the same period many 
important points of public law have been the 
subject of contest both by argument and by 
arms, of which we find either no mention, or 
very obscure traces, in the history of prece- 
ding times. 

There are other circumstances to which I 
allude with hesitation and reluctance, though 
it must be owned that they afford to a writer 
of this age some degree of unfortunate and 
deplorable advantage over his predecessors. 
Recent events have accumulated more terri- 
ble practical instruction on every subject of 
politics than could have been in other times 
acquired by the experience of ages. Men's 
wit sharpened by their passions has penetra- 
ted to the bottom of almost all political ques- 
tions. Even the fundamental rules of moral- 
ity themselves have, for the first time, unfor- 
tunately for mankind, become the subject of 
doubt and discussion. I shall consider it as 
my duty to abstain from all mention of these 
awful events, and of these fatal controversies. 
But the mind of that man must indeed be in- 
curious and indocile, who has either over- 
looked all these things, or reaped no instruc- 
tion from the contemplation of them. 

From these reflections it appears, that, 
since the composition of those two great 
works on the law of nature and nations 
which continue to be the classical and stand- 
ard works on that subject, we have gained 
both more convenient instruments of reason- 

* Especially those chapters of the third book, 
entitled, " Temperamentum circa Captivos," &c. 



ing and more extensive materials for science,. 
— that the code of war has been enlarged 
and improved, — that new questions have 
been practically decided, — and that new con- 
troversies have arisen regarding the inter- 
course of independent states, and the first 
principles of morality and civd government. 

Some readers may, however, think that in 
these observations which I offer, to excuse 
the presumption of my own attempt, I have 
omitted the mention of later writers, to 
whom some part of the remarks is not justly 
applicable. But, perhaps, further considera- 
tion will acquit me in the judgment of such 
readers. Writers on particular questions of 
public law are not within the scope of my 
observations. They have furnished the most 
valuable materials; but I speak only of a 
system. To the large work of Wolffius, the 
observations which I have made on Pufien- 
dorff as a book for general use, will surely 
apply with tenfold force. Hisabridger, Vat- 
tel, deserves, indeed, considerable praise : he 
is a very ingenious, clear, elegant, and useful 
writer. But he only considers one part of this 
extensive subject, — namely, the law of na- 
tions, strictly so called ; and I cannot help 
thinking, that, even in this department of the 
science, he has adopted some doubtful and 
dangerous principles, — not to mention his 
constant deficiency in that fulness of example 
and illustration, which so much embellishes 
and strengthens reason. It is hardly neces- 
sary to take any notice of the text-book of 
Heineccius, the best writer of elementary 
books with whom I am acquainted on any 
subject. Burlamaqui is an author of superior 
merit ; but he confines himself too much to 
the general principles of morality and politics, 
to require much observation from me in this 
place. The same reason will excuse me for 
passing over in silence the works of many 
philosophers and moralists, to whom, in the 
course of my proposed lectures, I shall owe 
and confess the greatest obligations; and it 
might perhaps deliver me from the neces- 
sity of speaking of the work of Dr. Paley, if 
I were not desirous of this public opportu- 
nity of professing my gratitude for the in- 
struction and pleasure which I have received 
from that excellent writer, who possesses, in 
so eminent a degree, those invaluable quali- 
ties of a moralist. — good sense, caution, 
sobriety, and perpetual reference to conve- 
nience and practice; and who certainly is 
thought less original than he really is, merely 
because his taste and modesty have led him 
to disdain the ostentation of novelty, and be- 
cause he generally employs more art to 
blend his own arguments with the body of 
received opinions (so as that they are scarce 
to be distinguished), than other men in the 
pursuit of a transient popularity, have exert- 
ed to disguise the most miserable common- 
places in the shape of paradox. 

No writer since the time of Grotius, of 
Puffendorff, and of Wolf, has combined an 
investigation of the principles of natural and 
public law, with a full application of these 



ON THE STUDY OF THE LAW OF NATURE AND NATIONS. 



35 



principles to particular cases : and in these 
circumstances, I trust, it will not be deemed 
extravagant presumption in me to hope that I 
shall be able to exhibit a view of this science, 
which shall, at least, be more intelligible and 
attractive to students, than the learned trea- 
tises of these celebrated men. I shall now 
proceed to state the general plan and sub- 
jects of the lectures in which I am to make 
this attempt. 

I. The being whose actions the law of 
nature professes to regulate, is man. It is 
on the knowledge of his nature that the 
science of his duty must be founded.* It is 
impossible to approach the threshold of moral 
philosophy without a previous examination 
of the faculties and habits of the human 
mind. Let no reader be repelled from this 
examination by the odious and terrible name 
of "metaphysics;" for it is, in truth, nothing 
more than the employment of good sense, in 
observing our own thoughts, feelings, and 
actions: and when the facts which are thus 
observed are expressed, as they ought to be, 
in plain language, it is, perhaps, above all 
other sciences, most on a level with the 
capacity and information of the generality of 
thinking men. When it is thus expressed, 
it requires no previous qualification, but a 
sound judgment perfectly to comprehend it ; 
and those who wrap it up in a technical and 
mysterious jargon, always give us strong 
reason to suspect that they are not philoso- 
phers, but impostors. Whoever thoroughly 
understands such a science, must be able to 
teach it plainly to all men of common sense. 
The proposed course will therefore open 
with a very short, and, I hope, a very simple 
and intelligible account of the powers and 
operations of the human mind. By this 
plain statement of facts, it will not be diffi- 
cult to decide many celebrated, though frivo- 
lous and merely verbal, controversies, which 
have long amused the leisure of the schools, 
and which owe both their fame and their 
existence to the ambiguous obscurity of 
scholastic language. It will, for example, 
only require an appeal to every man's ex- 
perience, that we often act purely from a 
regard to the happiness of others, and are 
therefore social beings ; and it is not neces- 
sary to be a consummate judge of the de- 
ceptions of language, to despise the sophis- 
tical trirler, who tells us, that, because we 
experience a gratification in our benevolent 
actions, we are therefore exclusively and 
uniformly selfish. A correct examination 
of facts will lead us to discover that quality 
which is common to all virtuous actions, and 
which distinguishes them from those which 
are vicious and criminal. But we shall see 
that it is necessary for man to be governed, 
not by his own transient and hasty opinion 
upon the tendency of every particular action, 
but by those fixed and unalterable rules, 
which are the joint result of the impartial 



* " Natura enim juris explicanda est nobis, 
eaqne ab hominis repetenda natura." — De Leg. 
lib. i. c. 5. 



judgment, the natural feelings, and the em- 
bodied experience of mankind. The autho- 
rity of these rules is, indeed, founded only 
on their tendency to promote private and 
public w r elfare ; but the morality of actions 
will appear solely to consist in their corres- 
pondence with the rule. By the help of this 
obvious distinction we shall vindicate a just 
theory, which, far from being modern, is, in 
fact, as ancient as philosophy, both from 
plausible objections, and from the odious 
imputation of supporting those absurd and 
monstrous systems which have been built 
upon it. Beneficial tendency is the founda- 
tion of rules, and the criterion by which 
habits and sentiments are to be tried : but it 
is neither the immediate standard, nor can 
it ever be the principal motive of action. 
An action to be completely virtuous, must 
accord with moral rules, and must flow 
from our natural feelings and affections, 
moderated, matured, and improved into 
steady habits of right conduct.* Without, 
however, dwelling longer on subjects which 
cannot be clearly stated, unless they are fully 
unfolded, I content myself with observing, 
that it shall be my object, in this preliminary, 
but most important, part of the course, to lay 
the foundations of morality so deeply in hu- 
man nature, as to satisfy the coldest inquirer; 
and, at the same time, to vindicate the para- 
mount authority of the rules of our duty, at 
all times, and in all places, over all opinions 
of interest and speculations of benefit, so ex- 
tensively, so universally, and so inviolably, 
as may well justify the grandest and the 
most apparently extravagant effusions of mo- 
ral enthusiasm. If, notwithstanding all my 
endeavours to deliver these doctrines with 
the utmost simplicity, any of my auditors 
should still reproach me for introducing such 
abstruse matters, I must shelter myself be- 
hind the authority of the wisest of men. " If 
they (the ancient moralists), before they had 
come to the popular and received notions of 
virtue and vice, had staid a little longer upon 
the inquiry concerning the roots of good and 
evil, they had given, in my opinion, a great 
light to that which followed ; and especially 
if they had consulted with nature, they had 
made their doctrines less prolix, and more 
profound. "t What Lord Bacon desired for 
the mere gratification of scientific curiosity, 
the welfare of mankind now imperiously de- 
mands. Shallow systems of metaphysics 
have given birth to a brood of abominable 
and pestilential paradoxes, which nothing but 
a more profound philosophy can destroy. 
However we may, perhaps, lament the neces- 
sity of discussions which may shake the ha- 
bitual reverence of some men for those rules 
which it is the chief interest of all men to 
practise, we have now no choice left. We 
must either dispute, or abandon the ground 
Undistinguishing and unmerited invectives- 

* " Est autem virtus nihil aliud, quatn in se 
perfecta atque ad sum mum perducta naiura."- 
Ibid. lib. i. c. 8. 

+ Advancement of Learning, book ii. 



36 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



against philosophy will only harden sophists 
and their disciples in the insolent conceit, 
that they are in possession of an undisputed 
superiority of reason 5 and that their antago- 
nists have no arms to employ against them, 
but those of popular declamation. Let us 
not for a moment even appear to suppose, 
that philosophical truth and human happiness 
are so irreconcilably at variance. I cannot 
express my opinion on this subject so well as 
in the words of a most valuable, though ge- 
nerally neglected writer: :, 'The science of 
abstruse learning, when completely attain- 
ed, is like Achilles' spear, that healed the 
wounds it had made before; so this know- 
ledge serves to repair the damage itself had 
occasioned, and this perhaps is all that it is 
good for; it casts no additional light upon the 
paths of life, but disperses the clouds with 
which it had overspread them before; it ad- 
vances not the traveller one step in his jour- 
ney, but conducts him back again to the spot 
from whence he wandered. Thus the land 
of philosophy consists partly of an open cham- 
paign country, passable by every common 
understanding, and partly of a range of woods, 
traversable only by the speculative, and where 
they too frequently delight to amuse them- 
selves. Since then we shall be obliged to 
make incursions into this latter track, and 
shall probably find it a region of obscurity, 
danger, and difficulty, it behooves us to use 
our utmost endeavours for enlightening and 
smoothing the way before us."* We shall, 
however, remain in the forest only long 
enough to visit the fountains of those streams 
which flow from it, and which water and 
fertilise the cultivated region of morals, to 
become acquainted with the modes of warfare 
practised by its savage inhabitants, and to 
learn the means of guarding our fair and 
fruitful land against their desolating incur- 
sions. I shall hasten from speculations, to 
which I am naturally, perhaps, but too prone, 
and proceed to the more profitable considera- 
tion of our practical duty. 

The first and most simple part of ethics is 
that which regards the duties of private men 
towards each other, when they are considered 
apart from the sanction of positive laws. I 
say apart from that sanction, not antecedent to 
it; for though we separate private from politi- 
cal duties for the sake of greater clearness 
and order in reasoning, yet we are not to be 
so deluded by this mere arrangement of con- 
venience as to suppose that human society 
ever has subsisted, or ever could subsist, 
without being protected by government, and 
bound together by laws. All these relative 
duties of private life have been so copiously 
and beautifully treated by the moralists of 
antiquity, that few men will now choose to 
follow them, who are not actuated by the wild 
ambition of equalling Aristotle in precision, 
or rivalling Cicero in eloquence. They have 
been also admirably treated by modern mo- 
ralists, among whom it would be gross in- 

* Light of Nature, vol.i. pref. p. xxxiii. 



justice not to number many of the preachers 
of the Christian religion, whose peculiar char- 
acter is that spirit of universal charity, which 
is the living principle of all our social duties. 
For it was long ago said, with great truth, by 
Lord Bacon, "that there never was any phi- 
losophy, religion, or other discipline, which 
did so plainly and highly exalt that good 
which is communicative, and depress the 
good which is private and particular, as the 
Christian faith."* The appropriate praise of 
this religion is not so much that it has taught 
new duties, as that it breathes a milder and 
more benevolent spirit over the whole extent 
of morals. 

On a subject which has been so exhausted, 
I should naturally have contented myself 
with the most slight and general survey, if 
some fundamental principles had not of late 
been brought into question, which, in all 
former times, have been deemed too evident 
to require the support of argument, and 
almost too sacred to admit the liberty of dis- 
cussion. I shall here endeavour to strengthen 
some parts of the fortifications of morality 
which have hitherto been neglected, because 
no man had ever been hardy enough to attack 
them. Almost all the relative duties of hu- 
man life will be found more immediately, or 
more remotely, to arise out of the two great 
institutions of property and marriage. They 
constitute, preserve, and improve society. 
Upon their gradual improvement depends the 
progressive civilization of mankind ; on them. 
rests the whole order of civil life. We are 
told by Horace, that the first efforts of law- 
givers to civilize men consisted in strength- 
ening and regulating these institutions, and 
fencing them round with rigorous penal laws. 

" Oppida cceperunt munire, et poneie leges, 
Ne quis fur esset, neu latro, neu quis ad alter. "t 

A celebrated ancient orator,! of whose 
poems we have but a few fragments remain- 
ing, has well described the progressive order 
in which human society is gradually led to 
its highest improvements under the guardian- 
ship of those laws which secure property 
and regulate marriage. 

" El leges sanctas doeuit, et chara jngavit 
Corpora conjugiis; et magnas eondidit urbes." 

These two great institutions convert the 
selfish as well as the social passions of our 
nature into the firmest bands of a peaceable 
and orderly intercourse; they change the 
sources of discord into principles of quiet; 
they discipline the most ungovernable, they 
refine the grossest, and they exalt the most 
sordid propensities; so that they become the 
perpetual fountain of all that strengthens, 
and preserves, and adorns society: they sus- 
tain the individual, and they perpetuate the 
race. Around these institutions all our social 
duties will be found at various distances to 
range themselves; some more near, obviously 



* Advancement of Learning, book ii. 
t Sermon, lib. i. Serin, iii. 105. 
I C. Licinius Calvus. 



ON THE STUDY OF THE LAW OF NATURE AND NATIONS. 



37 



essential to the good order of human life ; 
others more remote, and of which the ne- 
cessity is not at first view so apparent; and 
some so distant, that their importance has 
been sometimes doubted, though upon more 
mature consideration they will be found to 
be outposts and advanced guards of these 
fundamental principles, — that man should 
securely enjoy the fruits of his labour, and 
that the society of the sexes should be so 
wisely ordered, as to make it a school of the 
kind affections, and a fit nursery for the com- 
monwealth. 

The subject of property is of great extent. 
It will be necessary to establish the founda- 
tion of the rights of acquisition, alienation, 
and transmission, not in imaginary contracts 
or a pretended state of nature, but in their 
subserviency to the subsistence and well- 
being of mankind. It will not only be curious, 
but useful, to trace the history of property 
from the first loose and transient occupancy 
of the savage, through all the modifications 
which it has at different times received, to 
that comprehensive, subtle, and anxiously 
minute code of property which is the last 
result of the most refined civilization. 

I shall observe the same order in consider- 
ing the society of the sexes, as it is regulated 
by the institution of marriage.* I shall en- 
deavour to lay open those unalterable princi- 
ples of general interest on which that institu- 
tion rests; and if I entertain a hope that on 
this subject I may be able to add something 
to what our masters in morality have taught 
us. I trust, that the reader will bear in mind, 
as an excuse for my presumption, that they 
were not likely to employ much argument 
where they did not foresee the possibility of 
doubt. I shall also consider the historyt of 
marriage, and trace it through all the forms 
which it has assumed, to that descent and 
happy permanency of union, which has, per- 
haps above all other causes, contributed to 
the quiet of society, and the refinement of 
manners in modern times. Among many 
other inquiries which this subject will sug- 
gest, I shall be led more particularly to ex- 
amine the natural station and duties of the 
female sex, their condition anions different 



* See on this subject an incomparable fragment 
of the first book of Cicero's Economics, which is 
too long for insertion here, but which, if it be 
closely examined, may perhaps dispel the illusion 
of those gentlemen, who have so strangely taken 
it for granted that Cicero was incapable of exact 
reasoning. 

t This progress is traced with great accuracy in 
some beauiiful lines of Lucretius : — 

Mulier, corcjmicta viro, concessit in unum ; 

Castaque private Veneris connubia leeta 
Cognita sunt, prolemque ex se videre creatam ; 
Turn genus humanuni primum mollescere ccepit. 

puerique parentum 

Blanditiis facile ingenium fregere superbum. 
Tunc et amicitiam cceperuni jungere, habentes 
Finitimi m;er se, nee leedere, nee violare ; 
Et pueroscommendarunt, muliebreque sseclum, 
Vocibus et gestu ; cum balbe significarent, 
Imbecillorum esse asquum miserier omni. 

De Rerum Nat. lib. v. 



nations, its improvement in Europe, and the 
bounds which nature herself has prescribed 
to the progress of that improvement ; beyond 
which every pretended advance will be a 
real degradation. 

Having established the principles of private 
duty, I shall proceed to consider man under 
the important relation of subject and sove- 
reign, or, in other words, of citizen and ma- 
gistrate. The duties which arise from this 
relation I shall endeavour to establish, not 
upon supposed compacts, which are alto- 
gether chimerical, which must be admitted 
to be false in fact, and which, if they are to 
be considered as fictions, will be found to 
serve no purpose of just reasoning, and to be 
equally the foundation of a system of uni- 
versal despotism in Hobbes, and of universal 
anarchy in Rousseau ; but on the solid basis 
of general convenience. Men cannot subsist 
without society and mutual aid ; they can 
neither maintain social intercourse nor re- 
ceive aid from each other without the pro- 
tection of government ; and they cannot en- 
joy that protection without submitting to 
the restraints which a just goverment im- 
poses. This plain argument establishes the 
duty of obedience on the part of the citizens, 
aud the duty of protection on that of magis- 
trates, on the same foundation with that of 
every other moral duty; and it shows, with 
sufficient evidence, that these duties are re- 
ciprocal ; — the only rational end for which 
the fiction of a contract should have been 
invented. I shall not encumber my reason- 
ing by any speculations on the origin of 
government, — a question on which so much 
reason has been wasted in modern times ; 
but which the ancients* in a higher spirit of 
philosophy have never once mooted. If our 
principles be just, our origin of government 
must have been coeval with that of man- 
kind ; and as no tribe has ever been dis- 
covered so brutish as to be without some 
government, and yet so enlightened as to 
establish a government by common consent, 
it is surely unnecessary to employ any seri- 
ous argument in the confutation of the doc- 
trine that is inconsistent with reason, and 
unsupported by experience. But though all 
inquiries into the origin of government be 
chimerical, yet the history of its progress is 
curious and useful. The various stages 
throunh which it passed from savage inde- 
pendence, which implies every man's power 
of injuring his neighbour, to legal liberty, 
which consists in every man's security against 
wrong; the manner in which a family ex- 
pands into a tribe, and tribes coalesce into a 



* The introduction to the first book of Aristotle's 
Poliiics is the best demonstration of the necessity 
of political society to the well-being, and indeed 
to the very being, of man, with which I am ac- 
quainted. Having shown the circumstances which 
render man necessarily a social being, he justly 
concludes, " K»i oti uvBpcmos punt toaitixcv <£ow." 
The same scheme of philosophy is admirably pur- 
sued in the short, but invaluable fragment of the 
sixth book of Polybius, which describes the his- 
tory and revolutions of government. 
D 



38 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



7iation ; — in which public justice is gradually 
engrafted on private revenge, and temporary 
submission ripened into habitual obedience: 
form a most important and extensive subject 
of inquiry, which comprehends all the im- 
provements of mankind in police, in judica- 
ture, and in legislation. 

I have already given the reader to under- 
stand that the description of liberty which 
seems to me the most comprehensive, is that 
of security against wrong. Liberty is there- 
fore the object of all government. Men are 
more free under every government, even the 
most imperfect, than they would be if it 
were possible for them to exist without 
any government at all : they are more secure 
from wrong, more undisturbed in the exer- 
cise of their natural powers, and therefore 
more free, even in the most obvious and 
grossest sense of the word, than if they were 
altogether unprotected against injury from 
each other. But as general security is en- 
joyed in very different degrees under dif- 
ferent governments, those which guard it 
most perfectly, are by the way of eminence 
called '-'free/' Such governments attain most 
completely the end which is common to all 
government. A free constitution of govern- 
ment and a good constitution of government 
are therefore different expressions for the 
same idea. 

Another material distinction, however, soon 
presents itself. In most civilized states the 
subject is tolerably protected against gross 
injustice from his fellow's by impartial laws, 
which it is the manifest interest of the sove- 
reign to enforce : but some commonwealths 
are so happy as to be founded on a principle 
of much more refined and provident wisdom. 
The subjects of such commonwealths are 
guarded not only against the injustice of each 
other, but (as far as human prudence can con- 
trive) against oppression from the magistrate. 
Such states, like all other extraordinary exam- 
ples of public or private excellence and hap- 
piness, are thinly scattered over the different 
ag ;s and countries of the world. In them the 
will of the sovereign is limited with so exact a 
measure, that his protecting authority is not 
weakened. Such a combination of skill and 
fortune is not often to be expected, and indeed 
never can arise, but from the constant though 
gradual exertions of wisdom and virtue, to 
improve a long succession of most favourable 
circumstances. There is, indeed, scarce any 
society so wretched as to be destitute of 
some sort of weak provision against the in- 
justice of their governors. Eeligious institu- 
tions, favourite prejudices, national manners, 
have in different countries, with unequal de- 
grees of force, checked or mitigated the ex- 
ercise of supreme power. The privileges of 
a powerful nobility, of opulent mercantile 
communities, of great judicial corporations, 
have in some monarchies approached more 
near to a control on the sovereign. Means 
have been devised with more or less wisdom 
to temper the despotism of an aristocracy 
n&ver their subjects, and in democracies to 



protect the minority against the majority, 
and the whole people against the tyranny of 
demagogues. But in these unmixed forms 
i<l government, as the right of legislation is 
vested in one individual or in one order, it is 
obvious that the legislative power may shake 
off all the restraints which the laws have 
imposed on it. All such governments, there- 
fore, tend towards despotism, and the se- 
curities which they admit against misgovern- 
ment are. extremely feeble and precarious. 
The best security which human wisdom can 
devise, seems to be the distribution of poli- 
tical authority among different individuals 
and bodies, with separate interests, and 
separate characters, corresponding to the 
variety of classes of which civil society is 
composed, — each interested to guard their 
own order from oppression by the rest, — 
each also interested to prevent any of the 
others from seizing on exclusive, and there- 
fore despotic power ; and all having a com- 
mon interest to co-operate in carrying on the 
ordinary and necessary administration of 
government. If there were not an interest 
to resist each other in extraordinary cases, 
there would not be liberty : if there were 
not an interest to co-operate in the ordinary 
course of affairs, there could be no govern- 
ment. The object of such wise institutions, 
which make selfishness of governors a se- 
curity against their injustice, is to protect 
men against wrong both from their rulers and 
their fellows. Such governments are, with 
justice, peculiarly and emphatically called 
" free ;" and in ascribing that liberty to the 
skilful combination of mutual dependance 
and mutual check, I feel my own conviction 
greatly strengthened by calling to mind, that 
in this opinion I agree with all the wise men 
who have ever deeply considered the prin- 
ciples of politics • — with Aristotle and Poly- 
bius, with Cicero and Tacitus, with Bacon and 
Machiavel, with Montesquieu and Hume.* 
It is impossible in such a cursory sketch as 
the present, even to allude to a very small 
part of those philosophical principles, poli- 

* To the weight of these great names let me 
add the opinion of two illustrious men of the pre- 
sent age, ns both their opinions are combined by 
one of them in the following passages: "He 
(.Vlr. Fox) always thought any of the simple un- 
balanced governments bad ; simple monarchy, 
simple aristocracy, simple democracy ; he held 
them all imperfect or vicious, all were bad by 
themselves ; the composition alone was good. 
These had been always his principles, in which 
he agreed with his friend, Mr. Burke.'' — Speech 
on the Army Estimates, 9th Feb. 1790. In speak- 
ing of both these illustrious men, whose names I 
here join, as they will be joined in fame by poste- 
rity, which will forget their temporary differences 
in the recollection of their genius and their friend- 
ship, I do not entertain the vain imagination that 
I can add to their glory by any thing that I can 
say. But it is a gratification to me to give utter- 
ance to my feelings; to express the profound ve- 
neration with which I am tilled for the memory 
of the one, and the warm affection which I cherish 
for the other, whom no one ever heard in public 
without admiration, or knew in private life with- 
out loving. 



ON THE STUDY OF THE LAW OF NATURE AND NATIONS. 



39 



tical reasonings, and historical facts, which 
are necessary for the illustration of this mo- 
mentous subject. In a full discussion of it 
I shall be obliged to examine the general 
frame of the most celebrated governments 
of ancient and modem times, and especially 
of those which have been most renowned for 
their freedom. The result of such an exa- 
mination will be, that no institution so de- 
testable as an absolutely unbalanced govern- 
ment, perhaps ever existed ; that the simple 
governments are mere creatures of the ima- 
gination of theorists, who have transformed 
names used for convenience of arrangement 
into real politics ; that, as constitutions of 
government approach more nearly to that 
unmixed and uncontrolled simplicity they 
become despotic, and as they recede farther 
from that simplicity they become free. 

By the constitution of a state, I mean "the 
body of those written and unwritten funda- 
mental laws which regulate the most import- 
ant rights of the higher magistrates, and the 
most essential privileges* of the subjects/' 
Such a body of political laws must in all 
countries arise out of the character and 
situation of a people ; they must grow with 
its progress, be adapted to its peculiarities, 
change with its changes, and be incorporated 
with its habits. Human wisdom cannot form 
such a constitution by one act, for human 
wisdom cannot create the materials of which 
it is composed. The attempt, always inef- 
fectual, to change by violence the ancient 
habits of men, and the established order of 
society, so as to fit them for an absolutely 
new scheme of government, flows from the 
most presumptuous ignorance, requires the 
support of the most ferocious tyranny, and 
leads to consequences which its authors can 
never foresee, — generally, indeed, to institu- 
tions the most opposite to those of which 
they profess to seek the establishment.! 
But human wisdom indefatigably employed 
in remedying abuses, and in seizing favour- 
able opportunities of improving that order 
of society which arises from causes over 
which we have little control, after the re- 
forms and amendments of a series of ages, 
has sometimes, though very rarely, shown 
itself capable of building up a free constitu- 
tion, which is "'-'the growth of time and na- 
ture, rather than the work of human itiven- 

* Privilege, in Roman jurisprudence, means the 
exemption of one individual from die operation of 
a law. Political privileges, in the sense in which 
I employ the terms, mean those rights of the 
subjects of a free state, which are deemed so es- 
sential (o the well-being of the commonwealth, 
that they are excepted from the ordinary discretion 
of the magistrate, and guarded by the same fun- 
damental laws which secure his authority. 

t See. an admirable passage on this subject in 
Dr. Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (vol. ii. 
pp. 101 — 112), in which the true doctrine of re- 
formation is laid down with singular ability by that 
eloquent and philosophical writer. See also Mr. 
Burke's Speech on Economical Reform ; and 
Sir M. Hale on the Amendment of Laws, in the 
Collection of my learned and most excellent 
friend, Mr. Hargrave, p. 248. 



tion."* Such a constitution can only be 
formed by the wise imitation of '■' the great 
innovater Time, which, indeed, innovateth 
greatly, but quietly, and by degrees scarce to 
be perceived. "f Without descending to the 
puerile ostentation of panegyric, on that of 
which all mankind confess the excellence. 
I may observe, with truth and soberness, 
that a free government not only establishes 
a universal security against wrong, but that 
it also cherishes all the noblest powers of 
the human mind ; that it tends to banish 
both the mean and the ferocious vices ; that 
it improves the national character to which 
it is adapted, and out of which it grows ; 
that its whole administration is a practical 
school of honesty and humanity ; and that 
there the social affections, expanded into 
public spirit, gain a wider sphere, and a 
more active spring. 

I shall conclude what 1 have to offer on 
government, by an account of the constitu- 
tion of England. I shall endeavour to trace 
the progress of that constitution by the light 
of history, of laws, and of records, from the 
earliest times to the present age ; and to 
show how the general principles of liberty, 
originally common to it with the other Go- 
thic monarchies of Europe, but in other 
countries lost or obscured, were in this more 
fortunate island preserved, matured, and 
adapted to the progress of civilization. I 
shall attempt to exhibit this most complicat- 
ed machine, as our history and our lav/s show 
it in action ; and not as some celebrated 
writers have most imperfectly represented it, 
who have torn out a few of its more simple 
springs, and putting them together, miscal 
them the British constitution. So prevalent, 
indeed, have these imperfect representations 
hitherto been, that I will venture to affirm, 
there is scarcely any subject which has been 
less treated as it deserved than the govern- 
ment of England. Philosophers of great and 
merited reputation!.' have told us that it con- 
sisted of certain portions of monarchy, aris- 
tocracy, and democracy, — names which are, 
in truth, very little applicable, and which, if 
they were, would as little give an idea of this 
government, as an account of the weight of 
bone, of flesh, and of blood in a human body, 
would be a picture of a living man. Nothing 
but a patient and minute investigation of the 

* Pour former un gouvernement modere, il 
fant combiner les puissances, les regler, les tem- 
perer, les faire asir ; donner pour ainsi dire un lest 
a 1'une, pour la mettre en etat de resister a une 
autre : e'est un chef-d'eeuvre de legislation que le 
hasard fait rarement, et que rarement on laisse 
faire a la prudence. Un gouvernement despot- 
ique an eoritraire saute, pour ainsi dire, aux yeux ; 
il est uniforme partout : comme il ne faut que des 
passions pour l'etablir. tout le monde est bon pour 
cela. — Montesquieu, De l'Esprit de Loix, liv. v. 
c. 14. 

t Bacon, Essay xxiv. (Of Innovations.) 
t The reader will perceive that I allude to Mon- 
tesquieu, whom I never name without reverence, 
though I shall presume, with humility, to criticise 
his account of a government which he only saw at 
a distance. 



40 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



practice of the government in all its parts, 
and through its whole history, can give us 
just notions on this important subject. If a 
lawyer, without a philosophical spirit, be un- 
equal to the examination of this great work 
of liberty anil wisdom, still more unequal is 
a philosopher without practical, legal, and 
historical knowledge; for the first may want 
skill, but the second wants materials. The 
observations of Lord Bacon on political writ- 
ers in general, are most applicable to those 
who have given us systematic descriptions 
cf the English constitution. " All those who 
have written of governments have written as 
philosophers, or as lawyers, and none as states- 
men. As for the philosophers, they make ima- 
ginary laws for imaginary commonwealths, 
and their discourses are as the stars, which 
give little light because they are so high." — 
"Haec cognitio ad viros civiles propric perli- 
net," as he tells us in another part of his 
writings; but unfortunately no experienced 
philosophical British statesman has yet de- 
voted his leisure to a delineation of the con- 
stitution, which such a statesman alone can 
practically and perfectly know. 

In the discussion of this great subject, and 
in all reasonings on the principles of politics, 
I shall labour, above all things, to avoid that 
which appears to me to have been the con- 
stant source of political error : — I mean the 
attempt to give an air of system, of simpli- 
city, and of rigorous demonstration, to sub- 
jects which do not admit it. The only means 
by which this could be done, was by refer- 
ring to a few simple causes, what, in truth, 
arose from immense and intricate combina- 
tions, and successions of causes. The con- 
sequence was very obvious. The system 
of the theorist, disencumbered from all re- 
gard to the real nature of things, easily as- 
sumed an air of speciousness : it required 
little dexterity, to make his arguments appear 
conclusive. But all men agreed that it was 
utterly inapplicable to human affairs. The 
theorist railed at the foil)- of the world, in- 
stead of confessing his own ; and the man 
of practice unjustly blamed Philosophy, in- 
stead of condemning the sophist. The causes 
which the politician has to consider are. 
above all others, multiplied, mutable, minute, 
subtile, and, if I may so speak, evanescent, 
— perpetually changing their form, and vary- 
ing their combinations, — losing their nature, 
while they keep their name, — exhibiting the 
most different consequences in the endless 
variety of men and nations on whom they 
operate,— in one degree of strength produc- 
ing the most signal benefit, and, under a 
slight variation of circumstances, the most 
tremendous mischiefs. They admit indeed 
of being reduced to theory; but to a theory 
formed on the most extensive views, of the 
most comprehensive and flexible principles, 
to embrace all their varieties, and to lit all 
their rapid transmigrations, — a theory, of 
which the most fundamental maxim is, dis- 
trust in itself, and deference for practical 
prudence. Only two writers of former times 



have, as far as I know, observed this general 
defect of political reasoners ; but these two 
are the greatest philosophers who have ever 
appeared in the world. The first of them is 
Aristotle, who. in a passage of his politics,* 
to which I cannot at this moment turn, 
plainly condemns the pursuit of a delusive 
geometrical accuracy in moral reasonings as 
the constant source of the grossest error. The 
second is Lord Bacon, who tells us, with that 
authority of conscious wisdom which belongs 
to him, and with that power of richly adorn- 
ing Truth from the wardrobe of Genius 
which he possessed above almost all men, 
£: Civil knowledge is conversant about a 
subject which, above all others, is most 
immersed in matter, and hardliest reduced 
to axiom."f 

I shall next endeavour to lay open the 
genera] principles of civd and criminal laws. 
On this subject I may with some confidence 
hope that I shall be enabled to philosophise 
with better materials by my acquaintance 
with the laws of my own country, which it 
is the business of my life to practise, and of 
which the study has by habit become my 
favourite pursuit. 

The first principles of jurisprudence are 
simple maxims of Reason, of which the ob- 
servance is immediately discovered by expe- 
rience to be essential to the security of men's 
rights, and which pervade the laws of all 
countries. An account of the gradual appli- 
cation of these original principles, first to 
more simple, and afterwards to more com- 
plicated cases, forms both the history and 
the theory of law. Such an historical ac- 
count of the progress of men. in reducing 
justice to an applicable and practical system, 
will enable us to trace that chain, in which 
so many breaks and interruptions are per- 
.ceived by superficial observers, but which 
in truth inseparably, though with many dark 
and hidden windings, links together the se- . 
curity of life and property with the most 
minute and apparently frivolous formalities 
of legal proceeding. We shall perceive that 
no human foresight is sufficient to establish 
such a system at once, and that, if it were 
so established, the occurrence of unforeseen 
cases would shortly altogether change it; 
that there is but one way of forming a civil 
code, either consistent with common sense, 
or that has ever been practised in any coun- 
try. — namely, that of gradually building up 
the law in proportion as the facts arise which 
it is to regulate. We shall learn to appre- 

* Probably book iii. cap. 11. — Ed. 

t This principle is expressed by a writer of a 
very different character from these two great phi- 
losophers, — a writer, " qu'on n'appellera plus phi- 
losophe, mais qu'on appellera Ie plus eloquent des 
sophistes," with great force, and, as his manner 
is. with some exaggeration. " II n'y a point de' 
principes abstraits dans la politique. C'est une 
science des caleuls, des combinaisons, et des ex- 
ceptions, selon les lieux, les terns, et les circonstan- 
ces." — Lett re de Rousseau au Marquis de Mira- 
beau. The second proposition is true ; but the 
first is not a just inference from it. 



ON THE STUDY OF THE LAW OF NATURE AND NATIONS. 



41 



ciate the merit of vulgar objections against 
the subtilty and complexity of laws. We 
shall estimate the good sense and the grati- 
tude of those who reproach lawyers for em- 
ploying all the powers of their mind to dis- 
cover subtle distinctions for the prevention 
of justice ;* and we shall at once perceive 
that laws ought to be neither more simple 
nor more complex than the state of society 
which they are to govern, but that they ought 
exactly to correspond to it. Of the two faults, 
however, the excess of simplicity would 
certainly be the greatest ; for laws, more 
complex than are necessary, would only pro- 
duce embarrassment ; whereas laws more 
simple than the affairs which they regulate 
would occasion a defeat of Justice. More 
understanding has perhaps been in this man- 
ner exerted to fix the rules of life than in any 
other science ;t and it is certainly the most 
honourable occupation of the understanding, 
because it is the most immediately subservi- 
ent to general safety and comfort. There is 
not so noble a spectacle as that which is dis- 
played in the progress of jurisprudence ; 
wmere we may contemplate the cautious and 
unwearied exertions of a succession of wise 
men, through a long course of ages, with- 
drawing every case as it arises from the 
dangerous power of discretion, and subject- 
ing it to inflexible rules, — extending the do- 
minion of justice and reason, and gradually 
contracting, within the narrowest possible 
limits, the domain of brutal force and of ar- 
bitrary will. This subject has been treated 
with such dignity by a writer who is ad- 
mired by all mankind for his eloquence, but 
who is, if possible, still more admired by all 
competent judges for his philosophy, — a writ- 
er, of whom I may justly say, that he w r as 
"gravissimus et dicendi et intelligendi auc- 
tor et magister," — that I cannot refuse my- 
self the gratification of quoting his wouls : — 
"The science of jurisprudence, the pride of 
the human intellect, which, with all its de- 
fects, redundancies, and errors, is the collect- 
ed reason of ages combining the principles 
of original justice with the infinite variety 
of human concerns."}: 

I shall exemplify the progress of law, and 
illustrate those principles of Universal Jus- 
tice on which it is founded, by a compara- 
tive review of the two greatest civil codes 
that have been hitherto formed, — those of 
Rome and of England, § — of their agreements 



* "The casuistical subtilties are not perhaps 
greater than the subtilties oflawyers ; hut the lat- 
ter are innocent, and even necessary." — Hume, 
Essays, vol. ii. p. 558. 

t "Law," said Dr. Johnson, "is the science 
in which the greatest powers of I he understanding 
are applied to the greatest number of facta." No° 
body, who is acquainted with the varieiv and mul- 
tiplicity of the subjects of jurisprudence, and with 
the prodigious powers of discrimination employed 
upon them, can doubt the truth of this observation. 

X Burke, Works, vol. iii. p. 134. 

§ On the intimaie connection of these two codes, 
let us hear the words of Lord Holt, whose name 
never can be pronounced without veneration, as 



and disagreements, both in general provi- 
sions, and in some of the most important 
parts of their minute practice. In this part 
of the course, which I mean to pursue with 
such detail as to give a view of both codes, 
that may perhaps be sufficient for the pur- 
poses of the general student. I hope to con- 
vince him that the Jaws of civilized nations, 
particularly those of his own, are a subject 
most worthy of scientific curiosity; that prin- 
ciple and system run through them even to 
the minutest particular, as really, though not 
so apparently, as in other sciences, and ap- 
plied to purposes more important than those 
of any other science. Will it be presump- 
tuous to express a hope, that such an in- 
quiry may not be altogether a useless intro- 
duction to that larger* and more detailed 
study of the law of England, which is the 
duty of those who are to profess- and prac- 
tise that law ? 

In considering the important subject of 
criminal law it will be my duty to found, on 
a regard to the general safety, the right of 
the magistrate to inflict punishments, even 
the most severe, if that safety cannot be 
effectually protected by the example of infe- 
rior punishments. It will be a more agreea- 
ble part of my office to explain the tempera- 
ments which Wisdom, as well as Humanity, 
prescribes in the exercise of that harsh right, 
unfortunately so essential to the preservation 
of human society. I shall collate the penal 
codes of different nations, and gather to- 
gether the most accurate statement of the 
result of experience with respect to the effi- 
cacy of lenient and severe punishments; 
and I shall endeavour to ascertain the princi- 
ples on which must be founded both the pro- 
portion and the appropriation of penalties fc-j 
crimes. As to the law of criminal proceed- 
ing, my labour will be very easy; for on tha; 
subject an English lawyer, if he were to d^ 
lineate the model of perfection, would fii?^ 
that, with few exceptions, he had trans- 
cribed the institutions of his own country. 

The next great division of the subject is 
the "law of nations," strictly and properly 
so called. I have already hinted at the 
general principles on which this law is 
founded. They, like all the principles of 
natural jurisprudence, have been more hap- 
pily cultivated, and more generally obeyed, 
in some ages and countries than in others; 
and, like them, are susceptible of great va- 
riety in their application, from the character 
and usage of nations. I shall consider these 
principles in the gradation of those which 
are necessary to any tolerable intercourse 
between nations, of those which are essen- 
tial to all well-regulated and mutually ad- 
long as wisdom and integrity are revered among 
men : — " Inasmuch as the laws of all nations are 
doubtless raised out of the ruins of the civil law, 
as all governments are sprung out of the ruins of 
the Roman empire, it must be owned that the 
principles of our law are borrowed from the civil 
law, therefore grounded upon the same reason in 
many things." -12 Mod. Rep. 482. 
d2 



42 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



vantageous intercourse, and of those which 
are highly conducive to the preservation of 
a mild and friendly intercourse between 
civilized states. Of the first class, every 
understanding acknowledges the necessity, 
and some traces, of a faint reverence for 
them are discovered even among the most 
barbarous tribes; of the second, every well- 
informed man perceives the important use. 
and they have generally been respected 
by all polished nations: of the third, the 
great benefit may be read in the history of 
modern Europe, where alone they have been 
carried to their full perfection. In unfolding 
the first and second class of principles, I 
shall naturally be led to give an account of 
that law of nations, which, in greater or less 
perfection, regulated the intercourse of sa- 
vages, of the Asiatic empires, and of the an- 
cient republics. The third brings me to the 
consideration of the law of nations, as it is 
now acknowledged in Christendom. From 
the great extent of the subject, and the par- 
ticularity to which, for reasons already given, 
I must here descend, it is impossible for me, 
within my moderate compass, to give even 
an outline of this part of the course. It com- 
prehends, as every reader will perceive, the 
principles of national independence, the in- 
tercourse of nations in peace, the privileges 
of ambassadors and inferior ministers, the 
commerce of private subjects, the grounds 
of just war, the mutual duties of belligerent 
and neutral powers, the limits of lawful hos- 
tility, the rights of conquest, the faith to be 
observed in warfare, the force of an armis- 
tice, — of safe conducts and passports, the 
nature and obligation of alliances, the means 
of negotiation, and the authority and inter- 
pretation of treaties of peace. All these, 
and many other most important and compli- 
cated subjects, with all the variety of moral 
reasoning, and historical examples which is 
necessary to illustrate them, must be fully 
examined in that part of the lectures, in 
which I shall endeavour to put together a 
tolerably complete practical system of the 
law of nations, as it has for the last two 
centuries been recognised in Europe. 

" Le droit des gens est naturellement fonde 
sur ce principe, que les diverses nations doi- 
vent se faire, dans la paix le plus de bien, et 
dans la guerre le moins de mal, qu'il est pos- 
sible, sans nuire a leurs veritables interets. 
L'objet de la guerre c'est lavictoire, celui 
de la victoire la conquete ; celui de la con- 
quete la conservation. De ce principe et du 
precedent, doivent deriver toutes les loixqui 
forment le droit des gens. Toutes les na- 
tions ont un droit des gens; et les Iroquois 
meme, qui mangent leurs prisonniers, en out 
un. lis envoient et recoivent des embas- 
sades; ils connoissent les droits de la guerre 
et de la paix : le mal est que ce droit des 
gens n'est pas fonde sur les vrais prinoipes."* 

As an important supplement to the practi- 
cal system of our modern law of nations, or 



* .De 1'Esprit des Loix, liv. i. c 3. 



rather as a necessary part of it, I shall con- 
clude with a survey of the diplomatic and 
conventional law of Europe, and of the trea- 
ties which have material])- affected the dis- 
tribution of power and territory among the 
European states. — the circumstances which 
gave rise to them, the changes which they 
effected, and the principles which they in- 
troduced into the public code of the Christian 
commonwealth. In ancient times the know- 
ledge of this conventional law was thought 
one of the greatest praises that could be be- 
stowed on a name loaded with all the honours 
that eminence in the arts of peace and war 
can confer: "Equidem existimo judices. 
cum in omni genere ac varietate artium, 
etiam illarum, quae sine summo otio non 
facile discuntur, Cn. Pompeius excellat. sin- 
gularem quandam laudem ejus et prastabi- 
lem esse scientiam, in fcederibus, pactioni- 
bus, conditionibus, populorum, regum, exte- 
rarum nationum : in universo denique belli 
jure ac pacis."* Information on this subject 
is scattered over an immense variety of 
voluminous compilations, not accessible to 
every one. and of which the perusal can be 
agreeable only to a very few. Yet so much 
of these treaties has been embodied into the 
general law of Europe, that no man can be 
master of it who is not acquainted with them. 
The knowledge of them is necessary to ne- 
gotiators and statesmen ; it may sometimes 
be important to private men in various situ- 
ations in which they may be placed ; it is 
useful to all men who wish either to be ac- 
quainted with modern history, or to form a 
sound judgment on political measures. I 
shall endeavour to give such an abstract ot 
it as may be sufficient for some, and a con- 
venient guide for others in the farther pro- 
gress of their studies. The treaties which I 
shall more particularly consider, will be those 
of Westphalia, of Oliva, of the Pyrenees, of 
Breda, of Nimeguen, of Ryswick, of Utrecht, 
of Aix-la-Chapelle, of Paris (1763). and of 
Versailles (1783). I shall shortly explair 
the other treaties, of which the stipulations 
are either alluded to, confirmed, or abro- 
gated in those which I consider at length. 
I shall subjoin an account of the diplomatic 
intercourse of the European powers with the 
Ottoman Porte, and with other princes and 
states who are without the pale of our ordi- 
nary federal law; together with a view of 
the most important treaties of commerce, 
their principles, and their consequences. 

As an useful appendix to a practical trea- 
tise on the law of nations, some account will 
be given of those tribunals which in different 
countries of Europe decide controversies 
arising out of that law; of their constitution, 
of the extent of their authority, and of their 
modes of proceeding; more especially of 
those courts which are peculiarly appointed 
for that purpose by the laws of Great Britain. 

Though the course, of which I have sketch- 
ed the outline, may seem to comprehend so 

* Cic. Orat. pro L. Corn. Balbo, c. vi. 



LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 



43 



great a variety of miscellaneous subjects, yet 
they are all in truth closely and inseparably 
interwoven. The duties of men, of subjects, 
of princes, of lawgivers, of magistrates, and 
of states, are all parts of one consistent sys- 
tem of universal morality. Between the most 
abstract and elementary maxim of moral 
philosophy, and the most complicated con- 
troversies of civil or public law, there sub- 
sists a connection which it will be the main 
object of these lectures to trace. The princi- 
ple of justice, deeply rooted in the nature and 
interest of man, pervades the whole system, 
and is discoverable in every part of it, even to 
its minutest ramification in a legal formality, 
or in the construction of an article in a treaty. 
I know not whether a philosopher ought 
to confess, that in his inquiries after truth he 
is biassed by any consideration, — even by 
the love of virtue. But I, who conceive that 
a real philosopher ought to regard truth itself 
chiefly on account of its subserviency to 
the happiness of mankind, am not ashamed 
to confess, that I shall feel a great consola- 
tion at the conclusion of these lectures, if, 
by a wide survey and an exact examination 
of the conditions and relations of human na- 
ture, I shall have confirmed but one indivi- 



dual in the conviction, that justice is the 
permanent interest of all men, and of all 
commonwealths. To discover one new link 
of that eternal chain by which the Author 
of the universe has bound together the hap- 
piness and the duly of His creatures, and in- 
dissolubly fastened their interests to each 
other, would fill my heart with more plea- 
sure than all the fame with which the most 
ingenious paradox ever crowned the most 
eloquent sophist. I shall conclude this Dis- 
course in the noble language of two great 
orators and philosophers, who have, in a few 
words, stated the substance, the object, and 
the result of all morality, and politics, and 
law. '•' Nihil est quod adhuc de republica 
putem dictum, et quo possim longius pro- 
gredi. nisi sit confirmatum, non modo falsum 
esse illud, sine injuria non posse, sed hoc 
verissimum, sine summa justitia rempubli- 
cara geri nullo modo posse."* '-'Justice is 
itself the great standing policy of civil so- 
ciety, and any eminent departure from it, 
under any circumstances, lies under the sus- 
picion of being no policy at all." f 

* Cic De Repub. lib. ii. 

t Burke, Works, vol. iii. p. 207. 



LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 



Aristotle and Bacon, the greatest philo- 
sophers of the ancient and the modern world, 
agree in representing poetry as being of a 
more excellent nature than history. Agree- 
ably to the predominance of mere under- 
standing in Aristotle's mind, he alleges as 
his cause of preference that poetry regards 
general truth, or conformity to universal 
nature ; while history is conversant only with 
a confined and accidental truth, dependent on 
time, place, and circumstance. The ground 
assigned by Bacon is such as naturally issued 
from that fusion of imagination with reason, 
which constitutes his philosophical genius. 
Poetry is ranked more highly by him, be- 
cause the poet presents us with a pure ex- 
cellence and an unmingled grandeur, not to 
be found in the coarse realities of life or of 
history ; but which the mind of man, although 
not destined to reach, is framed to contem- 
plate with delight. 

The general difference between biography 
and history is obvious. There have been 
many men in every age whose lives are full 
of interest and instruction ; but who, having 
never taken a part in public affairs, are alto- 
gether excluded from the province of the 
historian : there have been also, probably, 
equal numbers who have influenced the for- 
tune of nations in peace or in war, of the 
peculiarities of whose character we have no 
information ; and who, for the purposes of 
the biographer, may be_ said to have had no 



private life. These are extreme cases : but 
there are other men, whose manners and 
acts are equally well known, whose indi- 
vidual lives are deeply interesting, whose 
characteristic qualities are peculiarly striking, 
who have taken an important share in events 
connected with the most extraordinary revo- 
lutions of human affairs, and whose biogra- 
phy becomes more difficult from that com- 
bination and intermixture of private with 
public occurrences, which render it instruc- 
tive and interesting. The variety and splen- 
dour of the lives of such men render it often 
difficult to distinguish the portion of them 
which ought to be admitted into history, from 
that which should be reserved for biography. 
Generally speaking, these two parts are so 
distinct and unlike, that they cannot be con- 
founded without much injury to both : — as 
when the biographer hides the portrait of 
the individual by a crowded and confined 
picture of events, or when the historian al- 
lows unconnected narratives of the lives of 
men to break the thread of history. The 
historian contemplates only the surface of 
human nature, adorned and disguised (as 
when actors perform brilliant parts before a 
great audience), in the midst of so many 
dazzling circumstances, that it is hard to 
estimate the intrinsic worth of individuals, 
' — and impossible, in an historical relation. 
I to exhibit the secret springs of their con- 
I duct. 



44 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



The biographer endeavours to follow the 
hero and the statesman, from the field, the 
council, or the senate, to his private dwell- 
ing, where, in the midst of domestic ease, 
or of social pleasure, he throws aside the 
robe and the mask, becomes again a man 
instead of an actor, and. in spite of himself, 
often betrays those frailties and singularities 
which are visible in the countenance and 
voice, the gesture and manner, of every one 
when he is not playing a part. It is par- 
ticularly difficult to observe the distinction 
in the case of Sir Thomas More, because he 
was so perfectly natural a man that he car- 
ried his amiable peculiarities into the gravest 
deliberations of state, and the most solemn 
acts of law. Perhaps nothing more can be 
universally laid down, than that the biogra- 
pher never ought to introduce public events, 
except in as far as they are absolutely neces- 
sary to the illustration of character, and that 
the historian should rarely digress into bio- 
graphical particulars, except in as far as they 
contribute to the clearness of his narrative 
of political occurrences. 

Sir Thomas More was born in Milk Street, 
in the city of London, in the year 1480, three 
years before the death of Edward IV. His 
family was respectable, — no mean advantage 
at that time. His father, Sir John More, who 
was born about 1440, was entitled by his 
descent to use an armorial bearing, — a privi- 
lege guarded strictly and jealously as the 
badge of those who then began to be called 
gentry, and who, though separated from the 
lords of parliament by political rights, yet 
formed with them in the order of society 
one body, corresponding to those called noble 
in the other countries of Europe. Though 
the political power of the barons was on the 
wane, the social position of the united body 
of nobility and gentry retained its dignity.* 
Sir John More was one of the justices of the 
court of King's Bench to the end of his long- 
life ; and. according to his son's account, well 
performed the peaceable duties of civil life, 
being gentle in his deportment, blameless, 
meek and merciful, an equitable judge, and 
an upright man.f 

Sir Thomas More received the first rudi- 
ments of his education at St. Anthony's 
school, in Thread-needle Street, under Nicho- 
las Hart : for the daybreak of letters was now 

* "In Sir Thomas More's epitaph, he describes 
himself as ' born of no noble family, but of an 
honest stock,' (or in the words of the original, 
familia non eclebri, sed honesta natns,) a true 
translation, as we here take nobility and ?iohle; 
fosr none under a baron, except he be of the privy 
council, doth challenge it; and in this sense he 
meant it ; but as the Latin word nob His is taken in 
other countries for gen trie, it was otherwise. Sir 
John More bare arms from his birth ; and though 
we cannot certainly tell who were his ancestors, 
they must needs be gentlemen." — Life of More 
(commonly reputed to be) by Thomas More, his 
great grandson, pp. 3, 4. This book will be cited 
henceforward as " More." 

t " Homo civilis, innocens, mitis, integer." — 
Epitaph. 



so bright, that the reputation of schools was 
carefully noted, and schoolmasters began to 
be held in some part of the estimation which 
they merit. Here, however, his studies were 
confined to Latin ; the cultivation of Greek, 
which contains the sources and models of 
Roman literature, being yet far from having 
descended to the level of the best among the 
schools. It was the custom of that age that 
young gentlemen should pass part of their 
boyhood in the house and service of their 
superiors, where they might profit by listen- 
ing to the conversation of men of experience, 
and gradually acquire the manners of the 
world. It was not deemed derogatory from 
youths of rank, — it was rather thought a 
beneficial expedient for inuring them to stern 
discipline and implicit obedience, that they 
should be trained, during this noviciate, in 
humble and even menial offices. A young 
gentleman thought himself no more lowered 
by serving as a page in the family of a great 
peer or prelate, than a Courtenay or a How- 
ard considered it as a degradation to be the 
huntsman or the cupbearer of a Tudor. 

More was fortunate in the character of his- 
master: when his school studies were thought 
to be finished, about his fifteenth year, he 
was placed in the house of Cardinal Morton, 
archbishop of Canterbury. This prelate, 
who was born in 1410, was originally an emi- 
nent civilian, canonist, and a practiser of 
note in the ecclesiastical courts. He had 
been a Lancastrian, and the fidelity with 
which he adhered to Henry VI., till that un- 
fortunate prince's death, recommended him 
to the confidence and patronage of Edward 
IV. He negotiated the marriage with the 
princess Elizabeth, which reconciled (with 
whatever confusion of titles) the conflicting 
pretensions of York and Lancaster, and 
raised Henry Tudor to the throne. By these 
services, and by his long experience in af- 
fairs, he continued to be prime minister till 
his death, which happened in 1500, at the 
advanced age of ninety.* Even at the time 
of More's entry into his household, the old 
cardinal, though then fourscore and five 
years, was pleased with the extraordinary 
promise of the sharp and lively boy ;. as aged 
persons sometimes, as it were, catch a 
glimpse of the pleasure of youth, by enter- 
ing for a moment into its feelings. More 
broke into the rude dramas performed at the 
cardinal's Christmas festivities, to which he 
was too young to be invited, and often in- 
vented at the moment speeches for himself, 
" which made the lookers-on more sport than 
all the players beside." The cardinal, much 
delighting in his wit and towardness, would 
often say of him unto the nobles that dined 
with him, — "This child here waiting at the 
table, whosoever shall live to see it, will 

* Dodd's Church History, vol. i. p. 141. The 
Roman Catholics, now restored to their just rank 
in society, have no longer an excuse for not con- 
tinuing this useful work. [This has been accord- 
ingly done since this note was written, by the Rev. 
M. A. Tierney.— Ed.] 



LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 



45 



prove a marvellous man."* More, in his 
historical work, thus commemorates this 
early friend, not without a sidelong glance 
at the acts of a courtier: — "He was a man 
of great natural wit, very well learned, hon- 
ourable in behaviour, lacking in no wise to 
win favour. "t In Utopia he praises the car- 
dinal more lavishly, and with no restraint 
from the severe justice of history. It was 
in Morton's house that he was probably first 
known to Colet, dean of St. Paul's, the foun- 
der of St. Paul's school, and one of the most 
eminent restorers of ancient literature in 
England ; who was wont to say, that " there 
was but one wit in England, and that was 
young Thomas More. "J: 

More went to Oxford in 1497, where he 
appears to have had apartments in St. Mary's 
Hall, but to have carried on his studies at 
Canterbury College,^ on the spot where 
Wolsey afterwards reared the magnificent 
edifice of Christchurch. At that university 
he found a sort of civil war waged between 
the partisans of Greek literature, who were 
then innovators in education and suspected 
of heresy, if not of infidelity, on the one 
hand ; and on the other side the larger body, 
comprehending the aged, the powerful, and 
the celebrated, who were content to be no 
wiser than their forefathers. The younger 
followers of the latter faction affected the 
ridiculous denomination of Trojans, and as- 
sumed the names of Priam, Hector, Paris, 
and ^Eneas, to denote their hostility to the 
Greeks. The puerile pedantry of these cox- 
combs had the good effect of awakening the 
zeal of More for his Grecian masters, and of 
inducing him to withstand the barbarism 
which would exclude the noblest produc- 
tions of the human mind from the education 
of English youth. He expostulated with the 
university in a letter addressed to the whole 
body, reproaching them with the better ex- 
ample of Cambridge, where the gates were 
thrown open to the higher classics of Greece, 
as freely as to their Roman imitators.il The 
established clergy even then, though Luther 
had not yet alarmed them, strangers as they 
were to the new learning, affected to con- 
temn (hat of which they were ignorant, and 
could not endure the prospect of a rising 
generation more learned than themselves. 
Their whole education was Latin, and their 
instruction was limited to Roman and canon 
law, to theology, and school philosophy. 
They dreaded the downfal of the authority 
of the Vulgate from the study of Greek and 
Hebrew. But the course of things was irrre- 
sistible. The scholastic system was now on 
the verge of general disregard, and the pe- 
rusal of the greatest Roman waiters turned 
all eyes towards the Grecian masters. What 



* Roper's Life of Sir T. More, edited by Singer. 
Thisbook will he ciied henceforward as " Roper.'' 

t History of Rio-hard III. 

4 More, p. 25. 

§ Athena3 Oxonienses, vol. i. p. 79. 

II See this Letter in the Appendix to the second 
volume of Jortin's Life of Erasmus. 



man of high capacity, and of ambition be- 
coming his faculties, could read Cicero with- 
out a desire to comprehend Demosthenes and 
Plato ? What youth desirous of excellence 
but would rise from the study of the Georgics 
and the yEneid, with a wish to be acquainted 
with Hesiod and Apollonius, with Pindar, 
and above all with Homer 1 These studies 
were then pursued, not with the dull languor 
and cold formality with which the indolent, in- 
capable, incurious majority of boys obey the 
prescribed rules of an old establishment, but 
with the enthusiastic admiration with which 
the superior few feel an earnest of their own 
higher powers, in the delight which arises 
in their minds at the contemplation of new 
beauty, and of excellence unimagined before. 

More found several of the restorers of 
Grecian literature at Oxford, who had been 
the scholars of the exiled Greeks in Italy ; — 
Grocyn, the first professor of Greek in the 
university; Linacre. the accomplished foun- 
der of the college of physicians; and Wil- 
liam Latimer, of whom we know little more 
than what we collect from the general tes- 
timony borne by his most eminent contem- 
poraries to his learning and virtue. Grocyn, 
the first of the English restorers, was a late 
learner, being in the forty-eighth year of his 
age when he went, in 1488, to Italy, where 
the fountains of ancient learning were once 
more opened. After having studied under 
Politian, and learnt Greek from Chalcon- 
dylas, one of the lettered emigrants who 
educated the teachers of the western nations, 
he returned to Oxford, where he taught that 
language to More, to Linacre, and to Eras- 
mus. Linacre followed the example of Gro- 
cyn in visiting Italy, and profiting by the in- 
structions of Chalcondylas. Colet spent four 
years in the same country, and in the like 
studies. William Latimer repaired at a 
mature age to Padua, in quest of that know- 
ledge which was not to be acquired at home. 
He was afterwards chosen to be tutor to 
Reginald Pole, the King's cousin ; and Eras- 
mus, by attributing to him "maidenly mo- 
desty," leaves in one word an agreeable im- 
pression of the character of a man chosen for 
his scholarship to be Linacre's colleague in a 
projected translation of Aristotle, and solici- 
ted by the latter for aid in his edition of the 
New Testament.* 

At Oxford More became known to a man 
far more extraordinary than any of these 
scholars. Erasmus had been invited to Eng- 
land by Lord Mountjoy, who had been his 
pupil at Paris, and continued to be his friend 
during life. He resided at Oxford during a 
great part of 1497 ; and having returned to 
Paris in 1498, spent the latter portion of the 
same year at the university of Oxford, where 
he again had an opportunity of pouring his 
zeal for Greek study into the mind of More. 
Their friendship, though formed at an age of 
considerable disparity, — Erasmus being then 



* For Latimer, see Dodd, Church History, vol- 
i. p. 219. : for Grocyn, Ibid. p. 227: for Colet and 
Linacre, all biographical compilations. 



46 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



thirty and More only seventeen,— lasted ] 
throughout the whole of their lives. Eras- | 
mus had acquired only the rudiments of ■ 
Greek at the age most suited to the aoquisi- 
lion of languages; and was now completing j 
his knowledge on that subject at a period of j 
mature manhood, which he jestingly com- 
pares with the age at which the elder Cato 
commenced his Grecian studies.* Though 
Erasmus himself seems to have been much 
excited towards Greek learning by the ex- 
ample of the English scholars, yet the cul- 
tivation of classical literature was then so 
small a part of the employment or amuse- 
ment of life, that William Latimer, one of 
the most eminent of these scholars, to whom 
Erasmus applied for aid in his edition of the 
Greek Testament, declared that he had not 
read a page of Greek or Latin for nine years, t 
that he had almost forgotten his ancient lite- 
rature, and that Greek books were scarcely 
procurable in England. Sir John More, in- 
flexibly adhering to the old education, and 
dreading that the allurements of literature 
might seduce his son from law, discouraged 
the pursuit of Greek, and at the same time 
reduced the allowance of Thomas to the 
level of the most frugal life ;— a parsimony 
for which the son was afterwards, though 
not then, thankful, as having taught him 
good husbandry, and preserved him from 
dissipation. 

At the university, or soon after leaving it, 
young More composed the greater part of 
his English verses: which are not such as, 
from their intrinsic merit, in a more advanced 
state of our language and literature, would 
be deserving of particular attention. But as 
the poems of a contemporary of Skelton, they 
may merit more consideration. Our language 
was still neglected, or confined chiefly to the 
vulgar uses of life. Its force, its compass, 
and its capacity of harmony, were untried : 
for though Chaucer had shone brightly for a 
season, the century which followed was dark 
and wintry. No master genius had impreg- 
nated the nation with poetical sensibility. 
In these inauspicious circumstances, the com- 
position of poems, especially if they mani- 
fest a sense of harmony, and some adapta- 
tion of the sound to the subject, indicates a 
delight in poetry, and a proneness to that 
beautiful art, which in such an age is a 
more than ordinary token of a capacity for it. 
The experience of all ages, however it may 
be accounted for, shows that the mind, when 
melted into tenderness, or exalted by the 
contemplation of grandeur, vents its feelings 
in language suited to a state of excitement, 
and delights in distinguishing its diction from 



common speech by some species of measure 
and modulation, which combines the gratifi- 
cation of the ear with that of the fancy and 
the heart. The secret connection between 
a poetical ear and a poetical soul is touched 
by the most sublime of poets, who consoled 
himself in his blindness by the remembrance 
of those who, under the like calamity, 



Feed on thoughts that voluntary move 

Harmonious numbers. 



* " Delibavimus et olim has literas, sed summis 
duntaxat labiis ; at nuper paulo altius ingressi, 
videmus id quod saepenumero apud gravissimos 
auctorea legimus, — Latinam eruditionem, quamvis 
impendiosam, citra Graecismum mancatn esse ac 
dimidiatam. Apud nos enim rivuli vix quidam 
sunt, et lacunulse lutulentaj ; apud illos fontes pu- 
rissimiet numinaaurum volventia." — Opera. Lug. 
Bat. 1703. vol. iii. p. 63. 

t Ibid. vol. iii. p. 293. 



We may be excused for throwing a glance 
over the compositions of a writer, who is 
represented a century after his death, by Ben 
Jonson, as one of the models of English lite- 
rature. More's poem on the death of Eliza- 
beth, the wife of Henry VII., and his merry 
jest How a Serjeant would play the Friar, 
may be considered as fair samples of his 
pensive and sportive vein. The superiority 
of the latter shows his natural disposition 
to pleasantry. There is a sort of dancing 
mirth in the metre which seems to warrant 
the observation above hazarded, that in a 
rude period the structure of verse may be 
regarded as some presumption of a genius 
for poetry. In a refined age, indeed, all the 
circumstances are different : the frame-work 
of metrical composition is known to all the 
world ; it may be taught by rule, and ac- 
quired mechanically; the greatest facility of 
versification may exist without a spark of 
genius. Even then, however, the secrets of 
The art of versification are chiefly revealed 
to a chosen few by their poetical sensibility; 
so that sufficient remains of the original tie 
still continue to attest its primitive origin. 
It is remarkable, that the most poetical of 
the poems is written in Latin : it is a poem 
addressed to a lady, with whom he had been 
in love when he was sixteen years old, and 
she fourteen; and it turns chiefly on the 
pleasing reflection that his affectionate re- 
membrance restored to her the beauty, of 
which twenty-five years seemed to others to 
have robbed her.* 

When More had completed his time at 
Oxford, he applied himself to the study of 
the law, which was to be the occupation of 
his life. He first studied at New Inn, and 
afterwards at Lincoln's Inn.t The societies 
of lawyers having purchased some inns, or 
noblemen's residences, in London, were 
hence called "inns of court." It was not 
then a metaphor to call them an university ; 
they had professors of law ; they conferred 
the characters of barrister and Serjeant, ana- 
logous to the degrees of bachelor, master, 
and doctor, bestowed by the universities; 
and every man, before he became a barrister, 
was subjected to examination, and obliged 



* "Gratulatur quod earn repererit incolumem 
quam olim ferine puer amaverat." — Not. in Poem. 
It does not seem reconcilable with dates, that his 
lady could have been the younger sister of Jane 
Colt. Vide infra. 

t Inn was successively applied, like the trench 
word hotel, first to the town mansion of a great 
man, and afterwards to a house where all man- 
kind were entertained for money. 



LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 



47 



to defend a thesis. More was appointed 
reader at Furnival's Inn, where he delivered 
lectures for three years. The English law 
had already grown into a science, formed by 
a process of generalisation from usages and 
decisions, with less help from the Roman 
law than the jurisprudence of any other 
country, though not with that total indepen- 
dence of it which English lawyers in former 
times considered as a subject of boast : it 
was rather formed as the law of Rome itself 
had been formed, than adopted from that 
noble system. When More began to lecture 
on English law, it was by no means in a 
disorderly and neglected state. The eccle- 
siastical lawyers, whose arguments and de- 
terminations were its earliest materials, were 
well prepared, by the logic and philosophy 
of their masters the Schoolmen, for those 
exact and even subtle distinctions which the 
precision of the rules of jurisprudence emi- 
nently required. In the reigns of the Lan- 
castrian princes, Littleton had reduced the 
law to an elementary treatise, distinguished 
by a clear method and an elegant concise- 
ness. Fortescue had during the same time 
compared the governments of England and 
France with the eye of a philosophical ob- 
server. Brooke and Fitzherbert had com- 
piled digests of the law, which they called 
(it might be thought, from their size, ironi- 
cally) " Abridgments." The latter composed 
a treatise, still very curious, on "writs;" 
that is, on those commands (formerly from 
the king) which constitute essential parts of 
every legal proceeding. Other writings on 
jurisprudence occupied the printing presses 
of London in the earliest stage* of their ex- 
istence. More delivered lectures also at St. 
Lawrence's church in the Old Jewry, on 
the work of St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, 
that is, on the divine government of the 
moral world; wdiich must seem to readers 
who look at ancient times through modern 
habits, a very singular occupation for a 
younu lawyer. But the clergy were then the 
chief depositaries of knowledge, and were 
the sole canonists and civilians, as they had 
once been the only lawyers.! Religion, 
morals, and law, were then taught together 
without due distinction between them, to 
the injury and confusion of them all. To 
these lectures, we are told by the affectionate 
biographer, " there resorted Doctor Grocyn, 
an excellent cunning man, and all the chief 
learned of the city of London."! More, in 
his lectures, however, did not so much dis- 
cuss "the points of divinity as the precepts 
of moral philosophy and history, wherewith 
these books are replenished. "§ The effect 
of the deep study of the first was, perhaps, 
however, to embitter his polemical writings, 
and somewhat to sour that naturally sweet 
temper, which was so deeply felt by his 

* Doctor and Student (by St. Germain) and Di- 
versiie des Courtes were both printed by Rastell 
in 1534. 

t Nullus causidicus nisi clericus. 

% Roper, p. 5. § More, p. 44. 



companions, that Erasmus scarcely ever con- 
cludes a letter to him without epithets more 
indicative of the most tender affection than 
of the calm feelings of friendship.*' 

The tenderness of More's nature combined 
with the instructions and habits of his edu- 
cation to predispose him to piety. As he 
lived in the neighbourhood of the great Car- 
thusian monastery, called the "Charter- 
house," for some years, he manifested a 
predilection for monastic life, and is said to 
have practised some of those austerities and 
self-inflictions which prevail among the 
gloomier and sterner orders. A pure mind 
in that age often sought to extinguish some 
of the inferior impulses of human nature, in- 
stead of employing them for their appointed 
purpose, — that of animating the domestic 
affections, and sweetening the most impor- 
tant duties of life. He soon learnt, however, 
by self-examination, his unfitness for the 
priesthood, and relinquished his project of 
taking orders, in words which should have 
warned his church against the imposition of 
unnatural self-denial on vast multitudes and 
successive generations of men.t 

The same affectionate disposition which 
had driven him towards the visions, and, 
strange as it may seem, to the austerities of 
the monks, now sought a more natural chan- 
nel. " He resorted to the house of one Mais- 
ter Colt, a gentleman of Essex, who had often 
invited him thither; having three daughters, 
whose honest conversation and virtuous edu- 
cation provoked him there especially to set 
his affection. And albeit his mind most 
served him to the second daughter, for that 
he thought her the fairest and best favoured, 
yet when he considered that it would be 
both great grief, and some shame also, to 
the eldest, to see her younger sister prefer- 
red before her in marriage, he then of a cer- 
tain pity framed his fancy toward her, and 
soon after married her, neverthemore dis- 
continuing his study of the law at Lincoln's 
Inn."t His more remote descendant adds, 
that Mr. Colt " proffered unto him the choice 
of any of his daughters; and that More, out 
of a kind of compassion, settled his fancy on 
the eldest. "§ Erasmus gives a turn to More's 
marriage with Jane Colt, which is too inge- 
nious to be probable : — "He wedded a very 
young girl of respectable family, but who 
had hitherto lived in the country with her 
parents and sisters, and was so uneducated, 
that he could mould her to his own tastes 
and manners. He caused her to be in- 
structed in letters ; and she became a very 
skilful musician, which peculiarly pleased 
him."|| 

The plain matter of fact seems to nave 
been, that in an age when marriage chiefly 
depended upon a bargain between parents, 



* " Suavissime More." " Charissime More." 
" Mellitissime More." 

+ " Maluit maritus esse castus quam sacerdo* 
impurus." Erasmus, Op. vol. iii. p. 475. 

j Roper, p. 6. $ More, p. 30. 

II Erasmus, Op. vol. iii. p. 475. 



48 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



on which sons were little consulted, and 
daughters not at all, More, emerging at 
twenty-one from the toil of acquiring Greek, 
and the voluntary self-torture of Carthusian 
mystics, was delighted at his first entry 
among pleasing young women, of whom 
the least attractive might, in these circum- 
stances, have touched him: and that his 
slight preference for the second easily yield- 
ed to a good-natured reluctance to mortify 
the elder. Most young ladies in Essex, in 
the beginning of the sixteenth century, must 
have required some tuition to appear in Lon- 
don among scholars and courtiers, who were 
at that time more mingled than it is now 
usual for them to be. It is impossible to 
ascertain the precise shade of feeling which 
the biographers intended to denote by the 
words "pity" and "compassion," for the 
use of which they are charged with a want 
of gallantry or delicacy by modern writers ; 
although neither of these terms, when the 
context is at the same time read, seems un- 
happily employed to signify the natiTral re- 
finement, which shrinks from humbling the 
harmless self-complacency of an innocent 
girl. 

The marriage proved so happy, that no- 
thing was to be regretted in it but the short- 
ness of the union, in consequence of the early 
death of Jane Colt, who left a son and three 
daughters; of whom Margaret, the eldest, 
inherited the features, the form, and the ge- 
nius of her father, and requited his fond par- 
tiality by a daughterly love, which endured 
to the end. 

In no long time* after the death of Jane 
Colt, he married Alice Middleton, a widow, 
seven years older than himself, and not hand- 
some • — rather, for the care of his family, and 
the management of his house, than as a com- 
panion and a friend. He treated her, and in- 
deed all females, except his daughter Mar- 
garet, as better qualified to relish a jest, than 
to take a part in more serious conversation ; 
and in their presence gave an unbounded 
scope to his natural inclination towards plea- 
santry. He even indulged himself in a Latin 
play of words on her want of youth and 
beauty, calling her "nee bella nee puella."t 
" She was of good years, of no good favour 
or complexion, nor very rich, and by disposi- 
tion near and worldly. It was reported that 
he wooed her for a friend of his; but she 
answering that he might speed if he spoke 
for himself, he married her with the consent 
of his friend, yielding to her that which per- 
haps he never would have done of his own 
accord. Indeed, her favour could not have 
bewitched, or scarce moved, any man to 
love her; but yet she proved a kind and 
careful mother-in-law to his children." Eras- 
mus, who was often an inmate in the family, 
speaks of her as "a keen and watchful ma- 



* " In a few months," says Erasmus, Op. vol. 
iii. p. 475. : — " within two or three years," ac- 
cording to his great grandson. — More, p. 32. 

t Erasmus, vol. iii. p. 475. 



nager, with whom More lived on terms of 
as much respect and kindness as if she had 
been fair and young." Such is the happy 
power of a loving disposition, which over- 
flows on companions, though their attrac- 
tions or deserts should be slender. "No 
husband," continues Erasmus, "ever gained 
so much obedience from a wife by authority 
and severity, as More won by gentleness and 
pleasantry. Though verging on old age, and 
not of a yielding temper, he prevailed on her 
to take lessons on the lute, the cithara, the 
viol, the monochord, and the flute, which she 
daily practised to him. With the same gen- 
tleness he ruled his whole family, so that it 
was without broils or quarrels. He com- 
posed all differences, and never parted with 
any one on terms of unkindness. The house 
was fated to the peculiar felicity that those 
who dwelt in it were always raised to a 
higher fortune ; and that no spot ever fell on 
the good name of its happy inhabitants." 
The course of More's domestic life is mi- 
nutely described by eye-witnesses. "His 
custom was daily (besides his private prayers 
with his children) to say the seven psalms, 
the litany, and the suffrages following ; so 
was his guise with his wife, children, and 
household, nightly before he went to bed, to 
go to his chapel, and there on his knees or- 
dinarily to say certain psalms and collects 
with them."* "With him," says Erasmus, 
"you might imagine yourself in the acade- 
my of Plato. But I should do injustice -to 
his house by comparing it to the academy 
of Plato, where numbers, and geometrical 
figures, and sometimes moral virtues, were 
the subjects of discussion ; it would be more 
just to call it a school and exercise of the 
Christian religion. All its inhabitants, male 
or female, applied their leisure to liberal 
studies and profitable reading, although piety 
was their first care. No wrangling, no angry 
word, was heard in it; no one was idle: every 
one did his duty with alacrity, and not with- 
out a temperate cheerfulness. "f Erasmus 
had not the sensibility of More ; he was more 
prone to smile than to sigh at the concerns 
of men : but he was touched by the remem- 
brance of these domestic solemnities in the 
household of his friend. He manifests an 
agreeable emotion at the recollection of these 
scenes in daily life, which tended to hallow 
the natural authority of parents, to bestow a 
sort of dignity on humble occupation, to raise 
menial offices to the rank of virtues, and to 
spread peace and cultivate kindness among 
those who had shared, and were soon again 
to share, the same modest rites, in gently 
breathing around them a spirit of "meek 
equality, which rather humbled the pride of 
the great than disquieted the spirits of the 
lowly. More himself justly speaks of the 
hourly interchange of the smaller a^ts of 
kindness which flow from the charities of 
domestic life, as having a claim on his time 
as strong as the occupations which seemed 

* Roper, p. 25. t Op. vol. iii. p. 1812. 



LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 



49 



to others so much more serious and impor- 
tant. " While," says he, " in pleading, in 
hearing, in deciding causes or composing 
differences, in waiting on some men about 
business, and on others out of respect, the 
greatest part of the day is spent on other 
men's affairs, the remainder of it must be 
given to my family at home ; so that I can 
reserve no part of it to myself, that is. to 
study. I must talk with my wife, and chat 
with my children, and I have somewhat to 
say to my servants; for all these things I 
reckon as a part of my business, except a 
man will resolve to be a stranger at home ; 
and with whomsoever either nature, chance, 
or choice, has engaged a man in any com- 
merce, he must endeavour to make himself 
as acceptable to those about him as he can."* 

His occupations now necessarily employed 
a large portion of his time. His professional 
practice became so considerable, that about 
the accession of Henry VIII., in 1509. with 
his legal office in the city of London, it pro- 
duced 400L a year, probably equivalent to 
an annual income of 5000L in the present 
day. Though it be not easy to determine the 
exact period of the occurrences of his life, 
from his establishment in London to his ac- 
ceptance of political office, the beginning of 
Henry VIII. 's reign may be considered as 
the time of his highest eminence at the bar. 
About this time a ship belonging to the Pope, 
or claimed by his Holiness on behalf of some 
of his subjects, happened to come to South- 
ampton, where she was seized as a forfei- 
ture, — probably as what is called a droit of 
the crown, or a droit of the admiralty, — 
though under what circumstances, or on what 
grounds we know not. The papal minister 
made suit to the King that the case might be 
argued for the Pope by learned counsel in a 
public place, and in presence of the minister 
himself, who was a distinguished civilian. 
None was found so well qualified to be of 
counsel for him as More, who could report 
in Latin all the arguments to his client, and 
who argued so learnedly on the Pope's side, 
that he succeeded in obtaining an order for 
the restitution of the vessel detained. 

It has been already intimated, that about 
the same time he had been appointed to a 
judicial office in the city of London, which 
is described by his son-in-law as " that of 
one of the under-sheriffs." Roper, who was 
himself for many years an officer of the court 
of King's Bench, gives the name of the office 
correctly; but does not describe its nature 
and importance so truly as Erasmus, who 
tells his correspondent that More passed 
several years in the city of London as a judge 
in civil causes. "This office." he says, 
' : though not laborious, for the court sits only 
on the forenoon of every Thursday, is ac- 
counted very honourable. No judge of that 
court ever went through more causes; none 
decided them more uprightly; often remit- 
ting the fees to which he was entitled from 

* Dedication of Utopia to Peter Giles, (Burnet's 
translation,) 1684. 



the suitors. His deportment in this capacity 
endeared him extremely to his fellow-citi- 
zens."* The under-sheriff was then appa- 
rently judge of the sheriff's court, which, 
being the county court for London and Mid- 
dlesex, was, at that time, a station of honour 
and ad vantage. t For the county courts in 
general, and indeed all the ancient subordi- 
nate jurisdictions of the common law, had 
not yet been superseded by that concen- 
tration of authority in the hands of the su- 
perior courts at Westminster, which con- 
tributed indeed to the purity and dignity of 
the judicial character, as well as to the uni- 
formity and the improvement of the admin- 
istration of law, — but which cannot be said 
to have served in the same degree to pro- 
mote a speedy and cheap redress of the 
wrongs suffered by those suitors to whom 
cost and delay are most grievous. More's 
office, in that state of the jurisdiction, might 
therefore have possessed the importance 
which his contemporaries ascribed to it; 
although the denomination of it would not 
make such an impression on modern ears. 
It is apparent, that either as a considerable 
source of his income, or as an honourable 
token of public confidence, this office was 
valued by More ; since he informs Erasmus, 
in 1516, that he had declined a handsome 
pension offered to him by the king on his 
return from Flanders, and that he believed 
he should always decline it ; because either 
it would oblige him to resign his office in the 
city, which he preferred to a better, or if he 
retained it, in' case of a controversy of the city 
with the king for their privileges, he might be 
deemed by his fellow-citizens to be disabled 
by dependence on the crown from sincere- 
ly and faithfully maintaining their rights.! 
This last reasoning is also interesting, as the 
first intimation of the necessity of a city law- 
officer being independent of the crown, and 
of the legal resistance of the corporation of 
London to a Tudor king. It paved the way 
for those happier times in which the great 
city had the honour to number the Holts and 
the Denmans among her legal advisers. § 

* Erasmus, Op. vol. iii. p. 476. 

t " In urbe sua pro shyrevo dixit." — Epitaph. 

t Erasmus, Op. vol. iii. p. 220. 

§ From communications obtained for me from 
the records of the City, I am enabled to ascertain 
some particulars of the nature of More's appoint- 
ment, which have occasioned a difference of opin- 
ion. On the 8th of May, 1514. it was agreed by 
the common council, " that, Thomas More, gen- 
tleman, one of the under-sheriffs of London, should 
occupy his office and chamber by a sufficient depu- 
ty, during his absence as the king's ambassador 
in Flanders." It appears from several entries in 
the same records, from 1496 to 1502 inclusive, that 
the under-sheriff was annually elected, or rather 
confirmed ; for the practice was not to remove 
him without his own application or some serious 
fiiulti For six years of Henry's reign, Edward 
Dudley was one of the under-sheriffs ; a circum- 
stance which renders the superior importance of 
the office at that time probable. Thomas Marowe, 
the author of works on law esteemed in his time, 
though not published, appears also in the above 
records as under-sheriff. 
E 



50 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



More is the first person in our history dis- 
tinguished by the faculty of public, speaking. 
A remarkable occasion on which it was suc- 
cessfully employed in parliament against a 
lavish grant of money to the crown is thus 
recorded by his son-in-law as follows : — "In 
the latter time of king Henry VII. he was 
made a burgess of the parliament, wherein 
was demanded by the king about three 
fifteenths for the marriage of his eldest 
daughter, that then should be the Scottish 
queen. At the last debating whereof he 
made such arguments and reasons there 
against, that the king's demands were there- 
by clean overthrown : so that one of the 
king's privy chamber, named maister Tyler, 
being present thereat, brought word to the 
king out of the parliament house, that a 
beardless boy had disappointed all his pur- 
pose. Whereupon the king, conceiving great 
indignation towards him, could not be satis- 
fied until he had some way revenged it. 
And forasmuch as he, nothing having, could 
nothing lose, his grace devised a causeless 
quarrel against his father; keeping him in 
the Tower till he had made him to pay 100L 
fine," (probably on a charge of having in- 
fringed some obsolete penal law). "Shortly 
after, it fortuned that Sir T. More, coming 
in a suit to Dr. Fox, bishop of Winchester, 
one of the king's privy council, the bishop 
called him aside, and, pretending great fa- 
vour towards him, promised that if he would 
be ruled by him he would not fail into the 
king's favour again to restore him ; meaning, 
as it was afterwards conjectured, to cause 
him thereby to confess his offences against 
the king, whereby his highness might, with 
the better colour, have occasion to revenge 
his displeasure against him. But when he 
came from the bishop he fell into communi- 
cation with one maister Whitforde, his fami- 
liar friend, then chaplain to that bishop, and 
showed him what the bishop had said, 
praying for his advice. Whitforde prayed 
him by the passion of God not to follow the 
counsel; for my lord, to serve the king's 
turn, will not stick to agree to his own fa- 
ther's death. So Sir Thomas More returned 
to the bishop no more; and had not the king 
died soon after, he was determined to have 
gone over sea."* That the advice of Whit- 
forde was wise, appeared from a circum- 
stance which occurred nearly ten years after, 
which exhibits a new feature in the character 
of the King and of his bishops. When Dud- 
ley was sacrificed to popular resentment, 
under Henry VIII., and when he was on his 
way to execution, he met Sir Thomas, to 
whom he said,— '-'Oh More. More! God 
was your good friend, that you did not ask 
the king forgiveness, as manie would have 
had you do ;' for if you had done so, pa-haps 

* Roper, p. 7. There seems to lie some for- 
getfulness of dates in the latter part of this passage, 
which has heen copied by succeeding wri'ers. 
Margaret, it is well known, was married in 1503 ; 
the debate was not, therefore, later than that year : 
but Henry VII. lived till 1509. 



you should have been in the like case with us 
now."* 

It was natural that the restorer of political 
eloquence, which had slumbered for a long 
series of ages,t should also be the earliest of 
the parliamentary champions of liberty. But 
it is lamentable that we have so little infor- 
mation respecting the oratorical powers which 
alone could have armed him for the noble 
conflict. He may be said to hold the same 
station among us, which is assigned by 
Cicero, in his dialogue On the Celebrated 
Orators of Rome, to Cato the censor, whose 
consulship was only about ninety years prior 
to his own. His answer, as Speaker of the 
House of Commons, to Wolsey, of which 
more will be said presently, is admirable for 
its promptitude, quickness, seasonableness, 
and caution, combined with dignity and 
spirit. It unites presence of mind and adap- 
tation to the person and circumstances, with 
address and management seldom surpassed. 
If the tone be more submissive than suits 
modern ears, it is yet remarkable for that 
ingenious refinement which for an instant 
shows a glimpse of the sword generally hid- 
den under robes of state. "His eloquent 
tongue," says Erasmus, " so well seconds 
his fertile invention, that no one speaks bet- 
ter when suddenly called forth. His alterr- 
tion never languishes ; his mind is always 
before his words ; his memory has all its 
stock so turned into ready money, that, with- 
out hesitation or delay, it gives out whatever 
the time and the case may require. His 
acuteness in dispute is unrivalled, and he 
often perplexes the most renowned theolo- 
gians when he enters their province."! 
Though much of this encomium may be 
applicable rather to private conversation 
than to public debate, and though this pre- 
sence of mind may refer altogether to promp- 
titude of repartee, and comparatively little 
to that readiness of reply, of which his ex- 
perience must have been limited ; it is still 
obvious that the great critic has ascribed to 
his friend the higher part of those mental 
qualities, which, when justly balanced and 
perfectly trained, constitute a great orator. 

As if it had been the lot of More to open 
all the paths through the wilds of our old 
English speech, he is to be considered also 
as our earliest prose writer, and as the first 
Englishman who wrote the history of his 
country in its present language. The his- 
torical fragment§ commands belief by sim- 
plicity, and by abstinence from too confident 
affirmation. It betrays some negligence 
about minute particulars, which is not dis- 
pleasing as a symptom of the absence of 
eagerness to enforce a narrative. The com- 
position has an ease and a rotundity (which 
gratify the ear without awakening the sus- 



* More, p. 38. 

t " Postquam pugnatum est apud Actium,. 
magna ilia ingenia cessere." — Tacitus, Hist. lib. 
i. cap. 1. 

t Erasmus, Op. vol. iii. p. 476. 

§ History of Richard III. 



LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 



picion of art) of which there was no model 
in any preceding writer of English prose. 

In comparing the prose of More with the 
modern style, we must distinguish the words 
from the composition. A very small part of 
his vocabulary has been superannuated ; the 
number of terms which require any expla- 
nation is inconsiderable : and in that respect 
the stability of the language is remarkable. 
He is, indeed, in his words, more English 
than the great writers of a century after him, 
who loaded their native tongue with expres- 
sions of Greek or Latin derivation. Cicero, 
speaking of '-'old Cato," seems almost to de- 
scribe More. "His style is rather antiquated; 
he has some words displeasing to our ears, 
but which were then in familiar use. Change 
those terms, which he could not, you will 
then prefer no speaker to Cato."* 

But in the combination and arrangement 
of words, in ordinary phraseology and com- 
mon habits of composition, he differs more 
widely from the style that has now been 
prevalent among us for nearly two centuries. 
His diction seems a continued experiment to 
discover the forms into which the language 
naturally runs. Iii that attempt he has fre- 
quently failed. Fortunate accident, or more 
varied experiment in aftertimes, led to the 
adoption of other combinations, which could 
scarcely have succeeded, if they had not 
been more consonant to the spirit of the lan- 
guage, and more agreeable to the ear and the 
feelings of the people. The structure of his 
sentences is frequently' not that which the 
English language has finally adopted : the 
language of his countrymen has decided, 
without appeal, against the composition of 
the father of English prose. 

The speeches contained in his fragment, 
like many of those in the ancient historians, 
were probably substantially real, but bright- 
ened by ornament, and improved in compo- 
sition. It could, indeed, scarcely be other- 
wise : for the history was written in 1513,t 
and the death of Edward IV., with which it 
opens, occurred in 1483; while Cardinal 
Morton, who became prime minister two 
years after that event, appears to have taken 
young More into his household about the 
year 1493. There is, therefore, little scope, 
in so short a time, for much falsification, by 
tradition, of the arguments and topics really- 
employed. These speeches have the merit 
of being accommodated to the circumstances, 
and of being of a tendency to dispose those 
to whom they were addressed to promote 
the object of the speaker; and this merit, 
rare in similar compositions, shows that More 

* De C!ar. Orat. cap. 17. 

t Holinshed, vol. iii. p. 360. Holinshed called 
More's work " unfinished." That it was meant 
to extend to the death of Richard III. seems pro- 
bable from the following sentence: — " But, for- 
asmuch as this duke's (ihe Duke of Gloucester) 
demeanour ministereth in effect all the whole 
matter whereof this book shall entreat, it is there- 
fore convenient to show you, as we further go, 
what manner of man this was that could find in 
his heart such mischief to conceive." — p. 361. 



had been taught, by the practice of speaking 1 
in contests where objects the most important 
are the prize of the victor, that eloquence is 
the art of persuasion, and that the end of the 
orator is not the display' of his talents, but 
dominion over the minds of his hearers. The 
dying speech, in which Edward exhorts the 
two parties of his friends to harmony, is a 
grave appeal to their prudence, as well as an 
affecting address from a father and a king to 
their public feelings. The surmises thrown 
out by Richard against the Widvilles are 
short, dark, and well adapted to awaken sus- 
picion and alarm. The insinuations against 
the Queen, and the threats of danger to the 
lords themselves from leaving the person of 
the Duke of York in the hands of that prin- 
cess, in Richard's speech to the Privy Coun- 
cil, before the Archbishop of York was sent 
to Westminster to demand the surrender of 
the boy, are admirable specimens of the 
address and art of crafty ambition. Gene- 
rally speaking, the speeches have little of 
the vague common-place of rhetoricians and 
declaimers; and the time is not wasted in 
parade. In the case, indeed, of the dispute 
between the Archbishop and the Queen, 
about taking the Duke of York out of his 
mother's care, and from the Sanctuary at 
Westminster, there is more ingenious argu- 
ment than the scene allows ; and the mind 
rejects logical refinements, of which the use, 
on such an occasion, is quite irreconcilable to 
dramatic verisimilitude. The Duke of Buck- 
ingham alleged in council, that sanetuaiy 
could be claimed only against danger; and 
that the royal infant had neither wisdom to 
desire sanctuary, nor the malicious intention 
in his acts without which he could not re- 
quire it. To this notable paradox, which 
amounted to an affirmation that no certainly- 
innocent person could ever claim protection 
from a sanctuary, when it was carried to the 
Queen, she answered readily, that if she 
could be in sanctuary, it followed that her 
child, who was her ward, was included in 
her protection, as much as her servants, who 
were, without contradiction, allowed to be. 

The Latin epigrams of More, a small vo- 
lume which it required two years to carry 
though the press at Basle, are mostly trans- 
lations from the Anthologia, which were 
rather made known to Europe by the fame 
of the writer, than calculated to increase it. 
They contain, however, some decisive proofs 
that he always entertained the opinions re- 
specting the dependence of all government 
on the consent of the people, to which he 
professed his adherence almost in his dying 
moments. Latin versification was not in 
that early period successfully attempted in 
any Transalpine country. The rules of pros- 
ody, or at least the laws of metrical compo- 
sition, were not yet sufficiently studied for 
such attempts. His Latinity was of the same ' 
school with that of his friend Erasmus; 
which was, indeed, common to the first gen- 
eration of scholars after the revival of classi- 
cal study. Finding Latin a sort of general 



52 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



language employed by men of letters in their 
conversation and correspondence, they con- 
tinued the use of it in the mixed and cor- 
rupted state to which such an application 
had necessarily reduced it: they began, 
indeed, to purify it from some grosser cor- 
ruptions; but they built their style upon 
the foundation of this colloquial dialect, 
with no rigorous observation of the good 
usage of the Roman language. Writings 
of business, of pleasantry, of familiar inter- 
course, could never have been composed 
in pure Latinity; which was still more in- 
consistent with new manners, institutions, 
and opinions, and with discoveries and in- 
ventions added to those which were trans- 
mitted by antiquity. Erasmus, who is the 
master and model of this system of compo- 
sition, admirably shows how much had been 
gained by loosening the fetters of a dead 
speech, and acquiring in its stead the na- 
ture, ease, variety, and vivacity of a spoken 
and living tongue. The course of circum- 
stances, however, determined that this lan- 
guage should not subsist, or at least flourish, 
for much more than a century. It was as- 
sailed on one side by the purely classical, 
whom Erasmus, in derision, calls '•' Cicero- 
nian s ;" and when it was sufficiently emas- 
culated by dread of their censure, it was 
finally overwhelmed by the rise of a national 
literature in every European language. 

More exemplified the abundance and flexi- 
bility of the Erasmian Latinity in Utopia, 
with which this short view of all his writings, 
except those of controversy, may be fitly con- 
cluded. The idea of the work had been sug- 
gested by some of the dialogues of Plato, 
who speaks of vast territories, formerly culti- 
vated and peopled, but afterwards, by some 
convulsion of nature, covered by the Atlantic 
Ocean. These Egyptian traditions, or le- 
gends, harmonised admirably with that dis- 
covery of a new continent by Columbus, 
which had roused the admiration of Europe 
about twenty years before the composition 
of Utopia. This was the name of an island 
feigned to have been discovered by a sup- 
posed companion of Amerigo Vespucci, who 
is made to tell the wondrous tale of its con- 
dition to More, at Antwerp, in 1514 : and in 
it was the seat of the Platonic conception of 
an imaginary commonwealth. All the names 
which he invented for men or places* were 

*The following specimen of Utopian ety- 
mologies may amuse some readers : — 
Utopia - - outotci; - nowhere. 
Aeliorians - d.-%apo; - of no country 
Ademians - - d-SHpo; - of no people. 

("The in- 
Anyder (ariver) u-Cieep - waterless. | visible 
Amaurot (a city) d-^^sc dark, 



Hythloday - Sxim-udh: 



city is 
•< on the 
a learner of river 
trifles, &c. I water- 
( less. 

Some are intentionally unmeaning, and oth- 
ers are taken from little known language in 



intimations of their being unreal, and were, 
perhaps, by treating with raillery his own 
notions, intended to silence gainsayers. The 
first book, which is preliminary, is naturally 
and ingeniously opened by a conversation, 
in which Raphael Hythloday, the Utopian 
traveller, describes his visit to England ; 
where, as much as in other countries, he 
found all proposals for improvement encoun- 
tered by the remark, that, — "Such things 
pleased our ancestors, and it were well for 
us if we could but match them; as if it 
were a great mischief that any should be 
found wiser than his ancestors." "I met," 
he goes on to say, " these proud, morose, and 
absurd judgments, particularly once when 
dining with Cardinal Morton at London." 
'•'There happened to be at table an English 
lawyer, who run out into high commenda- 
tion of the severe execution of justice upon 
thieves, who were then hanged so fast that 
there were sometimes twenty hanging "Upon 
one gibbet, and added, 'that he could not 
wonder enough how it came to pass that 
there were .so many thieves left robbing in 
all places.'" Raphael answered, "that it 
was because the punishment of death was 
neither just in itself, nor good for the public ; 
for as the severity was too great, so the rem- 
edy was not effectual. You, as well as other 
nations, like bad schoolmasters, chastise their 
scholars because they have not the skill to 
teach them." Raphael afterwards more spe- 
cially ascribed the gangs of banditti who, 
after the suppression of Perkin Warbeck's 
Cornish revolt, infested England, to two 
causes; of which the first was the frequent 
disbanding of the idle and armed retainers 
of the nobles, who, when from necessity let 
loose from their masters, were too proud for 
industry, and had no resource but rapine; 
and the second was the conversion of much 
corn field into pasture for sheep, because 
the latter had become more profitable, — by 
which base motives many landholders were 
tempted to expel their tenants and destroy 
the food of man. Raphael suggested the 
substitution of hard labour for death; for 
which he quoted the example of the Ro- 
mans, and of an imaginary community in 
Persia. "The lawyer answered, 'that it 
could never be so settled in England, with- 
out endangering the whole nation by it :' he 
shook his head, and made some grimaces, 
and then held his peace, and all the com- 
pany seemed to be of his mind. But the 
cardinal said, ' It is not easy to say whether 
this plan would succeed or not, since no 
trial has been made of it: but it might 
be tried on thieves condemned to death, 
and adopted if found to answer ; and vaga- 
bonds might be treated in the same way.' 
When the cardinal had said this, they 
all fell to commend the motion, though 

order to perplex pedants. Joseph Scaliger 
represents Utopia as a word not formed ac- 
cording to the analogy which regulates the 
formation of Greek words. 



LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 



53 



they had despised it when it came from me. 
They more particularly commended that 
concerning the vagabonds, because it had 
been added by him." * 

From some parts of the above extracts it 
is apparent that More, instead of having an- 
ticipated the economical doctrines of Adam 
Smith, as some modern writers have fancied, 
was thoroughly imbued with the prejudices 
of his contemporaries against the inclosure 
of commons, and the extent-ion of pasture. 
It is, however, observable, that he is per- 
fectly consistent with himself, and follows 
his principles through all their legitimate 
consequences, though they may end in doc- 
trines of very startling sound. Considering 
separate property as always productive of 
unequal distribution of the fruits of labour, 
and regarding that inequality of fortune as 
the source of bodily suffering to those who 
labour, and of mental depravation to those 
who are not compelled to toil for subsistence, 
Hylhloday is made to say. that, "as long as 
there is any property, and while money is 
the standard of all other things, he cannot 
expect that a nation can be governed either 
justly or happily. "t More himself objects 
to Hythloday : " It seems to me that men 
cannot live conveniently where all things 
are common. How can there be any plenty 
where every man will excuse himself from 
labouring 1 for as the hope of gain does not 
excite him, so the confidence that he has in 
other men's industry may make him slothful. 
And if people come to be pinched with want, 
and yet cannot dispose of any thing as their 
own, what can follow but perpetual sedition 
and bloodshed : especially when the reverence 
and authority due to magistrates fall to the 
ground ; for I cannot imagine how they can be 
kept amonij those that are in all things equal 
to one another." These remarks do in reality 
contain the germs of unanswerable objections 
to all those projects of a community of goods, 
which suppose the moral character of the 
majority of mankind to continue, at the mo- 
ment of their adoption, such as it has been 
heretofore in the most favourable instances. 
If, indeed, it be proposed only on the suppo- 
sition, that by the influence of laws, or by 
the agency of any other cause, mankind in 
general are rendered more honest, more be- 
nevolent, more disinterested than they have 
hitherto been, it is evident that they will, in 
the same proportion, approach to a practice 
more near the principle of an equality and a 
community of all advantages. The hints of 
an answer to Plato, thrown out by More, are 
so decisive, that it is not easy to see how he 
left this speck on his romance, unless we 
may be allowed to suspect that the specula- 
tion was in part suggested as a convenient 
cover for that biting satire on the sordid and 
rapacious government of Henry VII., which 

*6urnet's translation, p. 13, et seq. 

t Burnet's translation, p. 57. Happening to 
write where I have no access to the original, I use 
Burnet's translation. There can be no doubt 
of Burnet's learning or fidelity. 



occupies a considerable portion of Hythlo- 
day's first discourse. It may also be supposed 
that More, not anxious to save visionary re- 
formers from a few light blows in an attack 
aimed at corrupt and tyrannical statesmen, 
thinks it suitable to his imaginary personage, 
and conducive to the liveliness of his fiction, 
to represent the traveller in Utopia as touched 
by one of the most alluring and delusive of 
political chimeras. 

In Utopia, farm-houses were built over the 
whole country, to which inhabitants were 
sent in rotation from the fifty-four cities. 
Every family had forty men and women, 
besides two slaves; a master and mistress 
preside over every family ; and over thirty 
families a magistrate. Every year twenty 
of the family return to town, being two years 
in the country; so that all acquire some 
knowledge of agriculture, and the land is- 
never left in the hands of persons quite 
unacquainted with country labours. When 
they want any thing in the country which it 
doth not produce, they fetch it frbm the city 
without carrying any thing in exchange : the 
magistrates take care to see it given to them . 
The people of the towns carry their commo- 
dities to the market place, where they are 
taken away by those who need them. The 
chief business of the magistrates is to take 
care that no man may live idle, and that 
every one should labour in his trade for six 
hours of every twenty-four; — a portion of 
time, which, according to Hythloday, was 
sufficient for an abundant supply of all the 
necessaries and moderate accommodations 
of the community; and which is not inad- 
equate where all labour, and none apply 
extreme labour to the production of super- 
fluities to gratify a few, — where there are 
no idle priests or idle rich men, — and where 
women of all sorts perform their light allot- 
ment of labour. To women all domestic 
offices which did not degrade or displease 
were assigned. Unhappily, however, the 
iniquitous and unrighteous expedient was 
devised, of releasing the better order of fe- 
males from offensive and noisome occupa- 
tions, by throwing them upon slaves. Their 
citizens were forbidden to be butchers, "be- 
cause they think that pity and good-nature, 
which are among the best of those affections 
that are born within us, are much impaired 
by the butchering of animals;" — a striking 
representation, indeed, of the depraving ef- 
fects of cruelty to animals, but abused for 
the iniquitous and cruel purpose of training 
inferiors to barbarous habits, in order to pre- 
serve for their masters the exclusive benefit 
of a discipline of humanity. Slaves, too, were 
employed in hunting, which was deemed too 
frivolous and barbarous an amusement for 
citizens. " They look upon hunting as one 
of the basest parts of a butcher's business, 
for they account it more decent to kill beasts 
for the sustenance of mankind, than to take 
pleasure in seeing a weak, harmless, and 
fearful hare torn in pieces by a strong, fierce, 
and cruel dog." An excess of population 
e2 



54 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



was remedied by planting colonies ; a defect, 
by the recall of the necessary number of for- 
mer colonists; irregularities of distribution, 
by transferring the superfluous members of 
one township to supply the vacancies in an- 
other. They did not enslave their prisoners. 
nor the children of their own slaves. In those 
maladies where there is no hope of cure or 
alleviation, it was customarj for the Utopian 
priests to advise the patient voluntarily to 
.shorten his useless ami burthensome life by 
opium or some equally easy means. In cases 
of suicide, without permission of the priests 
and the senate, the party is excluded from 
the honours of a decent funeral. They allow 
divorce in eases of adultery, and incorrigible 
perverseness. Slavery is the general punish- 
ment of the highest crime. They have few 
laws, and no lawyers. "Utopus, the founder 
of the state, made a law that every man 
might be of what religion he pleased, and 
might endeavour to draw others to it by force 
of argument and by amicable and modest 
ways; but those who used reproaches or 
violence in their attempts were to be con- 
demned to banishment or slavery." The 
following passage is so remarkable, and has 
hitherto been so little considered in the 
history of toleration, that I shall insert it at 
length: — "This law was made by Utopus, 
not only for preserving the public peace, 
which, he said, suffered much by daily con- 
tentions and irreconcilable heat in these 
matters, but because he thought the interest 
of religion itself required it. As for those 
who so far depart from the dignity of human 
nature as to think that our souls died with 
our bodies, or that the world was governed 
by chance without a wise and over-ruling 
Providence, the Utopians never raise them 
to honours or offices, nor employ them in any 
public trust, but despise them as men of base 
and sordid minds ; yet they do not punish 
such men, because they lay it down as a 
ground, that a man cannot make himself 
believe any thing he pleases : nor do they 
drive any to dissemble their thoughts; so 
that men are not templed to lie or disguise 
their opinions among them, which, being a 
sort of fraud, is abhorred by the Utopians:" 
— a beautiful and conclusive reason, which, 
when it was used for the first time, as it 
probably was in Utopia, must have been 
drawn from so deep a sense of the value of 
sincerity as of itself to prove that he who 
thus employed it was sincere. "These un- 
believers are not allowed to argue before the 
common people ; but they are suffered and 
even encouraged to dispute in private with 
their priests and other grave men, being 
confident that they will be cured of these 
mad opinions by having reason laid before 
them." 

It may be doubted whether some extrava- 
gancies in other parts of Utopia were not in- 
troduced to cover such passages as the above, 
by enabling the writer to call the whole a 
mere sport of wit, and thus exempt him from 
ihe perilous responsibility of having main- 



tained such doctrines seriously. In other 
cases he seems diffidently to propose opinions 
to which he was in some measure inclined, 
but in the course of his statement to have 
warmed himself into an indignation against 
the vices and corruptions of Europe, which 
vents itself in eloquent invectives not un- 
worthy of Gulliver. He makes Hythloday 
at last declare, — "As I hope for mercy, I can 
have no other notion of all the other govern- 
ments that I see or know, but that they are 
a conspiracy of the richer sort, who, on pre- 
tence of managing the public, do only pursue 
their private ends.'" The true notion of Uto- 
pia is, however, that it intimates a variety of 
doctrines, and exhibits a multiplicity of pro- 
jects, which the writer regards with almost 
every possible degree of approbation and 
shade of assent ; from the frontiers of serious 
and entire belief, through gradations of de- 
scending plausibility, where the lowest are 
scarcely more than the exercises of inge- 
nuity, and to which some wild paradoxes are 
appended, either as a vehicle, or as an easy 
means (if necessary) of disavowing the se- 
rious intention of the whole of this Platonic 
fiction. 

It must be owned, that though one class 
of More's successors was more susceptible 
of judicious admiration of the beauties of 
Plato and Cicero than his less perfectly form- 
ed taste could be, and though another divi- 
sion of them had acquired a knowledge of 
the words of the Greek language, and per- 
ception of their force and distinctions, for the 
attainment of which More came too early 
into the world, yet none would have been 
so heartily welcomed by the masters of the 
Lyceum and the Academy, as qualified to 
take a part in the discussion of those grave 
and lofty themes which were freely agitated 
in these early nurseries of human reason. 

The date of the publication of Utopia 
would mark, probably, also the happiest pe- 
riod of its author's life. He had now acquired 
an income equivalent to four or five thousand 
pounds sterling of our present money, by his 
own independent industry and well-earned 
character. He had leisure for the cultivation 
of literature, for correspondence with his 
friend Erasmus, for keeping up an intercourse 
with European men of letters, who had al- 
ready placed him in their first class, and for 
the composition of works, from which, un- 
aware of the rapid changes which were to 
ensue, he probably promised himself more 
fame, or at least more popularity, than they 
have procured for him. His affections and 
his temper continued to insure the happiness 
of his home, even when his son -with a wife, 
three daughters with their husbands, and 
a proportionable number of grandchildren, 
dwelt under his patriarchal roof. 

At the same period, the general progress 
of European literature, and the cheerful pros- 
pects of improved education and diffused 
knowledge, had filled the minds of More and 
Erasmus with delight. The expectation of 
an age of pacific improvement seems to have 



LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 



prevailed among studious men in the twenty 
years which elapsed between the migration 
of classical learning across the Alps, and the 
rise of the religious dissensions stirred up by 
the preaching of Luther. " I foresee," says 
Bishop Tunstall, writing to Erasmus, "that 
our posterity will rival the ancients in every 
sort of study ; and if they be not ungrateful, 
they will pay the greatest thanks to those 
who have revived these studies. Go on, and 
deserve well of posterity, who will never suf- 
fer the name of Erasmus to perish."* Eras- 
mus, himself, two years after, expresses the 
same hopes, which, with unwonted courtesy, 
he chooses to found on the literary character 
of the conversation in the palace of Henry 
VIII.: — '-'The world is recovering the use 
of its senses, like one awakened from the 
deepest sleep ; and yet there are some who 
cling to their old ignorance with their hands 
and feet, and will not suffer themselves to 
be torn from it."t To Wolsey, he speaks in 
still more sanguine language, mixed with the 
like personal compliment: — :i Isee another 
golden age arising, if other rulers be animat- 
ed by your spirit. Nor will posterity be un- 
grateful. This new felicity, obtained for the 
world by you, will be commemorated in im- 
mortal monuments by Grecian and Roman 
eloquence."! Though the judgment of pos- 
terity in favour of kings and cardinals is thus 
confidently foretold, the writers do not the 
less betray their hope of a better age, which 
will bestow the highest honours on the pro- 
moters of knowledge. A better age was, in 
truth, to come ; but the time and circum- 
stances of its appearance did not correspond 
to their sanguine hopes. An age of iron was 
to precede, in which the turbulence of refor- 
mation and the obstinacy of establishment 
were to meet in long and bloody contest. 

When the storm seemed ready to break 
out, Erasmus thought it his duty to incur the 
obloquy which always attends mediatorial 
counsels. "You know the character of the 
Germans, who are more easily led than 
driven. Great danger may arise, if the na- 
tive ferocity of that people be exasperated 
by untimely severities. We see the perti- 
nacity of Bohemia and the neighbouring pro- 
vinces. A bloody policy has been tried with- 
out success. Other remedies must be em- 
ployed. The hatred of Rome is fixed in the 
minds of many nations, chiefly from the ru- 
mours believed of the dissolute manners of 
that city, and from the immoralities of 
the representatives of the supreme pontiff 
abroad." The uncharitableness, the turbu- 
lence, the hatred, the bloodshed, which fol- 
lowed the preaching of Luther, closed the 
bright visions of the two illustrious friends, 
who agreed in an ardent love of peace, though 
not without a difference in the shades and 



* Erasmi Opera, vol. iii. p. 267. 

t Ibid. p. 321. 

t Ibid. p. 591. To this theory neither of the 
parties about to contend could have assented ; but 
it is not on that account the less likely to be in a 
great measure true. 



modifications of their pacific temper, arising 
from some dissimilarity of original character. 
The tender heart of More clung more strong- 
ly to the religion of his youth; while Eras- 
mus more anxiously apprehended the dis- 
turbance of his tastes and pursuits. The 
last betrays in some of his writings a tem- 
per, which might lead us to doubt, whether 
he considered the portion of truth which was 
within reach of his friend as equivalent to 
the evils attendant on the search. 

The public life of More may be said to 
have begun in the summer of 1514,* with a 
mission to Bruges, in which Tunstall, then 
Master of the Rolls, and afterwards Bishop 
of Durham, was his colleague, and of which 
the object was to settle some particulars re- 
lating to the commercial intercourse of Eng- 
land with the Netherlands. He was consoled 
for a detention, unexpectedly long, by the 
company of Tunstall, whom he describesf 
as one not only fraught with all learning, and 
severe in his life and morals, but inferior to 
no man as a delightful companion. On this 
mission he became acquainted with several 
of the friends of Erasmus in Flanders, where 
he evidently saw a progress in the accom- 
modations and ornaments of life, to which he 
had been hitherto a stranger. With Peter 
Giles of Antwerp, to whom he intrusted the 
publication of Utopia by a prefatory dedica- 
tion, he continued to be closely connected 
during the lives of both. In the year follow- 
ing, he was again sent to the Netherlands on 
a like mission ; the intricate relations of traf- 
fic between the two countries having given 
rise to a succession of disputes, in which the 
determination of one case generally produced 
new complaints. 

In the beginning of 1516 More was made 
a privy-councillor; and from that time may 
be dated the final surrender of his own 
tastes for domestic life, and his predilections 
for studious leisure, to the flattering impor- 
tunities of Henry VIII. " He had resolved," 
says Erasmus, "to be content with his pri- 
vate station; but having gone on more than 
one mission abroad, the King, not discour- 
aged by the unusual refusal of a pension, did 
not rest till he had drawn More into the 
palace. For why should I not say l drawn, 1 
since no man ever laboured with more in- 
dustry for admission to a court, than More to 
avoid it ?• The King would scarcely ever 
suffer the philosopher to quit him. For if 
serious affairs were to be considered, who 
could give more prudent counsel? or if the 
King's mind was to be relaxed by cheerful 
conversation, where could there be a more 
facetious companion ?"t Roper, who was 
an eye-witness of these circumstances, re- 
lates them with an agreeable simplicity. 
"So from time to time was he by the King 
advanced, continuing in his singular favour 
and trusty service for twenty years. A good 

* Records of the Common Council of London. 
t In a letter to Erasmus, 30th April, 1516. 
t Erasmus, Op. vol. iii. p. 476. 



56 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



part thereof used the King, upon holidays, 
when he had done his own devotion, to send 
for him ; and there, sometimes in matters of 
astronomy, geometry, divinity, and such other 
faculties, and sometimes 'on his worldly 
affairs, to converse with him. And other 
whiles in the night would he have him up 
into the leads, there to consider with him 
the diversities, courses, motions, and opera- 
tions of the stars and planets. And because 
he was of a pleasant disposition, it pleased 
the King and Queen, after the council had 
supped at the time of their own (i. e. the 
royal) supper, to call for him to be merry 
with them." What Roper adds could not 
have been discovered by a less near ob- 
server, and would scarcely be credited upon 
less authority: " When them he perceived 
so much in his talk to delight, that he could 
not once in a month get leave to go home to 
his wife and children (whose company he 
most desired), he, much misliking this re- 
straint on his liberty, began thereupon some- 
what to dissemble his nature, and so by 
little and little from his former mirth to dis- 
use himself, that he was of them from 
thenceforth, at such seasons, no more so 
ordinarily sent for."* To his retirement at 
Chelsea, however, the King followed him. 
"He used of a particular love to come of a 
sudden to Chelsea, and leaning on his shoul- 
der, to talk with him of secret counsel in his 
garden, yea, and to dine with him upon no 
inviting."! The taste for More's conversa- 
tion, and the eagerness for his company thus 
displayed, would be creditable to the King. 
if his behaviour in after time had not con- 
verted them into the strongest proofs of utter 
depravity. Even in Henry's favour there was 
somewhat tyrannical ; and his very friend- 
ship was dictatorial and self-willed. It was 
reserved for him afterwards to exhibit the 
singular, and perhaps solitary, example of 
a man unsoftened by the recollection of a 
communion of counsels, of studies, of amuse- 
ments, of social pleasures with such a com- 
panion. In the moments of Henry's par- 
tiality, the sagacity of More was not so ut- 
terly blinded by his good-nature, that he did 
not in some degree penetrate into the true 
character of these caresses from a beast of 
prey. ''When I saw the King," says his 
son-in-law, " walking with him for an hour, 
holding his arm about his neck, I rejoiced, 
and said to Sir Thomas, how happy he was 
whom the King had so familiarly entertained, 
as I had never seen him do to any one before, 
except Cardinal Wolsey. ' I thank our Lord, 
son,' said he, 'I find his grace my very good 
lord indeed, and I believe he doth as singu- 
larly favour me as any other subject within 
this realm : howbeit, son Roper, I may tell 
thee, I have no cause to be proud thereof; 
for if my head would win him a castle in 
France, when there was war between us, it 
should not fail to go.' "J 

* Roper, p. 12. t More, p. 49. 

X Roper, pp. 21, 22, Compare this insight into 



An edition of Utopia had been printed in- 
correctly, perhaps clandestinely, at Paris; 
but, in 1518, Erasmus' friend and printer, 
Froben, brought out a correct one at Basle, 
the publication of which had been retarded 
by the expectation of a preface from Budasus, 
the restorer of Greek learning in France, and 
probably the most critical scholar in that 
province of literature on the north of the 
Alps. The book was received with loud ap- 
plause by the scholars of France and Ger- 
many. Erasmus in confidence observed to 
an intimate friend, that the second book 
having been written before the first, had oc- 
casioned some disorder and inequality of 
style : but he particularly praised its novelty 
and originality, and its keen satire on the 
vices and absurdities of Europe. 

So important was the office of under-sheriff 
then held to be, that More did not resign it 
till the 23d of July, 1519,* though he had in 
the intermediate time served the public in 
stations of trust and honour. In 1521 he 
was knighted, and raised to the office of 
treasurer of the exchequer,! a station in some 
respects the same with that of chancellor of 
the exchequer, who at present is on his ap- 
pointment designated by the additional name 
of under-treasurer. It is a minute but some- 
what remarkable, stroke in the picture of 
manners, that the honour of knighthood 
should be spoken of by Erasmus, if not 
as of superior dignity to so important an 
office, at least as observably adding to its 
consequence. 

From 1517 to 1522, More was employed 
at various times at Bruges, in missions like 
his first to the Flemish government, or at 
Calais in watching and conciliating Francis 
I., with whom Henry and Wolsey long 
thought it convenient to keep up friendly 
appearances. To trace the date of More's 
reluctant journeys in the course of the unin- 
teresting attempts of politicians on both sides 
to gain or dupe each other, would be vain, 
without some outline of the negotiations in 
which he was employed, and repulsive to 
most readers, even if the inquiry promised 
a better chance of a successful result. — 
Wolsey appears to have occasionally ap- 



Henry's character with a declaration post of an 
opposite nature, though borrowed also from cas- 
tles and towns, made by Charles V. when he 
hoard of More's murder. 

* Records of the city of London. 

t Est quod Moro gratuleris ; nam Rex huiic nee 
ambientem vec flag it ant em rnunere magnifico ho- 
nestavit. addito salario nequaquam ppnitendo: est 
enim principi suo a thesauris. . . Nee hoc con- 
tentus, equitis aurati dignitatem adjecit. — Eras- 
mus, Op. vol. iii. p. 378. 

" Then died Master Weston, treasurer of the 
exchequer, whose office the King, of his own ac- 
cord, vit/iout any asking, freely gave unto Sir 
Thomas More."— Roper, 13. ' 

The minute verbal coincidences which often 
occur between Erasmus and Roper, cannot be 
explained otherwise than by the probable suppo- 
sition, that copies or originals of the correspond- 
ence between More and Erasmus were preserved 
by Roper after the death of the former. 



LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 



57 



pointed commissioners to conduct his own 
affairs, as well as those of his master, at 
Calais. At this place they could receive in- 
structions from London with the greatest 
rapidity, and it was easy to manage negotia- 
tions, and to shift them speedily, with Brus- 
sels and Paris; with the additional advan- 
tage, that it might be somewhat easier to 
conceal from each one in turn of those jealous 
courts the secret dealings of his employers 
with the other, than if the despatches had 
been sent directly from London to the place 
of their destination. Of this commission 
More was once at least an unwilling mem- 
ber. Erasmus, in a letter to Peter Giles on 
the 15th of November, 1518, says, " More is 
still at Calais, of which he is heartily tired. 
He lives with great expense, and is engaged 
in business most odious to him. Such are 
the rewards reserved by kings for their fa- 
vourites."* Two years afterwards, More 
writes more bitterly to Erasmus, of his own 
residence and occupations. " I approve your 
determination never to be involved in the 
busy trifling of princes ; from which, as you 
love me, you must wish that I were extri- 
cated. You cannot imagine how painfull}' 
I feel myself plunged in them, for nothing 
can be more odious to me than this legation. 
I am here banished to a petty sea-port, of 
which the air and the earth are equally dis- 
agreeable to me. Abhorrent as I am by na- 
ture from strife, even when it is profitable, 
as at home, you may judge how wearisome 
it is here where it is attended by loss."t — 
On one of his missions, — that of the summer 
of 1519 — More had harboured hopes of being 
consoled by seeing Erasmus at Calais, for all 
the tiresome pageantry, selfish scuffles, and 
paltry frauds, which he was to witness at 
the congress of kings,! where he could find 
little to alter those splenetic views of courts, 
wdiich his disappointed benevolence breathed 
in Utopia. Wolsey twice visited Calais du- 
ring the residence of More, who appears to 
have then had a weight in council, and a 
place in the royal favour, second only to 
those of the cardinal. 

In 1523. § a parliament was held in the 
middle of April, at Westminster, in which 
More took a part so honourable to his me- 
mory, that though it has been already men- 
tioned when touching on his eloquence, it 
cannot be so shortly passed over here, be- 
cause it was one of those signal acts of his 
life which bears on it the stamp of his cha- 
racter. Sir John, his father, in spite of very 
advanced age, had been named at the be- 
ginning of this parliament one of " the triers 
of petitions from Gascony," — an office of 
which the duties had become nominal, but 
which still retained its ancient dignity ; while 
of the House of Commons. Sir Thomas him- 



* Op. vol. ii. p. 357. 

t Op. vol. iii. p. 589. 

t Ibid. From the dates of the following letters 
of Erasmus, it appears that the hopes of More 
were disappointed. 

$ 14 Henry VIII. 



self was chosen to be the speaker. He ex- 
cused himself, as usual, on the ground of 
alleged disability; but his excuse was justly 
pronounced to be inadmissible. The Jour- 
nals of Parliament are lost, or at least have 
not been printed ; and the Rolls exhibit only 
a short account of what occurred, which is 
necessarily an unsatisfactory substitute for 
the deficient Journals. But as the matter 
personally concerns Sir Thomas More, and 
as the account of it given by his son-in-law, 
then an inmate in his house, agrees with the 
abridgment of the Rolls, as far as the latter 
goes, it has been thought proper in this place 
to insert the very words of Roper's narrative. 
It may be reasonably conjectured that the 
speeches of More were copied from his 
manuscript by his pious son-in-law."* — 
" Sith I perceive, most redoubted sovereign, 
that it standeth not with your pleasure to 
reform this election, and cause it to be 
changed, but have, by the mouth of the most 
reverend father in God the legate, your high- 
ness's chancellor, thereunto given your most 
royal assent, and have of your benignity de- 
termined far above that I may bear for this 
office to repute me meet, rather than that 
you should seem to impute unto your com- 
mons that they had unmeetly chosen, I am 
ready obediently to conform myself to the 
accomplishment of your highness'S pleasure 
and commandment. In most humble wise 
I beseech your majesty, that I may make to 
you two lowly petitions ; — the one privately 
concerning myself, the other the whole as- 
sembly of your commons' house. For my- 
self, most gracious sovereign, that if it mishap 
me in any thing hereafter, that is, on the be- 
half of your commons in your high presence 
to be declared, to mistake my message, and 
in lack of good utterance by my mishearsal 
to prevent or impair their prudent instruc- 
tions, that it may then like your most noble 
majesty to give me leave to repair again 
unto the commons' house, and to confer with 
them and take their advice what things I 
shall on their behalf utter and speak before 
your royal grace. 

"Mine other humble request, most excel- 
lent prince, is this: forasmuch as there be 
of your commons here by your high com- 
mandment assembled for your parliament, a 
great number of which are after the accus- 
tomed manner appointed in the commons' 
house to heal and advise of the common 
affairs among themselves apart; and albeit, 
most dear liege lord, that according to your 
most prudent advice, by your honourable 
writs every where declared, there hath been 

* This conjecture is almost raised above that 
name by what precedes. "Sir Thomas More 
made an oration, not now extant, to the king's 
highness, for his discharge from the speakership, 
wnereunto when the king would not consent, the 
speaker spoke to his grace in the form following." 
— It cannot be doubted, without injustice to the 
honest and amiable biographer, that he would 
have his readers to understand that the original of 
the speeches, which actually follow, were extan* 
in his hands. 



58 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



as due diligence used in sending up to your 
highness's court of parliament the most dis- 
creet persons out of every quarter that men 
could esteem meet thereunto; whereby it is 
not to be doubted but that there is a very 
substantial assembly of right wise, meet, 
and politique persons: yet, most victorious 
prince, sith among so many wise men, neither 
is every man wise alike, nor among so many 
alike well witted, every man well spoken; 
and it often happeth that as much folly is 
uttered with painted polish speech, so many 
boisterous and rude in language give right 
substantial counsel; and sith also in matters 
of great importance, the mind is often so oc- 
cupied in the matter, that a man rather stu- 
dieth what to say than how; by reason 
whereof the wisest man and best spoken in 
a whole country fortuneth, when his mind is 
fervent in the matter, somewhat to speak in 
such wise as he would afterwards wish to 
have been uttered otherwise, and yet no 
worse will had when he spake it than he had 
when he would so gladly change it; there- 
fore, most gracious sovereign, considering 
that in your high court of parliament is 
nothing treated but matter of weight and 
importance concerning your realm, and your 
own royal estate, it could not fail to put to 
silence from the giving of their advice and 
counsel many of your discreet commons, to 
the great hindrance of your common affairs, 
unless every one of your commons were ut- 
terly discharged from all doubt and fear how 
any thing that it should happen them to 
speak, should happen of your highness to be 
taken. And in this point, though your well- 
known and proved benignity putteth every 
man in good hope ; yet such is the weight 
of the matter, such is the reverend dread 
that, the timorous hearts of your natural sub- 
jects conceive towards your highness, our 
most redoubted king and undoubted sove- 
reign, that they cannot in this point find 
themselves satisfied, except your gracious 
bounty therein declared put away the scruple 
of their timorous minds, and put them out 
of doubt. It may therefore like your most 
abundant grace to give to all your commons 
here assembled your most gracious licence 
and pardon freely, without doubt of your 
dreadful displeasure, every man to discharge 
his conscience, and boldly in every thing in- 
cident among us to declare his advice ; and 
whatsoever happeneth any man to say, that 
it may like your noble majesty, of your in- 
estimable goodness, to take all in good part, 
interpreting every man's words, how nncun- 
ningly soever they may be couched, to pro- 
ceed yet of good zeal towards the profit of 
your realm, and honour of your royal person ; 
and the prosperous estate and preservation 
whereof, most excellent sovereign, is the 
thing which we all, your majesty's humble 
loving subjects, according to the most bound- 
en duty of our natural allegiance, most highly 
desire and pray for." 

This speech, the substance of which is in 
the Rolls denominated "the protest," is con- 



formable to former usage, and the model of 
speeches made since that time in the like 
circumstances. What follows is more sin- 
gular, and not easily reconciled with the in- 
timate connection then subsisting between 
the speaker and the government, especially 
with the cardinal: — 

" At this parliament Cardinal Wolsey found 
himself much aggrieved with the burgesses 
thereof; for that nothing was so soon done or 
spoken therein, but that it was immediately 
blown abroad in every alehouse. It fortuned 
at that parliament a very great subsidy to 
be demanded, which the cardinal, fearing 
would not pass the commons' house, deter- 
mined, for the furtherance thereof, to be 
there present himself. Before where coming, 
after long debating there, whether it was 
better but with a few of his lords, as the 
most opinion of the house was, or with his 
whole train royally to receive him ; ' Mas- 
ters,' quoth sir Thomas More, 'forasmuch as 
my lord cardinal lately, ye wot well, laid to 
our charge the lightness of our tongues for 
things uttered out of this house, it shall not 
in my mind be amiss to receive him with all 
his pomp, w r ith his maces, his pillars, his 
poll-axes, his hat, and great seal too ; to the 
intent, that if he find the like fault with us 
hereafter, we may be the bolder from our- 
selves to lay the blame on those whom his 
grace bringeth here with him.' Whereunto 
the house wholly agreeing, he was received 
accordingly. Where after he had by a solemn 
oration, by many reasons, proved how neces- 
sary it was the demand then moved to be 
granted, and farther showed that less would 
not serve to maintain the prince's purpose ; 
he seeing the company sitting still silent, and 
thereunto nothing answering, and, contrary 
to his expectation, showing in themselves 
towards his request no towardness of incli- 
nation, said to them, 'Masters, you have 
many wise and learned men amongst you, 
and sith I am from the king's own person 
sent hitherto unto you, to the preservation of 
yourselves and of all the realm, I think it 
meet you give me some reasonable answer.' 
Whereat every man holding his peace, then 
began to speak to one Master Mamey, after- 
wards lord Mamey j 'How say you,' quoth 
he, 'Master Mamey?' who making him no 
answer neither, he severally asked the same 
question of divers others, accounted the 
wisest of the company ; to whom, when 
none of them all would give so much as one 
word, being agreed before, as the custom 
was. to give answer by their speaker ; ' Mas- 
ters.' quoth the cardinal, ' unless it be the 
manner of your house, as of likelihood it is, 
by the mouth of your speaker, whom you 
have chosen for trusty and wise (as indeed 
he is), in such cases to utter your minds, 
here is, without doubt, a marvellously obsti- 
nate silence :' and thereupon he required 
answer of Mr. Speaker; who first reverently, 
on his knees, excusing the silence of the 
house, abashed at the presence of so noble a 
personage, able to amaze the wisest and best 



LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 



59 



learned in a realm, and then, by many proba- 
ble arguments, proving that for them to make 
answer was neither expedient nor agreeable 
with the ancient liberty of the house, in con- 
clusion for himself, showed, that though they 
had all with their voices trusted him, yet 
except every one of them could put into his 
own head their several wits, he alone in so 
weighty a matter was unmeet to make his 
grace answer. Whereupon the cardinal, 
displeased with Sir Thomas More, that had 
not in this parliament in all things satisfied 
his desire, suddenly arose and departed." * 

This passage deserves attention as a speci- 
men of the mild independence and quiet 
steadiness of More's character, and also as a 
proof how he perceived the strength which 
the commons had gained by the power of 
the purse, which was daily and silently 
growing, and which could be disturbed only 
by such an unseasonable show of an imma- 
ture authority as might too soon have roused 
the crown to resistance. It is one among 
many instances of the progress of the influ- 
ence of parliaments in the midst of their 
apparently indiscriminate submission, and it 
affords a pregnant proof that we must not 
estimate the spirit of our forefathers by the 
humility of their demeanour. 

The reader will observe how nearly the 
example of More was followed by a succeed- 
ing speaker, comparatively of no distinction, 
but in circumstances far more memorable, in 
the answer of Lenthall to Charles I., when 
that unfortunate prince came to the House 
of Commons to arrest the five members of 
that assembly, who had incurred his dis- 
pleasure. 

There is another point from which these 
early reports of parliamentary speeches may 
be viewed, and from which it is curious to 
■consider them. They belong to that critical 
moment in the history of our language when 
it was forming a prose style, — a written dic- 
tion adapted to grave and important occa- 
sions. In the passage just quoted, there are 
about twenty words and phrases (some of 
them, it is true, used more than once) which 
would not now be employed. Some of them 
are shades, such as "lowly," where we say 
"humble;" "company," for "a house of 
parliament;" "simpleness," for "simpli- 
city," with a deeper tinge of folly than the 
single word now ever has; "right," then 
used as a general sign of the superlative, 
where we say "very," or "most;" "reve- 
rend," for "reverent," or "reverential." 
" If it mishap me," if it should so hap- 
pen, " to mishap in me," "it often hap- 
peth," are instances of the employment 
of the verb "hap" for happen, or of a 
conjugation of the former, which has fallen 
into irrecoverable disuse. A phrase was 
then so frequent as to become, indeed, the 
established mode of commencing an address 
to a superior, in which the old usage was, 
" It may like," or " It may please your Ma- 

* Roper, pp. 13—21. 



jesty," where modern language absolutely 
requires us to say, "May it please," by a 
slight inversion of the words retained, but 
with the exclusion of the word "like" in that 
combination. "Let" is used for "hinder," 
as is still the case in some public forms, and 
in the excellent version of the Scriptures. 
" Well wilted" is a happy phrase lost to the 
language except on familiar occasions with a 
smile, or by a master in the art of combining 
words. Perhaps l ' enable me," for "give 
me by your countenance the ability which 
I have not," is the only phrase which savours 
of awkwardness or of harsh effect in the ex- 
cellent speaker. The whole passage is a 
remarkable example of the almost imper- 
ceptible differences which mark various 
stages in the progress of a language. In 
several of the above instances we see a sort 
of contest for admission into the language 
between two phrases extremely similar, and 
yet a victory which excluded one of them as 
rigidly as if the distinction had been very 
wide. Every case where subsequent usage 
has altered or rejected words and phrases 
must be regarded as a sort of national ver- 
dict, which is necessarily followed by their 
disfranchisement. They have no longer any 
claim on the English language, other than 
that which may be possessed by all alien 
suppliants for naturalization. Such examples 
should warn a writer, desirous to be lastingly 
read, of the danger which attends new 
words, or very new acceptations of those 
which are established, or even of attempts 
to revive those which are altogether super- 
annuated. They show in the clearest light 
that the learned and the vulgar parts of lan- 
guage, being those which are most liable to 
change, are unfit materials for a durable 
style ; and they teach us to look to those 
words which form the far larger portion of 
ancient as well as of modern language, — that 
" well of English undented," which has been 
happily resorted to from More to Cowper, as 
being proved by the unimpeachable evidence 
of that long usage to fit the rest of our speech 
more perfectly, and to flow more easily, 
clearly, and sweetly, in our composition. 

Erasmus tells us that Wolsey rather fear- 
ed than liked More. When the short session 
of parliament was closed, Wolsey, in his gal- 
lery of Whitehall, said to More, " I wish to 
God you had been at Rome, Mr. More, when 
I made you speaker." — "Your Grace not of- 
fended, so would I too, my lord," replied Sir 
Thomas ; " for then should I have seen the 
place I long have desired to visit."* More 
turned the conversation by saying that he 
liked this gallery better than the cardinal's 
at Hampton Court. But the latter secretly 
brooded over his revenge, which he after- 
wards tried to gratify by banishing More, 
under the name of an ambassador to Spain. 
He tried to effect his purpose by magnifying 
the learning and wisdom of More, his pecu- 
liar fitness for a conciliatory adjustment of 



Roper, p. 20. 



60 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



the difficult matters which were at issue be- 
tween the King and his kinsman the Empe- 
ror. The King suggested this proposal to 
More, who, considering the unsuitableness 
of the Spanish climate to his constitution, 
and perhaps suspecting Wolsey of sinister 
purposes, earnestly besought Henry not to 
send his faithful servant to his grave. The 
King, who also suspected Wolsey of being 
actuated by jealousy, answered, " It is not 
our meaning, Mr. More, to do you any hurt ; 
but to do you good we should be glad ; we 
shall therefore employ you otherwise."* 
More could boast that he had never asked 
the King the value of a penny for himself, 
when on the 25th of December, 1525,t the 
King appointed him chancellor of the duchy 
of Lancaster, as successor of Sir Anthony 
Wingfield — an office of dignity and profit, 
which he continued to hold for nearly three 
years. 

In the summer of 1527, Wolsey went on 
his magnificent embassy to France, in which 
More and other officers of state were joined 
with him. On this occasion the main, though 
secret object of Henry was to pave the way 
for a divorce from Queen Catharine, with a 
view to a marriage with Anne Boleyn, a 
young beauty who had been bred at the 
French court, where her father, Sir Thomas 
Boleyn, created Earl of Wiltshire, had been 
repeatedly ambassador. 

On their journey to the coast, Wolsey 
sounded Archbishop Wareham and Bishop 
Fisher on the important secret with which 
he was intrusted. Wareham, an estimable 
and amiable prelate, appears to have inti- 
mated that his opinion was favourable to 
Henry's pursuit of a divorce. I Fisher, bi- 
shop of Rochester, an aged and upright man, 
promised Wolsey that he would do or say 
nothing in the matter, nor in anyway coun- 
sel the Queen, except what stood with Hen- 
ry's pleasure; ic for,"' said he, " though she 
be queen of this realm, yet he acknowledg- 
eth you to be his sovereign lord :"§ as if the 
rank or authority of the parties had any con- 



* More, p. 53. with a small variation. 

t Such is the information which I have received 
from the records in the Tower. The accurate writer 
of the article on More, in the Biographia Britannica, 
is perplexed by finding Sir Thomas More, chancel- 
lor of the duchy, as one of the negotiators of a 
treaty in August, 1526, which seems to the writer 
in the Biographia to bring down the death of Wing- 
field to near that time ; he being on all sides ac- 
knowledged to be More's immediate predecessor. 
But there is no difficulty, unless we needlessly as- 
sume that the negotiation with which Wingfield 
was concerned related to the same treaty which 
More concluded. On the contrary, the first ap- 
pears to have been a treaty with Spain ; the last a 
treaty with France. 

t State Papers, Hen. VIII. vol. i. p. 196. Woi- 
sey's words are, — " He expressly affirmed, that 
however displeasantly the queen took this matter, 
yet the truth and judgment of the law must take 
place. I have instructed him how he shall order 
himself if the queen shall demand his counsel, 
which he promises me to follow." 

$ State Papers, Hen. VIII. vol. i. p. 168. 



cent with the duty of honestly giving coun- 
sel where it is given at all. The overbearing 
deportment of Wolsey probably overawed 
both these good prelates: he understood 
them in the manner most suitable to his pur- 
pose; and, confident that he should by some 
means finally gain them, he probably colour- 
ed very highly their language in his commu- 
nication to Henry, whom he had himself just 
before displeased by unexpected scruples. 

It was generally believed by their contem- 
poraries that More and Fisher had corrected 
the manuscript of Henry's answer to Luther; 
while it is certain that the propensity of the 
King to theological discussions constituted 
one of the links of his intimacy with the 
former. As More's writings against the Lu- 
therans were of great note in his own time, 
and as they were probably those of his works 
on which he exerted the most acuteness, and 
employed most knowledge, it would be wrong 
to omit all mention of them in an estimate 
of his mind, or as proofs of his disposition. 
They contain many anecdotes which throw 
considerable light on our ecclesiastical his- 
tory during the first prosecution of the Pro- 
testants, or, as they were then called, Lu- 
therans, under the old statutes against Lol- 
lards, during the period which extended from 
1520 to 1532; and they do not seem to have 
been enough examined with that view by the 
historians of the Church. 

Legal responsibility, in a well-constituted 
commonwealth, reaches to all the avowed 
advisers of the government, and to all those 
whose concurrence is necessary to the va- 
lidity of its commands : but moral responsi- 
bility is usually or chiefly confined to the 
actual authors of each particular measure. 
It is true, that when a government has at- 
tained a state of more than usual regularity, 
the feelings of mankind become so well 
adapted to it, that men are held to be even 
morally responsible for sanctioning, by a base 
continuance in office, the bad policy which 
may be known not to originate with them- 
selves. These refinements were, however, 
unknown in the reign of Henry VIII. The 
administration was then carried on under the 
personal direction of the monarch, who gene- 
rally admitted one confidential servant only 
into his most secret counsels; and all the 
other ministers, whatever their rank might 
be, commonly confined their attention to the 
business of their own offices, or to the exe- 
cution of special commands intrusted to 
them. This system was probably carried to 
its utmost height under so self-willed a prince 
as Henry, and by so domineering a minister 
as Wolsey. Although there can be no doubt 
that More, as a privy-councillor, attended 
and co-operated at the examination of the 
unfortunate Lutherans, his conduct in that 
respect was regarded by his contemporaries 
as little more than the enforcement of orders 
which he could not lawfully decline to obey. 
The opinion that a minister who disap- 
proves measures which he cannot control is 
bound to resign his office, is of very modem 



LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 



61 



origin, and still not universally entertained, 
especially if fidelity to a party be not called 
in to its aid. In the time of Henry, he was 
not thought even entitled to resign. The 
fact of More's attendance, indeed, appears in 
his controversial writings, especially by his 
answer to Tyndal. It is not equitable to 
treat him as effectively and morally, as well 
as legally, answerable for measures of state, 
till the removal of VVolsey, and the delivery 
of the great seal into his own hands. The 
injustice of considering these transactions in 
any other light appears from the circum- 
stance, that though he was joined with VVol- 
sey in the splendid embassy to France in 
1527. there is no reason to suppose that More 
was intrusted with the secret and main pur- 
pose of the embassy, — that of facilitating a 
divorce and a second marriage. His respon- 
sibility, in its most important and only practi- 
cal part, must be contracted to the short time 
which extends from the 25th of October, 1529, 
when he was appointed chancellor, to the 
16th of May, 1532, when he was removed 
from his office, not much more than two 
years and a half.* Even after confining it 
to these narrow limits, it must be remember- 
ed, that he found the system of persecution 
established, and its machinery in a state of 
activity. The prelates, like most other pre- 
lates in Europe, did their part in convicting 
the Protestants of Lollardy in the spiritual 
courts, which were the competent tribunals 
for trying that offence. Our means of deter- 
mining what executions for Lollardy (if any) 
took place when More had a decisive ascend- 
ant in the royal councils, are very imperfect. 
If it were certain that he was the adviser of 
such executions, it would only follow that he 
executed one part of the criminal law, with- 
out approving it, as succeeding judges have 
certainly done in cases of fraud and theft ; — 
where they no more approved the punish- 
ment of death than the author of Utopia 
might have done in its application to heresy. 
If the progress of civilization be not checked, 
Ave seem not far from the period when such 
capital punishments will appear as little 
consistent with humanity, and indeed with 
justice, as the burning of heretics now ap- 
pears to us. More himself deprecates an 
appeal to his writings and those of his friend 
Erasmus, innocently intended by themselves, 
but abused by incendiaries to inflame the 
fury of the ignorant multitude t "Men," 
says he (alluding evidently to Utopia), " can- 
not almost now speak of such things inso- 
much as in play, but that such evil hearers 
were a great deal the worse." "I would 
not now translate the Moria of Erasmus, — 
even some works that I myself have written 
ere this, into English, albeit there be none 
harm therein." It is evident that the two 
philosophers deeply felt the injustice of citing 
against them, as a proof of inconsistency, 

; ' Records in the Tower. 

t More's answer to Tvndal, part i. p. 128. — 
(Printed by John Rastell, 1532.) 



that they departed from the pleasantries, the 
gay dreams, — at most the fond speculations, 
of their early days, when they saw these 
harmless visions turned into weapons of de- 
struction in the blood-stained hands of the 
boors of Saxony, and of the ferocious fanatics 
of Monster. The virtuous love of peace 
might be more prevalent in More; the Epi- 
curean desire of personal ease predominated 
more in Erasmus : but both were, doubtless 
from commendable or excusable causes, in- 
censed against those odious disciples, who 
now, "with no friendly voice," invoked their 
authority against themselves. 

If, however, we examine the question 
on the grounds of positive testimony, it is 
impossible to appeal to a witness of more 
weight than Erasmus. "It is," said he, 
"a sufficient proof of his clemency, that 
while he was chancellor no man was put to 
death for these pestilent dogmas, while so 
many have suffered capital punishment for 
them in France, in Germany, and in the 
Netherlands."* The only charges against 
him on this subject, which are adverted to 
by himself, relate to minor severities; but 
as these may be marks of more cruelty than 
the infliction of death, let us listen on this 
subject to the words of the merciful and 
righteous man :f "Divers, of them have said 
that of stich as were in my house when I 
was chancellor, I used to examine them 
with torments, causing them to be bound to 
a tree in my garden, and there piteously 
beaten. Except their sure keeping, I never 
did else cause any such thing to be done 
unto any of the heretics in all my life, ex- 
cept only twain : one was a child and a ser- 
vant of mine in mine own house, whom his 
father, ere he came to me, had nursed up in 
such matters, and set him to attend upon 
George Jay. This Jay did teach the child 
his ungracious heresy against the blessed 
sacrament of the altar; which heresy this 
child in my house began to teach another 
child. And upon that point I caused a ser- 
vant of mine to strip him like a child before 
mine household, for amendment of himself 
and ensample of others." " Another was 
one who, after he had fallen into these fran- 
tic heresies, soon fell into plain open frensy: 
albeit that he had been in Bedlam, and after- 
wards by beating and correction gathered his 
remembrance;! being therefore set at lib- 
erty, his old frensies fell again into his head. 
Being informed of his relapse, I caused him 
to be taken by the constables and bounden 
to a tree in the street before the whole town, 
and there striped him till he waxed weary. 
Verily, God be thanked, I hear no harm of 
him now. And of all who ever came in my 
hand for heresy, as help me God, else had 
never any of them any stripe or stroke given 
them, so much as a fillip in the forehead. "§ 



* Op. vol. iii. p. 1811. 
t More's Apology, chap. 36. 
t Such was then the mode of curing insanity 
§ Apology, chap. 36. 



62 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



This statement, so minute, so capable of 
easy confutation, if in any part false, was 
made public after his fall from power, when 
he was surrounded by enemies, and could 
have no friends but the generous. It relates 
circumstances of public notoriety, or at least 
so known to all his own household (from 
which it appears that Protestant servants 
were not excluded), which it would have 
been rather a proof of insanity than of im- 
prudence to have alleged in his defence, if 
they had not been indisputably and confes- 
sedly true. Wherever he touches this sub- 
ject, there is a quietness and a circumstan- 
tiality, which are among the least equivocal 
marks of a man who adheres to the temper 
most favourable to the truth, because he is 
conscious that the truth is favourable to 
him.* Without relying, therefore, on the 
character of More for probity and veracity 
(which it is derogatory to him to employ for 
such a purpose), the evidence of his hu- 
manity having prevailed over his opinion 
decisively outweighs the little positive testi- 
mony produced against him. The charge 
against More rests originally on Fox alone, 
from whom it is copied by Burnet, and with 
considerable hesitation by Strype. But the 
honest martyrologist writes too inaccurately 
to be a weighty witness in this case ; for he 
tells us that Firth was put to death in June 
1533, and yet imputes it to More, who had 
resigned his office a year before. In the 
case of James Baynham, he only says that 
the accused was chained to two posts for 
two nights in More's house, at some unspe- 
cified distance of time before his execution. 

Burnet, in mentioning the extreme tolera- 
tion taught in Utopia, truly observes, that if 
More had died at the time of its publication, 
" he would have been reckoned among those 
who only wanted a fit opportunity of decla- 
ring themselves openly for a reformation." t 
The same sincere and upright writer was too 
zealous for an historian, when he added : — 
"When More was raised to the chief post in 
the ministry, he became a persecutor even 
to blood, and defiled those hands which were 
never polluted with bribes/' In excuse for 
the total silence of the honest bishop re- 
specting the opposite testimony of More him- 
self (of whom Burnet speaks even then with 
reverence), the reader must be reminded 
that the third volume of the History of the 



* There is a remarkable instance of this obser- 
vation in More's Dialogue, book iii. chap, xvi., 
where he tells, with some prolixity, the story of 
Richard Dunn, who was found dead, and hanging 
in the Lollard's Tower. The only part taken by 
More in this affair was his share as a privy coun- 
cillor in the inquiry, whether Dunn hanged him- 
self, or was murdered and then hanged up by the 
Bishop of London's chancellor. The evidence to 
prove that the death could rot be suicide, was as 
absurd as the story of the bishop's chancellor was 
improbable. He was afterwards, however, con- 
vicied by a jury, but pardoned, it should seem 
righily, by the King. 

+ History of the Reformation (Lond. 1820), 
Vol. in. putt i. p. 45. 



Reformation was written in the old age of 
the Bishop of Salisbury, thirty years after 
those more laborious researches, which at- 
tended the composition of the two former vo- 
lumes, and under the influence of those ani- 
mosities against the Roman Catholic Chuich, 
which the conspiracy of Queen Anne's last 
ministers against the Revolution had revived 
with more than their youthful vigour. It 
must be owned that he from the commence- 
ment acquiesced too lightly in the allegations 
of Fox; and it is certain, that if the fact, 
however deplorable, had been better proved, 
yet in that age it would not have warranted 
such asperity of condemnation.* 

The date of the work in which More de- 
nies the charge, and challenges his accusers 
to produce their proofs, would have aroused 
the attention of Burnet if he had read it. 
This book, entitled "The Apology of Sir 
Thomas More," was written in 1533. "after 
he had given over the office of lord chancel- 
lor," and when he was in daily expectation 
of being committed to the Tower. Defence- 
less and obnoxious as he then was, no man 
was hardy enough to dispute his truth. Fox 
was the first who, thirty years afterwards, 
ventured to oppose it in a vague statement, 
which we know to be in some respects inac- 
curate ; and on this slender authority alone 
has rested such an imputation on the ve- 
racity of the most sincere of men. Who- 
ever reads the Apology will perceive, from 
the melancholy ingenuousness with which 
he speaks of the growing unpopularity of his 
religion in the court and country, that he 
could not have hoped to escape exposure, if 
it had been then possible to question his- 
declaration. t 

On the whole, then, More must not only be 
absolved ; but when we consider that his ad- 
ministration occurred during a hot paroxysm 
of persecution, — that intolerance was the 
creed of his age, — that he himself, in his 
days of compliance and ambition, had been 
drawn over to it as a theory,— that he was 
filled with alarm and horror by the excesses 
of the heretical insurgents in Germany, we 
must pronounce him, by his abstinence from 
any practical share in it, to have given 
stronger proofs than any other man, of a re- 
pugnance to that execrable practice, founded 



* The change of opinion in Erasmus, and the 
less remarkable change of More in the same re- 
spect, is somewhat excused by the excesses and' 
disorders which followed the Reformation. "To 
believe," says Bayle, " that the church required 
reformation, and to approve a particular manner 
of reforming it, are two very different things. To 
blame the opponents of reformation, and to dis- 
approve the conduct of the reformers, are two 
things very compatible. A man may then imi- 
tate Erasmus, without being an apostate or a trai- 
tor." — Dictionary, art. Castellan. These are po- 
sitions too reasonable to be practically believed, 
at the time when their adoption would be most 
useful. 

tin the Apology, More states that four-tenths 
of the people were unable to read ; — probably an 
overrated estimate of the number of readers. 



LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 



62 



on the unshaken basis of his natural hu- 
manity. 

The fourth book of the Dialogue* exhibits 
a lively picture of the horror with which the 
excesses of the Reformers had filled the mind 
of ihis good man, whose justice and even 
humanity were disturbed, so far at least as 
to betray him into a bitterness of language 
and harshness of opinion foreign from his 
general temper. The events themselves are. 
it must be owned, sufficient to provoke the 
meekest, — to appal the firmest of men. 
'•The temporal lords." he tells us. "were 
glad to hear the cry against the clergy; the 
people were glad to hear it against the clergy 
and the lords too. They rebelled first against 
an abbot, and after against a bishop, where- 
with the temporal lords had good game and 
sport, and dissembled the matter, gaping 
after the lands of the spirituality, till they 
had almost played, as iEsop telleth of the 
dog, which, to snatch at the shadow of the 
cheese in the water, let fall and lost the 
cheese which he bare in his mouth. The 
uplandish Lutherans set upon the temporal 
lords : they slew 70,000 Lutherans in one 
summer, and subdued the remnant in that 
part of Almayne into a right miserable servi- 
tude. Of this sect was the great partf of 
those ungracious people which of late en- 
tered Rome with the Duke of Bourbon." 
The description of the horrible crimes per- 
petrated on that occasion is so disgusting in 
some of its particulars, as to be unfit for the 
decency of historical narrative. One speci- 
men will suffice, which, considering the 
constant intercourse between England and 
Rome, is not unlikely to have been related 
to More by an eye-witness: — '-'Some took 
children and bound them to torches, and 
brought them gradually nearer to the fire to 
be roasted, while the fathers and mothers 
were looking on, and then begun to speak of 
a price for the sparing of the children ; ask- 
ing first 100 ducats, then fifty, then fort}-, 
then at last offered to take twain : after they 
had taken the last ducat from the father, 
then would they let the child roast to death." 
This wickedness (More contended) was the 
fruit of Luther's doctrine of predestination ; 
"for what good deed can a man study or 
labour to do, who believeth Luther, that he 
hath no free will of his own."t "If the 
world were not near an end, and the fervour 
of devotion almost quenched, it could never 
have come to pass that so many people 
should fall to the following of so beastly a 
sect." He urges at very great length, and 
with great ability, the tendency of belief in 
destiny to overthrow morality ; and repre- 
sents it as an opinion of which, on account 
of its incompatibility with the order of so- 



* Dialogue of Sir Thomas More, touching the 
pestilent sect of Luther, composed and published 
when he was chancellor of ihe duchy of Lancaster, 
" but newly oversew by the said Sir T. More, 
chancellor of England," 1530. 

t A violent exaggeration. 

J Dialogue, book iv. chap. 8. 



ciety, the civil magistrate may lawfully pun- 
ish the promulgation ; little aware how de- 
cisively experience was about to confute 
such reasoning, however specious, by the 
examples of nations, who, though their whole 
religion was founded on predestination, were, 
nevertheless, the most moral portion of man- 
kind.* "The fear," says More, "of out- 
rages and mischiefs to follow upon such here- 
sies, with the proof that men have had in 
some countries thereof, have been the cause 
that princes and people have been constrained 
to punish heresies by a terrible death; where- 
as else more easy ways had been taken with 
them. If the heretics had never begun with 
violence, good Christian people had perad- 
venture used less violence against them : 
while they forbare violence, there was little 
violence done unto them. 'By my soul,' 
quoth your friend,! 'I would all the world 
were agreed to take violence and compulsion 
away.' 'And sooth,' said I, 'if it were so, 
yet would God be too strong for his ene- 
mies.' " In answer, he faintly attempts to 
distinguish the case of Pagans, who may be 
tolerated, in order to induce them to tolerate 
Christians, from that of heretics, from which 
no such advantage was to be obtained in ex- 
change ; — a distinction, however, which dis- 
appeared as soon as the supposed heretics 
acquired supreme power. At last, however, 
he concludes with a sentence which suffi- 
ciently intimates the inclination of his judg- 
ment, and shows that his ancient opinions 
still prevailed in the midst of fear and ab- 
horrence. "And yet, as I said in the begin- 
ning, never were they by any temporal pun- 
ishment of their bodies any thing sharply 
handled till they began to be violent them- 
selves." It is evident that his mind misgave 
him when he appeared to assent to intoler- 
ance as a principle ; for otherwise there was 
no reason for repeatedly relying on the de- 
fence of society against aggression as its jus- 
tification. His silence, however, respecting 
the notorious fact, that Luther strained every 
nerve to suppress the German insurgents, 
can never be excused by the sophistry which 
ascribes to all reformers the evil done by those 
who abuse their names. It was too much 
to say that Luther should not have uttered 
what he believed to be sacred and necessary 
truth, because evil-doers took occasion from 
it to screen their bad deeds. This contro- 
versial artifice, however grossly unjust, is 
yet so plausible and popular, that perhaps 
no polemic ever had virtue enough to resist 
the temptation of employing it. What other 
controversialist can be named, w.ho, having 
the power to crush antagonists whom he 
viewed as the disturbers of the quiet of his 
own declining age, — the destroyers of all the 
hopes which he had cherished for mankind, 
contented himself with severity of language 
(for which he humbly excuses himself in his 



* Switzerland. Holland. Scotland, English puri- 
tans, New England, French Huguenots, &c. 

t This wish is put into the mouth of the adverse 
speaker in the Dialogue. 



64 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



Apology — in some measure a dying work), 
and with one instance of unfair inference 
against opponents who were too zealous to 
be merciful. 

In the autumn of 1529. More, on his return 
from Cambray, where he had been once 
more joined in commission with his friend 
Tunstall as ambassador to the emperor, paid 
a visit to the court, then at Woodstock. A 
letter written from thence to his wife, on oc- 
casion of a mishap at home, is here inserted 
as affording a little glimpse into the manage- 
ment of his most homely concerns, and es- 
pecially as a specimen of his regard for a 
deserving woman, who was, probably, too 
'•'coarsely kind" even to have inspired him 
with tenderness.* 

"Mistress Alyce, in my most harty will, 
I recomend me to you. And whereas I am 
enfourmed by my son Heron of the loss of 
our barnes and our neighbours also, w' all 
the come that was therein, albeit (saving 
God's pleasure) it is gret pitie of so much 
good corne lost, yet sith it hath liked hym 
to send us such a chance, we must saie 
bounden, not only to be content, but also to 
be glad of his visitation. He sent us all that 
we have lost : and sith he hath by such a 
chance taken it away againe, his pleasure 
be fulfilled. Let us never grudge thereat, 
but take it in good worth, and hartely thank 
him, as well for adversitie, as for prosperitie. 
And par adventure we have more cause to 
thank him for our losse, than for our winning : 
for his wisedom better seeth what is good 
for us then we do ourselves. Therefore I 
pray you be of good cheere, and take all the 
howsold with you to church, and there thank 
God both for that he hath given us, and for 
that he has left us, which if it please hym, 
he can increase when he will. And if it 
please him to leave us yet lesse, at hys plea- 
sure be it. I praye you to make some good 
ensearche what my poor neighbours have 
loste, and bidde them take no thought there- 
fore, and if I shold not leave myself a spone, 
there shall no poore neighbour of mine bere 
no losse by any chance happened in my 
house. I pray you be with my children and 
household mery in God. And devise some- 
what with your friends, what way wer best 
to take, for provision to be made for corne 
for our household and for sede thys yere 
coming, if ye thinke it good that we keepe 
the ground still in our handes. And whether 
ye think it good y' we so shall do or not, 
yet I think it were not best sodenlye thus 
to leave it all up, and to put away our folk 
of our farme, till we have somewhat advised 
us thereon. Howbeit if we have more nowe 
thin ye shall neede, and which can get 
the other maisters, ye may then discharge 

* In More's metrical inscription for his own 
in. iiiument, we find a just but long, and somewhat 
laboured, commendation of Alice, which in ten- 
derness is outweighed by one word applied to the 
long-departed companion of his youth. 
" Chara Thomae jacet hie Joanna uxorcula Mori." 



us of them. But I would not that any man 
wer sodenly sent away he wote nere we- 
ther. At my coming hither, I perceived 
none other, but that I shold tary still with 
the kinpes utace. But now I shall (I think), 
because of this chance, get leave this next 
weke to come home and se you ; and then 
shall we further devise together uppon all 
thinges, what order shall be best to take : and 
thus as hartely fare you well with all our chil- 
dren as you can wishe. At Woodstok the 
thirde daye of Septembre, by the hand of ' 
" Your loving husband, 

"Thomas Moke, Knight." 

A new scene now opened on More, of whose 
private life the above simple letter enables us 
to form no inadequate or unpleasing estimate. 
On the 25th of October 1529, sixteen days 
after the commencement of the prosecution 
against Wolsey, the King, by delivering the 
great seal to him at Greenwich, constituted 
him lord chancellor,— the highest dignity of 
the state and of the law. and which had 
previously been generally held by ecclesias- 
tics.* A very summary account of the na- 
ture of this high office, may perhaps prevent 
some confusion respecting it among those 
who know it only in its present state. The 
office of chancellor was known to all the 
European governments, who borrowed it, 
like many other institutions, from the usage 
of the vanquished Romans. In those of 
England and France, which most resembled 
each other, and whose history is most fa- 
miliar and most interesting to us,f the chan- 
cellor, whose office had been a conspicuous 
dignity under the Lower Empire, was origi- 
nally a secretary who derived a great part 
of his consequence from the trust of holding 
the king's seal, the substitute for subscription 
under illiterate monarchs, and the stamp of 
legal authority in more cultivated times. 
From his constant access to the king, he 
acquired every where some authority in the 
cases which were the frequent subject of 
complaint to the crown. In France he be- 
came a minister of state with a peculiar 
superintendence over courts of justice, and 
some remains of a special jurisdiction, which 
continued till the downfal of the French 
monarchy. In the English chancellor were 
gradually united the characters of a legal 
magistrate and a political adviser; and since 
that time the office has been confined to 
lawyers in eminent practice, He has been 
presumed to have a due reverence for the law, 
as well as a familiar acquaintance with it ; 
and his presence and weight in the counsels 
of a free commonwealth have been regarded 
as links which bind the state to the law. 

One of the earliest branches of the chan- 
cellor's duties seems, by slow degrees, to 
have enlarged his jurisdiction to the extent 

* Thorpe, in 1371, and Knivet, in 1372, seem 
to be the last exceptions. 

t Ducange and Spelman, voce Cancellarius, 
who give us the series of Chancellors in both 
countries. 



LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 



65 



which it reached in modern times.* From 
the chancery issued those writs which first 
put the machinery of law in motion in every 
case where legal redress existed. In that 
court new writs were framed, when it was 
fit to adapt the proceedings to the circum- 
stances of a new case. When a case arose 
in which it appeared that the course and 
order of the common law could hardly be 
adapted, by any variation in the forms of 
procedure, to the demands of justice, the 
complaint was laid by the chancellor, before 
the king, who commanded it to be considered 
in council, — a practice which, by degrees, led 
to a reference to that magistrate by himself. 
To facilitate an equitable determination in 
such complaints, the writ was devised called 
the writ of " subpxnd," commanding the 
person complained of to appear before the 
chancellor, and to answer the complaint. 
The essential words of a petition for this 
writ, which in process of time has become 
of so great importance, were in the reign of 
Richard III. as follows : " Please it therefore, 
your lordship, — considering that your orator 
has no remedy by course of the common 
law, — to grant a writ subpxnd, commanding 
T. Coke to appear in chancery, at a certain 
day, and upon a certain pain to be limited 
by you, and then to do what by this court 
shall be thought reasonable and according 
to conscience." The form had not been 
materially different in the earliest instances, 
which appear to have occurred from 1380 
to 1400. It would seem that this device 
was not first employed, as has been hitherto 
supposed,! to enforce the observance of the 
duties of trustees who held lands, but for 
cases of an extremely different nature, where 
the failure of justice in the ordinary courts 
might ensue, not from any defect in the 
common law, but from the power of turbu- 
lent barons, who, in their acts of outrage and 
lawless violence, bade defiance to all ordinary 
jurisdiction. In some of the earliest cases we 
find a statement of the age and poverty of 
the complainant, and of the power, and even 
learning, of the supposed wrongdoer ; — topics 
addressed to compassion, or at most to equity 
in a very loose and popular sense of the word, 
which throw light on the original nature of 
this high jurisdiction.!: It is apparent, from 
the earliest cases in the reign of Richard II., 



* " Non facile est digilo monstrare quibus 
gradibus, sed conjecturam accipe.'' — Spelman, 
voce Catvellarius 

t Blaekstone, book iii. chap. 4. 

t Calendars of Proceedings in Chancery, temp. 
Eliz. London. 1827. Of ten of these suits which 
occurred in the last ten years of the fourteenth 
century, one complains of ouster from land by 
violence ; another, of exclusion from a benefice, 
by a writ obtained from the king under false sug- 
gestions ; a third, for the seizure of a freeman, 
under pretext of being a slave (or nief) ; a fourth, 
for being disturbed in the enjoyment of land by a 
trespasser, abetted by the sheriff; a fifth for im- 
prisonment on a false allegation of debt. No case 
is extant prior to the first year of Henry V., which 
relates t'j the trust of lands, which eminent writers 
9 



that the occasional relief proceeding from 
mixed feelings of pity and of regard.to sub- 
stantial justice, not effectually aided by law, 
or overpowered by tyrannical violence, had 
then grown into a regular system, and was 
subject to rules resembling those of legal 
jurisdiction. At first sight it may appear 
difficult to conceive how ecclesiastics could 
have moulded into a regular form this ano- 
malous branch of jurisprudence. But many 
of the ecclesiastical order. — originally the 
only lawyers,— were eminently skilled in the 
civil and canon law, which hail atlained an 
order and precision unknown to the digests 
of barbarous usages then attempted in France 
and England. The ecclesiastical chancellors 
of those countries introduced into their courts 
a course of proceeding very similar to that 
adopted by other European nations, who all 
owned the authority of the canon law, and 
were enlightened by the wisdom of the Ro- 
man code. The proceedings in chancery, 
lately recovered from oblivion, show the sys- 
tem to have been in regular activity about 
a century and a half before the chancellor- 
ship of Sir Thomas More, — the first common 
lawyer who held the great seal since the 
Chancellor had laid any foundations (known 
to us) of his equitable jurisdiction. The 
course of education, and even of negotiation 
in that age, conferred on Moore, who was 
the most distinguished of the practisers of 
the common law, the learning and ability of 
a civilian and a canonist. 

Of his administration, from the 25th of 
October 1529, to the 16th of May 1532, four 
hundred bills and answers are still preserved, 
which afford an average of about a hundred 
and sixty suits annually. Though this ave- 
rage may by no means adequately represent 
the whole occupations of a court which had 
many other duties to perform, it supplies us 
with some means of comparing the extent 
of its business under him with the number 
of similar proceedings in succeeding times. 
The whole amount of bills and answers in the 
reign of James I. was thirty-two thousand. 
How far the number may have differed at 
different parts of that reign, the unarranged 
state of the records does not yet enable us 
to ascertain. But supposing it, by a rough 
estimate, to have continued the same, the 
annual average of bills and answers during 
the four years of Lord Bacon's administration 
was fourteen hundred and sixty-one, being 
an increase of nearly ten-fold in somewhat 
less than a century. Though cases con- 
nected with the progress of the jurisdiction 
and the character of the chancellor must 
have somewhat contributed to this remarka- 
ble increase, yet it must be ascribed princi- 
pally to the extraordinary impulse given to 

have represented as the original object of this 
jurisdiction. In the reign of Henry VI there is 
a bill against certain WyclifRtes for outrages done 
to the plaintiff, Robert Burton, chanter of the 
cathedral of Lincoln, on account of his zeal as an 
inquisitor in the diocese of Lincoln, to convict 
and punish heretics. 

f2 



66 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



daring enterprise and national wealth by 
the splendid administration of Elizabeth. 
which ^multiplied alike the occasions of liti- 
gation and the means of carrying it on.* In 
a century and a half after, when equitable 
jurisdiction was completed in its foundations 
and most necessary parts by Lord Chancellor 
Nottingham, the yearly average of suits was. 
during his tenure of the great seal, about 
sixteen hundred f Under Lord Hardwicke, 
the chancellor of most professional celebrity, 
the yearly average of bills and answers ap- 
pears to have been about two thousand ; 
probably in part because more questions had 
been finally determined, and partly also be- 
cause the delays were so aggravated by the 
multiplicity of business, that parties aggriev- 
ed chose rather to submit to wrong than to 
be ruined in pursuit of right. This last mis- 
chief arose in a great measure from the 
variety of affairs added to the original duties 
of the judge, of which the principal were 
bankruptcy and parliamentary appeals. Both 
these causes continued to act with increas- 
ing force ; so that, in spite of a vast increase 
of the property and dealings of the kingdom. 
the average number of bills and answers was 
considerably less from 1800 to 1802 than it 
had been from 1745 to 17544 

It must not be supposed that men trained 
in any system of jurisprudence, as were the 
ecclesiastical chancellors, could have been 
indifferent to the inconvenience and vexa- 
tion which necessarily harass the holders 
of a merely arbitrary power. Not having a 
law, they were a law unto themselves ; and 
every chancellor who contributed by a de- 
termination to establish a principle, became 
instrumental in circumscribing the power of 
his successor. Selden is, indeed, represented 
to have said, "that equity is according to 
the conscience of him who is chancellor ; 
which is as uncertain as if we made the 
chancellor's foot the standard for the mea- 
sure which we call a foot."§ But this was 
spoken in the looseness of table-talk, and 
under the influence of the prejudices then 
prevalent among common lawyers against 
equitable jurisdiction. Still, perhaps, in his 
time what he said might be true enough for 
a smart saying: but in process of years a 
system of rules has been established which 
has constantly tended to limit the originally 
discretionary powers of the chancery. Equity, 
in the acceptation in which that word is used 
in English jurisprudence, is no longer to be 
confounded with that moral equity which 

* From a letter of Lord Bacon (Lords' Journals, 
20lh March, 1680,) it appears that he made two 
thousand decrees and orders in a year; so that in 
his time the bills and answers amounted to about 
two-thirds of the whole business. 

t The numbers have been obligingly supplied 
by the gentlemen of the Record Office in the 
Tower. 

t Account of Proceedings in Parliament rela- 
tive to the Court of Chancery. Bv C. P. Cooper, 
Esq. (Loud. 1828 ) p. 102. &c— A work equally 
remarkable for knowledge and acuteness. 

$ Table Talk, (Edinb. 1809,) p. 55. 



generally corrects the unjust operation of 
Jaw. ami with which it seems to have been 
synonymous in the days of Selden and Bacon. 
It is a part of law formed from usages and 
determinations which sometimes differ from 
what is culled •■common law'- 1 in its subjects, 
but chiefly varies from it in its modes of 
proof, of trial, and of relief; it is a jurisdic- 
tion so irregularly formed, and often so little 
dependent on general principles, that it can 
hardly be defined or made intelligible other- 
wise than by a minute enumeration of the 
matters cognisable by it.* 

It will be seen from the above that Sir 
Thomas Mote's duties differed very widely 
from the various exertions of labour and in- 
tellect required from a modern chancellor. 
At the utmost he did not hear more than two 
hundred cases and arguments yearly, inclu- 
ding those of every description. No authentic 
account of any case tried before him, if any 
such be extant, has been yet brought to light. 
No law book alludes to any part of his judg- 
ments or reasonings. Nothing of this higher 
part of his judicial life is preserved, which 
can warrant us in believing more than that 
it must have displayed his never-failing in- 
tegrity, reason, learning, and eloquence. 

The particulars of his instalment are not 
unworthy of being specified as a proof of the 
reverence for his endowments and excel- 
lences professed by the King and entertained 
by the public, to whose judgment the min- 
isters of Henry seemed virtually to appeal, 
with an assurance that the King's appoint- 
ment would be ratified by the general voice. 
"He was led between the Dukes of Norfolk 
and Suffolk up Westminster Hall to the Stone 
Chamber, and there they honourably placed 
him in the high judgment-seat of chancel- 
lor ;"t (for the chancellor was, by his office, 
the president of that terrible tribunal.) "The 
Duke of Norfolk, premier peer and lord high 
treasurer of England," continues the biogra- 
pher. " by the command of the king, spoke 
thus unto the people there with great applause 
and joy gathered together : — 

" ' The King's majesty (which. I pray God, 
may prove happie and fortunate to the whole 
realme of England) hath raised to the most 
high dignitie of chancellourship Sir Thomas 
More, a man for his extraordinarie worth 
and suffictencie well knowne to himself and 
the whole realme, for no other cause or earth- 
lie respect, but for that he hath plainely per- 
ceaved all the gifts of nature and grace to be 
heaped upon him, which either the people 
could desire, or himself wish, for the dis- 
charge of so great an office. For the ad- 
mirable wisedome, integritie, and innocencie. 
joyned with most pleasant facilitie of witt, 
that this man is endowed withal], have been 
sufficiently knowen to all Englishmen from 
his youth, and for these manie j eares also to 



* Blackstone, book iii. chap. 27. Lord Hnrd- 
wioke's Letter to Lord Karnes. 30ih June, 1757. 
— Lord Woodhouselee's Life of Lord Karnes, vol. 
i. p. 237. 

t More, pp. 156, 163. 



LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 



the King's majestie himself. This hath the 
King abundantly found in manie and weightie 
afFayres, which he hath happily dispatched 
both at home and abroad, in divers offices 
which he hath born, in most honourable em- 
bassages which he hath undergone, and in 
his daily counsell and advises upon all other 
occasions. He hath perceaved no man in 
his realme to be more wise in deliberating, 
more sincere in opening to him what he 
thought, nor move eloquent to adorne the 
matter which he uttered. Wherefore, be- 
cause he saw in him such excellent endow- 
ments, and that of his especiall care he hath 
a particular desire that his kingdome and 
people might be governed with all equitie 
and justice, integritie and wisedome, he of 
his owne most gracious disposition hath 
created this singular man lord chancellor : 
that, by his laudable performance of this 
office, his people may enjoy peace and jus- 
tice ; and honour also and fame may re- 
dounde to the whole kingdome. It may 
perhaps seem to manie a strange and un- 
usuall matter, that this dignitie should be 
bestowed upon a layman, none of the nobili- 
tie, and one that hath wife and children ; be- 
cause heretofore none but singular learned 
prelates, or men of greatest nobilitie, have 
possessed this place; but what is wanting in 
these respects, the admirable vertues, the 
matchless guifts of witt and wisedome of 
this man, doth most plentifully recompence 
the same. For the King's majestie hath not 
regarded how great, but what a man he was; 
he hath not cast his eyes upon the nobilitie 
of his bloud, but on the worth of his person ; 
he hath respected his sufficiencie, not his 
profession ; finally, he would show by this 
his choyce, that he hath some rare subjects 
amongst the rowe of gentlemen and laymen, 
who deserve to manage the highest offices 
of the realme, which bishops and noblemen 
think they only can deserve. The rarer 
therefore it was, so much both himself held 
it to be the more excellent, and to his people 
he thought it would be the more grateful]. 
Wherefore, receave this your chancellour 
with joyful acclamations, at whose hands 
you may expect all happinesse and content.' 
" Sir Thomas More, according to his wont- 
ed modestie, was somewhat abashed at this 
the duke's speech, in that it sounded so 
much to his praise, but recollecting himself 
as that place and time would give him leave, 
he answered in this sorte : — ; Although, most 
noble duke, and you right honourable lords, 
and worshipfull gentlemen, I knowe all these 
things, which the King's majestie, it seemeth, 
hath bene pleased should be spoken of me 
at this time and place, and your grace hath 
with most eloquent wordes thus amplifyed, 
are as far from me, as I could wish with all 
my hart they were in me for the better per- 
formance of so great a charge ; and although 
this your speach hath caused in me greater 
feare than I can well express in words: yet 
th s incomparable favour of my dread soue- 
raigne, by which he showeth how well, yea 



how highly he conceaveth of my weaken 
nesse. having commanded that my meanesse 
should be so greatly commended, cannot be 
but most acceptable unto me; and I cannot 
choose but give your most noble grace ex- 
ceeding thankes, that what his majestie bath- 
willed you briefly to utter, you, of the abun- 
dance of your love unto me, have in a large 
and eloquent oration dilated. As for myself, 
I can take it no otherwise, but that his ma- 
jestie's incomparable favour towards me, the 
good will and incredible propension of his 
royall minde (wherewith he has these manie 
yeares favoured me continually) hath alone 
without anie desert of mine at all, caused 
both this my new honour, and these youn 
undeserved commendations of me. For who 
am I, or what is the house of my father, that 
the King's highnesse should heape upon me 
by such a perpetuall streame of affection^ 
these so high honours? I am farre Jesse then 
anie the meanest of his benefitts bestowed 
on me; how can I then thinke myself wor- 
thie or fitt for this so peerlesse dignitie ? I 
have bene drawen by force, as the King's 
majestie often professeth, to his highnesse's 
service, to be a courtier ; but to take this 
dignitie upon me, is most of all against my 
will ; yet such is his highnesse's benignitie. 
such is his bountie, that he highly esteem- 
eth the small dutiefulnesse of his meanest 
subjects, and seeketh still magnificently to* 
recompence his servants ; not only such as 
deserve well, but even such as have but a 
desire to deserve well at his hands, in whicb 
number I have alwaies wished myself to be 
reckoned, because I cannot challenge myself 
to be one of the former; which being so, you 
may all perceave with me how great a bur- 
den is layde upon my backe, in that I must 
strive in some sorte with my diligence and 
dutie to corresponde with his royall benevo- 
lence, and to be answerable to that great ex- 
pectation, which he and you seeme to havf- 
of me; wdierefore those so high praises- are ' 
by me so much more grievous unto me, by 
how much more I know the greater charge 
I have to render myself worthie of, and the 
fewer means I have to make them goode. 
This w T eight is hardly suitable to my wealke 
shoulders; this honour is not correspondent 
to my poore desert ; it is a burden, not a 
glorie ; a care, not a dignitie ; the one there- 
fore I must beare as manfully as I can, and 
discharge the other with as much dexteriJij? 
as I shall be able. The earnest desire which? 
I have alwaies had and doe now acknow- 
ledge myself to have, to satisfye by aB? 
meanes I can possible, the most ample be- 
nefitts of his highnesse, will greatly excite 
and ayde me to the diligent performance o£ 
all, which I trust also I shall be more able 
to doe. if I finde all your good wills and 
wishes both favourable unto me, and con- 
formable to his royall' munificence : because 
my serious endeavours to doe well, jpyned 
with your favourable acceptance, will easily 
procure that whatsoever is performed by me, 
though it be in itself but small, yet will it 



68 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAVS. 



seeme great and praisewovthie ; for those 
things are alwaies atchieved happily, which 
are accepted willingly ; and those succeede 
fortunately, which are receaved by others 
courteously. As you therefore doe hope for 
great matters, and the best at my hands, so 
though I dare not promise anie such, yet do 
I promise truly and affectionately to per- 
forme the best I shall be able.' 

'• When Sir Thomas More had spoken 
these wordes, turning his face to the high 
judgment seate of the chancerie, he pro- 
ceeded in this manner : — ' But when I looke 
upon this seate, when I thinke how greate 
and what kinde of personages have possessed 
this place before me, when I call to rninde 
'who he was that sate in it last of all — a man 
•of what singular wisdome, of what notable 
experience, what a prosperous and favour- 
able fortune he had for a great space, and 
how at the last he had a most grevious fall, 
and dyed inglorious — I have cause enough 
by my predecessor's example to think hon- 
our but slipperie, and this dignitie not so 
grateful to me as it may seeme to others ; 
for both is it a hard matter to follow with 
like paces or praises, a man of such admira- 
ble witt, prudence, authoritie, and splendour, 
to whome I may seeme but as the lighting 
of a candle, when the sun is downe ; and 
also the sudden and unexpected fall of so 
great a man as he was doth terribly putt me 
in minde that this honour ought not to please 
me too much, nor the lustre of this glistering 
seate da^cel mine eyes. Wherefore I ascende 
this seate as a place full of labour and dan- 
ger, voyde of all solide and true honour; 
the which by how much the higher it is, by 
so much greater fall I am to feare, as well in 
respect of the verie nature of the thing it 
selfe, as because I am warned by this late 
fearfull example. And truly I might even 
now at this verie just entrance stumble, yea 
faynte, but that his majestie's most singular 
favour towardes me, and all your good wills. 
which your joyfull countenance doth testifye 
in this most honorable assemblie, doth some- 
what recreate and refresh me; otherwise 
tthis seate would be no more pleasing to me, 
than that sword was to Damocles, which 
hung over his head, tyed only by a hayre of 
a horse's tale, when he had store of delicate 
fare before him, seated in the chair of slate 
of Denis the tirant of Sicilie; this therefore 
shall be always fresh in my minde, this will 
I have still before mine eies, that this seate 
will be honorable, famous, and full of glorie 
unto me, if I shall with care and diligence, 
fidelitie and wisedome, endeavour to doe 
my dutie, and shall persuade myself, that 
the enjoying thereof may be but short and 
uncertaine ; the one whereof my labour ought 
to performe ; the other my predecessor's ex- 
ample may easily teach me. All which be- 
ing so, you may easily perceave what great 
pleasure I take in this high dignitie, or in 
this most noble duke's praising of me.' 

" All the world took notice now of sir 
Thomas's dignitie, whereof Erasmus writeth 



to John Fabius, bishop of Vienna, thus:— 
• Concerning the new increase of honour 
lately happened to Thomas More, I should 
easily make you believe it, if I should show 
you the letters of many famous men, rejoi- 
cing with much alacritie. and congratulating 
the King, the realme, himself, and also me, 
for More's honor, in being made lord chan- 
cellour of England.'" 

At the period of the son's promotion, Sir 
John More who was nearly of the age of 
ninety, was the most ancient judge of the 
King's Bench. "What a grateful spectacle 
was it," says their descendant, " to see the 
son ask the blessing of the father every day r 
upon his knees before he sat upon his own 
seat ?"* Even in a more unceremonious 
age, the simple character of More would 
have protected these daily rites of fihal re- 
verence from that suspicion of affectation, 
which could alone destroy their charm. 
But at that time it must have borrowed its 
chief power from the conspicuous excellence 
of the lather and son. For if inward worth 
had then borne any proportion to the grave 
and reverend ceremonial of the age, we 
might be well warranted in regarding our 
forefathers as a race of superior beings. 

The contrast which the humble and affa- 
ble More afforded to the haughty cardinal, 
astonished and delighted the suitors. No 
application could be made to Wolsey, which 
did not pass through many hands; and no 
man could apply, whose fingers were not 
tipped with gold : but More sat daily in an 
open hall, that he might receive in person 
the petitions of the poor. If any reader 
should blame his conduct in this respect, as 
a breach of an ancient and venerable pre- 
cept, — "Ye shall do no unrighteousness in 
judgment ; thou shalt not respect the person 
of the poor, nor honour the person of the 
mighty ; but in righteousness shalt thou judge 
thy neighbour,"! let it be remembered, that 
there still clung to the equitable jurisdiction 
some remains of that precarious and eleemo- 
synary nature from which it originally sprung; 
which, in the eyes of the compassionate 
chancellor, might warrant more preference 
for the helpless poor than could be justified 
in proceedings more rigorously legal. 

Courts of law were jealous then, as since, 
of the power assumed by chancellors to 
issue injunctions to parlies to desist from 
doing certain acts which they were by law 
entitled to do, until the court of chancery 
should determine whether the exercise of the 
legal right would not work injustice. There 
are many instances in which irreparable 
wrong may be committed, before a right can 
be ascertained, in the ordinary course of pro- 
ceedings. In such cases it is the province 
of theChancellor to take care that affairs 
shall continue in their actual condition until 
the questions in dispute be determined. A 
considerable outcry against this necessary, 
though invidious authority, was raised at the 



* More, p. 163. t Levhicus, chap. xix. v. 15. 



LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 



69 



commencement of More's chancellorship. 
He silenced this clamour with his wonted 
prudence and meekness. Having caused 
one of the six clerks to make out a list of the 
injunctions issued by him, or pending before 
him, he invited all the judges to dinner. He 
laid the list before them; and explained the 
circumstances of each case so satisfactorily, 
that they all confessed that in the like case 
they would have done no less. Nay, he 
offered to desist from the jurisdiction, if they 
would undertake to contain the law within 
the boundaries of righteousness, which he 
thought they ought in conscience to do. The 
judges declined to make the attempt ; on 
which he observed privately to Roper, that 
he saw they trusted to their influence for 
obtaining verdicts which would shift the re- 
sponsibility from them to the juries. " Where- 
fore," said he, " I am constrained to abide 
the adventure of their blame." 

Dauncey, one of his sons-in-law, alleged 
that under Wolsey "even the door-keepers 
got great gains," and was so perverted by 
the venality there practised that he expostu- 
lated with More for his churlish integrity^ 
The chancellor said, that if "his father, 
whom he reverenced dearly, were on the 
one side, and the devil, whom he hated with 
all his might, on the other, the devil should 
have his right." He is represented by his 
descendant, as softening his answer by pro- 
mising minor advantages, such as priority of 
hearing, and recommendation of arbitration, 
where the case of a friend was bad. The 
biographer, however, not being a lawyer, 
might have misunderstood the conversation, 
which had to pass through more than one 
generation before the tradition reached him ; 
or the words may have been a hasty effusion 
of good nature, uttered only to qualify the 
roughness of his honesty. If he had been 
called on to perform these promises, his head 
and heart would have recoiled alike from 
breaches of equality which he would have 
felt to be altogether dishonest. When Heron, 
another of his sons-in-law, relied on the bad 
practices of the times, so far as to entreat a 
favourable judgment in a cause of his own, 
More, though the most affectionate of fathers, 
immediately undeceived him by an adverse 
decree. This act of common justice is made 
an object of panegyric by the biographer, as 
if it were then deemed an extraordinary in- 
stance of virtue; a deplorable symptom of 
that corrupt state of general opinion, which, 
half a century later, contributed to betray 
into ignominious vices the wisest of men, 
and the most illustrious of chancellors, — if 
the latter distinction be not rather due to the 
virtue of a More or a Somers. 

He is said to have despatched the causes 
oefore him so speedily, that, on asking for 
the next, he was told that none remained; 
which is boastfully contrasted by Mr. More, 
his descendant, with the arrear of a thousand 
in the time of that gentleman, who lived in 
the reign of Charles I. ; though we have 
already seen that this difference may be re- 



ferred to other causes, and therefore that the 
fact, if true, proves no more than his exem- 
plary diligence and merited reputation. 

The scrupulous and delicate integrity of 
More (for so it must be called in speaking of 
that age) was more clearly shown after his 
resignation, than it could have been during. 
his continuance in office* One Parnell com- 
plained of him for a decree obtained by his 
adversary Vaughan. whose wife had bribed 
the chancellor by a gilt cup. More surprised 
the counsel at first, by owning that he re- 
ceived the cup as a new year's gift. Lord 
Wiltshire, a zealous Protestant, indecently, 
but prematurely, exulted: "Did I not tell 
you, my lords," said he, "that you would 
find this matter true?" "But, my lords," 
replied More, " hear the other part of my 
tale." He then told them that, "having 
drank to her of wine with which his butler 
had filled the cup, and she having pledged' 
him, he restored it to her, and would listen 
to no refusal." When Mrs. Croker, for 
whom he had made a decree against Lord 
Arundel, came to him to request his accep- 
tance of a pair of gloves, in which were con- 
tained 40/. in angels, he told her, with a 
smile, that it were ill manners to refuse a 
lady's present ; but- though he should keep 
the gloves, he must return the gold, which 
he enforced her to receive. Gresham, a 
suitor, sent him a present of a gilt cup, of 
which the fashion pleased him : More ac- 
cepted it ; but would not do so till Gresham 
received from him another cup of greater 
value, but of which the form and workman- 
ship were less suitable to the Chancellor. It 
would be an indignity to the memory of such 
a man to quote these facts as proofs of his 
probity ; but they may be mentioned as spe- 
cimens of the simple and unforced honesty 
of one who rejected improper offers with all 
the ease and pleasantry of common courtesy. 

Henry, in bestowing the great seal on 
More, hoped to dispose his chancellor to lend 
his authority to the projects of divorce and 
second marriage, which were now agitating 
the King's mind, and were the main objects 
of his policy.* Arthur, the eldest son of 
Henry VII., having married Catharine, the 
daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, sove- 
reigns of Castile and Arragon, and dying 
very shortly after his nuptials, Henry had 
obtained a dispensation from Pope Julius II. 
to enable the princess to marry her brother- 
in-law, afterwards Henry VIII. ; and in this 
last-mentioned union, of which the Princess 
Mary was the only remaining fruit, the par- 
ties had lived sixteen years in apparent har- 
mony. But in the year 1527, arose a con- 
currence of events, which tried and estab- 
lished the virtue of More, and revealed to 
the world the depravity of his master. Henry 
had been touched by the charms of Anne 
Boleyn, a beautiful young lady, in her twenty- 

*"Thomas Mortis, doctrina et probitate specta- 
bilis vir, cancellarius in Wolseei locum consiitui- 
I tur. Neutiquam Eegis causce tzquior." — Thuanus, 
I Historia sui Temporis, lib. ii. c. 16. 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



■second year, the daughter of Sir Thomas 
Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire, who had lately 
returned from the court of France, where 
J»er youth had been spent. At the same 
moment it became the policy of Francis 1 
to loosen all the ties which joined the King 
of England to the Emperor. When the 
Bishop of Tarbes, his ambassador in Eng- 
land, found, on his arrival in London, the 
growing distaste of Henry for his inoffensive 
and exemplary wife, he promoted the King's 
inclination towards divorce, and suggested 
a marriage with Margaret Duchess of Alen- 
•con, the beautiful and graceful sister of 
Francis ['.* 

At this period Henry for the first time 
professed to harbour conscientious doubts 
whether the dispensation of Julius II. could 
suspend the obligation of the divine prohibi- 
tion pronounced against such a marriage as 
h.\» in the Levitical law.f The court of 
Rome did not dare to contend that the dis- 
pensation could reach the case if the prohi- 
bition were part of the universal law of God. 
Henry, on the other side, could not consistent- 
ly question its validity, if he considered the 
precept as belonging to merely positive law. 
To this question, therefore, the dispute was 
confined, though both parties shrunk from an 
explicit and precise avowal of their main 
ground. The most reasonable solution that 
it was a local and temporary law, forming a 
part of the Hebrew code, might seem at first 
sight to destroy its authority altogether. But 
if either party had been candid, this prohi- 
bition, adopted by all Christendom, might be 
Justified by that general usage, in a case 
where it was not remarkably at variance 
with reason or the public welfare. But such 
.-a doctrine would have lowered the ground 
of the Papal authority too much to be ac- 
ceptable to Rome, and yet, on the other hand, 
.rested it on too unexceptionable a foundation 
f»*uit the case of Henry. False allegations 
fit facts in the preamble of the bull were 
alleged on the same side ; but they were in- 
conclusive. The principal arguments in the 
King's favour were, that no precedents of 
tmeh a dispensation seem to have been pro- 
daeed J and that if the Levitical prohibitions 



* ■" Margarita Francisci soror, speciaiae formae 
mt venustatis fcemina, Carolo Alenconio dure 
*»arito paulo ante mortuo, vidua permanserat. Ea 
alertinata uxor Henrico : missique Wolsasus et 
Bifflerronum Praesul qui de dissolvendo matrimo- 
jrio cum Gallo agerent. Ut Caletum appulit, 
Walsaeus mandatum a rege contrarium accipit, 
sescivitque per amicos Henricum non tarn Galli 
suffinetatem quam insanum amorem, quo Annam 
Salenam prosequebatur, explere velle." — Ibid. 
Ko trace of the latter part appears in the State 
fapeTS just (1831) published. 

fr Leviticus, chap. xx. v. 22. But see Deutero- 
nomy, chap. xxv-. v. 5. The latter text, which 
allows an exception in the case of a brother's wife 
feeing left cbildless, may be thought to strengthen 
Abe prohibition in all cases not excepted. It may 
seem applicable to the precise case of Henry. 
But the application of that text is impossible ; for 
j£ contains an injunction, of which the breach is 
skassiscd by a disgraceful punishment. 



do not continue in force under the Gospel, 
there is no prohibition against incestuous 
marriages in the system of the New Testa- 
ment. It was a disadvantage to the Church 
of Rome in the controversy, that being driven 
from the low ground by its supposed ten- 
dency to degrade the subject, and deterred 
from the high ground by the fear of the re- 
proach of daring usurpation, the inevitable 
consequence was confusion and fluctuation 
respecting the first principles on which the 
question was to be determined. 

To pursue this subject through the long 
negotiations and discussions which it occa- 
sioned during six years, would be to lead us 
far from our subject. Clement VII. (Medici) 
had been originally inclined to favour the 
suit* of Henry, according to the usual policy 
of the Roman Court, which sought plausible 
pretexts for facilitating the divorce of kings, 
whose matrimonial connections might be 
represented as involving the quiet of nations. 
The sack of Rome, however, and his own 
captivity left him full of fear of the Empe- 
ror's power and displeasure; it is even said 
that Charles V., who had discovered the 
secret designs of the. English court, had ex- 
torted from the Pope, before his release, a pro- 
mise that no attempt would be made to dis- 
honour an Austrian princess by acceding to 
the divorce.! The Pope, unwilling to provoke 
Henry, his powerful and generous protector, 
instructed Campeggio to attempt, at first, a 
reconciliation between the King and Queen; 
secondly, if that failed, to endeavour to per- 
suade her that she ought to acquiesce in her 
husband's desires, by entering into a cloister 
— (a proposition which seems to show a rea- 
diness in the Roman court to waive their 
theological difficulties); and thirdly, if nei- 
ther of these attempts were successful, to 
spin out the negotiation to the greatest length, 
in order to profit by the favourable incidents 
which time might bring forth. The impa- 
tience of the King and the honest indigna- 
tion of the Queen defeated these arts of 
Italian policy; while the resistance of Anne 
Boleyn to the irregular gratification of the 
King's desires, — without the belief of which 
it is impossible to conceive the motives for 
his perseverance in the pursuit of an unequal 
marriage, — opposed another impediment to 
the counsels and contrivances of Clement, 
which must have surprised and perplexed a 
Florentine pontiff. The proceedings, how- 
ever, terminated in the sentence pronounced 
by Cranmer annulling the marriage, the 
espousal of Anne Boleyn by the King, and 
the rejection of the Papal jurisdiction by 
the kingdom, which still, however, adhered 
to the doctrines of the Roman Catholic 
Church. 

The situation of More during a great part 
of these memorable events was embarrass- 
ing. The great offices to which he had 
been raised by the King, the personal favour 
hitherto constantly shown to him, and the 



Pallavicino, lib. ii. c 15. 



t Ibid. 



LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 



71 



natural tendency of his gentle and quiet dis- 
position, combined to disincline him to re- 
sistance against the wishes of his friendly 
master. On the other hand, his growing 
dread and horror of heresy, with its train of 
disorders; his belief that universal anarchy 
would be the inevitable result of religious 
dissension, and the operation of seven years' 
controversy on behalf of the Catholic Church, 
in heating his mind on all subjects involving 
the extent of her authority, made him re- 
coil from designs which were visibly tend- 
ing towards disunion with the Roman pon- 
tiff, — the centre of Catholic union, and the 
supreme magistrate of the ecclesiastical 
commonwealth. Though his opinions re- 
lating to the Papal authority were of a mo- 
derate and liberal nature, he at least respect- 
ed it as an ancient and venerable control on 
licentious opinions, of which the prevailing 
heresies attested the value and the necessity. 
Though he might have been better pleased 
with another determination by the supreme 
pontiff, it did not follow that he should con- 
tribute to weaken the holy See, assailed as it 
was on every side, by taking an active part 
in resistance to the final decision of a lawful 
authority. Obedience to the supreme head 
of the Church in a case which ultimately 
related only to discipline, appeared peculiarly 
incumbent on ail professed Catholics. But 
however sincere the zeal of More for the 
Catholic religion and his support of the legi- 
timate supremacy of the Roman See un- 
doubtedly were, he was surely influenced at 
the same time by the humane feelings of 
his just and generous nature, which engaged 
his heart to espouse the cause of a blame- 
less and wronged princess, driven from the 
throne and the bed of a tyrannical husband. 
Though he reasoned the case as a divine and 
a canonist, he must have felt it as a man ; 
and honest feeling must have glowed be- 
neath the subtleties and formalities of doubt- 
ful and sometimes frivolous disputations. It 
Avas probably often the chief cause of con- 
duct for which other reasons might be sin- 
cerely alleged. 

In steering his course through the intrigues 
and passions of the court, it is very observa- 
ble that More most warily retired from every 
opposition but that which Conscience abso- 
lutely required : he shunned unnecessary 
disobedience as much as unconscientious 
compliance. If he had been influenced solely 
by prudential considerations, he could not 
have more cautiously shunned every need- 
less opposition ; but in that case he would not 
have gone so far. He displayed, at the time 
of which we now speak, that very peculiar 
excellence of his character, which, as it 
showed his submission to be the fruit of 
sense of duty, gave dignity to that which in 
others is apt to seem, and to be slavish. His 
anxiety had increased with the approach to 
maturity of the King's projects of divorce and 
second marriage. Some anecdotes of this 
period are preserved by the affectionate and 
descriptive pen of Margaret Roper's husband, 



which, as he evidently reports in the chan- 
cellor's language, it would be unpardonable 
to relate in any other words than those of 
the venerable man himself. Roper, indeed, 
like another Plutarch, consults the unre- 
strained freedom of his story by a disregard 
of dates, which, however agreeable to a gene- 
ral reader, is sometimes unsatisfactory to a 
searcher after accuracy. Yet his office in a 
court of law. where there is the strongest 
inducement to ascertain truth, and the largest 
experience of the means most effectual for 
that purpose, might have taught him the ex- 
treme importance of time as well as place in 
estimating the bearing and weight of testi- 
mony. 

"On a time walking with me along the 
Thames' side at Chelsea, he said unto me, 
'Now would to our Lord, son Roper, upon 
condition that three things were well esta- 
blished in Christendom, I were put into a sack, 
and were presently cast into the Thames.' 
— 'What great things be those, sir;' quoth 
I, 'that should move you so to wish.' — 'In 
faith, son, they be these,' said he. 'The 
first is, that whereas the most part of Chris- 
tian princes be at mortal war, they were all 
at universal peace. The second, that where 
the church of Christ is at present sore afflict- 
ed with many errors and heresies, it were 
well settled in perfect uniformity of reli- 
gion. The third, that as the matter of the 
King's marriage is now come in question, it 
were, to the glory of God and quietness of 
all parties, brought to a good conclusion.' "* 
On another occasion. t "before the matri- 
mony was brought in question, when I. in 
talk with Sir Thomas More (of a certain joy), 
commended unto him the happy estate of 
this realm, that had so catholic a prince, so 
grave and sound a nobility, and so loving, 
obedient subjects, agreeing in one faith. 
'Truth it is, indeed, son Roper; and yet I 
pray God, as high as we sit upon the moun- 
tains, treading heretics under our feet like 
ants, live not the day that we gladly would 
wish to be at league and composition with 
them, to let them have their churches, so 
that they would be contented to let us have 
ours quietly.' I answered, 'By my troth, it 
is very desperately spoken.' He, perceiving 
me to be in a fame, said merrily, — 'Well, 
well, son Roper, it shall not be so.' Whom," 
concludes Roper, in sixteen years and more, 
being in his house, conversant with him, I 
never could perceive him as much as once 
in a fume." Doubtless More was some- 
what disquieted by the reflection, that some 
of those who now appealed to the freedom 
of his youthful philosophy against himself 
would speedily begin to abuse such doctrines 
by turning them against the peace which he 
loved, — that some of the spoilers of Rome 

* The description of the period appears to suit 
the year 1529, before the peace of Cambray and 
the recall of the legate Campeggio. 

t Probably in the beginning of 1527, after the 
promotion of More to be chancellor of the duchy 
of Lancaster. 



72 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



might exhibit the like scenes of rapine and 
blood in the city which was his birth-place 
and his dwelling-place: yet, even then, the 
placid mien, which had stood the test of 
every petty annoyance for sixteen years, 
was unruffled by alarms for the impending 
fate of his country and of his religion. 

Henry used every means of procuring an 
opinion favourable to his wishes from his 
chancellor, who, however, excused himself 
as unmeet for such matters, having never 
professed the study of divinity. But the 
King "sorely" pressed him.* and never 
ceased urging him until he had promised to 
give his consent, at least, to examine the 
question, conjointly with his friend Tunstall 
and other learned divines. This examina- 
tion over, More, with his wonted ingenuity 
and gentleness, conveyed the result to his 
master. "To be plain with your grace, 
neither your bishops, wise and virtuous 
though they be, nor myself, nor any other 
of your council, by reason of your manifold 
benefits bestowed on us. are meet counsel- 
lors for your grace herein. If you mind to 
understand the truth, consult St. Jerome, St. 
Augustin, and other holy doctors of the Greek 
and Latin churches, who will not be inclined 
to deceive you by respect of their own worldly 
commodity, or by fear of your princely dis- 
pleasure. "f Though the King did not like 
what " was disagreeable to his desires, yet 
the language of More was so wisely temper- 
ed, that for the present he look it in good 
part, and oftentimes had conferences with 
the chancellor thereon." The native meek- 
ness of More was probably more effectual 
than all the arts by which courtiers ingratiate 
themselves, or insinuate unpalatable counsel. 
Shortly after, the King again moved him to 
weigh and consider the great matter : the 
chancellor fell down on his knees, and re- 
minding Henry of his own words on deliver- 
ing the great seal, which were, — " First look 
upon God, and after God upon me," added, 
that nothing had ever so pained him as that 
he was not able to serve him in that matter, 
without a breach of that original injunction. 
The King said he was content to continue 
his favour, and never with that matter mo- 
lest his conscience afterwards ; but when the 
progress towards the marriage was so far 
advanced that the chancellor saw how soon 
his active co-operation must be required, he 
made suit to his " singular dear friend," the 
Duke of Norfolk, to procure his discharge 
from office. The duke, often solicited by 
More, then obtained, by importunate suit, a 
clear discharge for the chancellor ; and upon 
the repairing to the King, to resign the great 
seal into his hands, Henry received him with 
thanks and praise for his worthy service, and 
assured him, that in any suit that should 
either concern his honour or appertain unto 
his profit, he would show himself a good 
and gracious master to his faithful servant. 
He then further directed Norfolk, when he 



installed his successor, to declare publicly, 
"that his majesty had with pain yielded to 
the prayers of Sir Thomas More, by the re- 
moval of such a magistrate."* 

At the time of his resignation More assert- 
ed, and circumstances, without reference to 
his character, demonstrate the truth of his 
assertion, that his whole income, independ- 
ent of grants from the crown, did not amount 
to more than 50/. yearly. This was not more 
than an eighth part of his gains at the bar 
and his judicial salary from the city of Lon- 
don taken together; — so great was the pro- 
portion in which his fortune had declined 
during eighteen years of employment in 
offices of such trust, advantage, and honour. t 
In this situation the clergy voted, as a testi- 
monial of their gratitude to him, the sum of 
5000L, which, according to the rate of inte- 
rest at that time, would have yielded him 
500?. a year, being ten times the yearly sum 
which he could then call his own. But good 
and honourable as he knew their messengers, 
of whom Tunstall was one, to be, he declar- 
ed, u that he tcould rather cast their money 
into the sea than lake it ;." — not speaking from 
a boastful pride, most foreign from his nature, 
but shrinking with a sort of instinctive deli- 
cacy from the touch of money, even before 
he considered how much the acceptance of 
the gift might impair his usefulness. 

His resources were of a nobler nature. 
The simplicity of his tastes, and the mode- 
ration of his indulgences rendered retrench- 
ment a task so easy to himself, as to be 
scarcely perceptible in his personal habits. 
His fool or jester, then a necessary part of a 
great man's establishment, he gave to the 
lord mayor for the time being. His first care 
was to provide for his attendants, by placing 
his gentlemen and yeomen with peers and 
prelates, and his eight watermen in the ser- 
vice of his successor Sir T. Audley r , to whom 
he gave his great, barge, — one of the most 
indispensable appendages of his office in an 
age when carriages were unknown. His sor- 
rows were for separation from those whom 
he loved. He called together his children 
and grandchildren, who had hitherto lived 
in peace and love under his patriarchal roof, 
and, lamenting that he could not, as he was 
wont, and as he gladly would, bear out the 
whole charges of them all himself, continue 
living together as they were wont, he prayed 
them to give him their counsel on this trying 
occasion. When he saw them silent, and 
unwilling to risk their opinion, he gave them 
his, seasoned with his natural gaiety^ and 
containing some strokes illustrative of the 
state of society at that time : — " I have been 
brought up," quoth he, '• at Oxford, at an inn 
of chancery, at Lincoln's Inn, and also in the 
king's court, from the lowest degree to the 
highest, and yet I have at present left me lit-* 
tie above 1001. a year" (including the king's 



Roper, p. 32. 



t Ibid. p. 48. 



* " Honorifice jussit rex de me testatum reddere 
quod asgre ad preces meas me demiserit." — More 
to Erasmus. 

t Apology, chap. x. 



LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 



73 



grants;) "so that now if we like to live to- 
gether we must be content to be contributa- 
ries together ; but we must not fall to the low- 
est fare first: — we will begin with Lincoln's 
Inn diet, where many right worshipful and 
of good years do live full well; which, if we 
find not ourselves the first year able to main- 
tain, then will we the next year go one step 
to New Inn fare : if that year exceed our abili- 
ty, we will the next year descend to Oxford 
fare, where many grave, learned, and ancient 
fathers are continually conversant. If our 
ability stretch not to maintain either, then 
may we yet with bags and wallets go a beg- 
ging together, and hoping for charity at every 
man's door, to sing Salve regina; and so still 
keep company and be merry together."* On 
the Sunday following his resignation, he stood 
at the door of his wife's pew in the church, 
where one of, his dismissed gentlemen had 
been used to stand, and making a low obei- 
sance to Alice as she entered, said to her with 
perfect gravity, — "Madam, my lord is gone." 
He who for seventeen years had not raised his 
voice in displeasure, could not be expected 
to sacrifice the gratification of his innocent 
merriment to the heaviest blows of fortune. 

Nor did he at fit times fail to prepare his 
beloved children for those more cruel strokes 
which he began to foresee. Discoursing with 
them, he enlarged on the happiness of suf- 
fering for the love of God, the loss of goods, 
of liberty, of lands, of life. He would further 
say unto them, " that if he might perceive 
his wife and children would encourage him 
to die in a good cause, it should so comfort 
him, that for very joy, it would make him 
run merrily to death." 

It must be owned that Henry felt the 
weight of this great man's opinion, and tried 
every possible means to obtain at least the 
appearance of his spontaneous approbation. 
Tunstall and other prelates were command- 
ed to desire his attendance at the coronation 
of Anne at Westminster. They wrote a let- 
ler to persuade him to comply, and accom- 
panied it with the needful present of 20Z. to 
buy a court dress. Such overtures he had 
foreseen ; for he said some time before to 
Roper, when he first heard of that marriage, 
"God grant, son Roper, that these matters 
within a while be not confirmed with oaths !" 
He accordingly answered his friends the bi- 
shops well : — " Take heed, my lords : by pro- 
curing your lordships to be present at the 
coronation, they will next ask you to preach 
for the setting forth thereof; and finally to 
write books to all the world in defence 
thereof." 

Another opportunity soon presented itself 
for trying to subdue the obstinacy of More, 
whom a man of violent nature might believe 
to be fearful, because he was peaceful. 
Elizabeth Barton, called " the holy maid of 
Kent," who had been, for a considerable 
number of years, afflicted by convulsive 
maladies, felt her morbid susceptibility so 



Roper, pp. 51, 52. 
10 



excited by Henry's profane defiance of the 
Catholic Church, and his cruel desertion of 
Catharine, his faithful wife, that her pious 
and humane feelings led her to represent, 
and probably to believe, herself to be visited 
by a divine revelation of those punishments 
which the King was about to draw down on 
himself and on the kingdom. In the univer- 
sal opinion of the sixteenth century, such in- 
terpositions were considered as still occurring. 
The neighbours and visiters of the unfortu- 
nate young woman believed her ravings to 
be prophecies, and the contortions of her 
body to be those of a frame heaving and 
struggling under the awful agitations of di- 
vine inspiration, and confirmed that convic- 
tion of a mission from God, for which she 
was predisposed by her own pious benevo- 
lence, combined with the general error of the 
age. Both Fisher and More appear not to 
have altogether disbelieved her pretensions : 
More expressly declared, that he durst not 
and would not be bold in judging her mira- 
cles.* In the beginning of her prophecies, 
the latter had been commanded by the King 
to inquire into her case : and he made a re- 
port to Henry, who agreed with him in con- 
sidering the whole of her miraculous preten- 
sions as frivolous, and deserving no farther 
regard. But in 1532, several monks f so 
magnified her performances to More that he 
was prevailed on to see her ; but refused to 
hear her speak about the King, saying to her,, 
in general terms, that he had no desire to 
pry into the concerns of others.. Pursuant, 
as it is said, to a sentence by or in the Star 
Chamber, she stood in the pillory at Paul's 
Cross, acknowledging herself to be guilty of 
the imposture of claiming inspiration, and 
saying that she was tempted to this fraud by 
the instigation of the devil. Considering the 
circumstances of the case, and the character 
of the parties, it is far more probable that the 
ministers should have obtained a false con- 
fession from her hopes of saving her life, than 
that a simple woman should have contrived 
and carried on, for many years, a system of 
complicated and elaborate imposture. It 
would not be inconsistent with this aquittal, 
to allow that, in the course of her self-delu- 
sion, she should have been induced, by some 
ecclesiastics of the tottering Church, to take 
an active part in these pious frauds, which 
there is too much reason to believe that per- 
sons of unfeigned religion have been often 
so far misguided by enthusiastic zeal, as to 
perpetrate or to patronize. But whatever 
were the motives or the extent of the " holy 
maid's" confession, it availed her nothing; 
for in the session of parliament which met 
in January, 1534, she and her ecclesiastical 
prompters were attainted of high treason, and 
adjudged to suffer death as traitors. Fisher, 
bishop of Rochester, and others, were attain- 
ted of misprision, or concealment of treason, 
for which they were adjudged to forfeiture 



* Letter to Cromwell, probably written in the 
end of 1532. 
t Of whom some were afterwards executed. 
G 



74 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



and imprisonment during the King's plea- 
sure.* The u holy maid." with her spiritual 
guides, suffered death at Tyburn on (he 21st 
of April, she confirming her former confes- 
sion, but laying her crime to the charge of 
her companions, if we may implicitly believe 
the historians of the victorious party. t 

Fisher ami his supposed accomplices in 
misprision remained in prison according to 
their attainder. Of More the statute makes 
no mention; but it contains a provision, 
which, when it is combined with other cir- 
cumstances to be presently related, appeals 
to have been added to the bill for the pur- 
pose of providing for his safety. By this 
provision, the King's majesty, at the humble 
suit of his well beloved wife Queen Anne, 
pardons all persons not expressly by name 
attainted by the statute, for all misprision 
and concealments relating to the false and 
feigned miracles and prophecies of Elizabeth 
Barton, on or before the 20th day of October, 
1533. Now we are told by Roper,t -that 
Sir Thomas More's name was originally in- 
serted in the bill," the King supposing that 
this bill would "to Sir Thomas More be so 
troublous and terrible, that it would force 
him to relent and condescend to his request ; 
wherein his grace was much deceived." 
More was personally to have been received 
to make answer in his own defence : but the 
King, not liking that, sent the Archbishop of 
Canterbury, the Chancellor, the Duke of Nor- 
folk, and Cromwell, to attempt his conver- 
sion. Audley reminded More of the King's 
special favour and many benefits: More ad- 
mitted them; but modestly added, that his 
highness had most graciously declared that 
on this matter he should be molested no 
more. When in the end they saw that no 
persuasion could move him, they then said, 
" that the King's highness had given them 
in commandment, if they could by no gen- 
tleness win him, in the King's name with 
ingratitude to charge him, that never was 
servant to his master so villainous. § nor sub- 
ject to his prince so traitorous as he." They 
even reproached him for having either writ- 
ten in the name of his master, or betrayed 
his sovereign into writing, the book against 
Luther, which had so deeply pledged Henry 
to the support of Papal pretensions. To 
these upbraidings he calmly answered :— 
"The terrors are arguments for children, 
and not for me. As to the fact, the King 
knoweth, that after the book was finished by 
his highness's appointment, or the consent of 
the maker, I was only a sorter out and placer 
of the principal matters therein contained." 

* 25 H. viii. c. 12. 

t Such as Hall and Holinshed. t p. 62. 

§ Like a slave or a villain. The word in the 
mouth of these gentlemen appears to have been 
in a state of transition, about the middle point be- 
tween the original sense of " like a slave," and 
its modern acceptation of mean or malignant of- 
fenders. What proof is not supplied by this single 
fact in the history of the language of the masters, 
of their conviction, that the slavery maintained by 
them doomed the slaves to depravity ! 



He added, that he had warned the King of 
the prudence of " touching the pope's au- 
thority more slenderly, and that he had re- 
minded Henry of the statutes of ■premunirc^ 
whereby ' a good part of the pope"s pastoral 
care was pared away;" and thai impetuous 
monarch had answered. '• We are so' much 
bounden unto (he See of Rome, that we can- 
not do too much honour unto it." On More's 
return to Chelsea from his interview with 
these. lords, Roper said to him : — " I hope all 
is well, since you are so merry ?" — " It is so, 
indeed." said More, "I thank God."— "Are 
you, then, out of the parliament bill?" said 
Roper — '"By my troth. I never remembered 
it ; but," said More, " 'i will tell thee why I 
was so merry; because I had given the devil a 
foul fall, and that with those lords I had gone 
so far, as without great shame I can never 
go back again." This frank avowal of the 
power of temptation, and this simple joy at 
having at the hazard of life escaped from 
the farther seductions of the court, bestows 
a greatness on these few and familiar words 
which scarcely belongs to any other of the 
sayings of man. 

Henry, incensed at the failure of wheedling 
and threatening measures, broke out into vio- 
lent declarations of his resolution to include 
More in the attainder, and said that he 
should be personally present to insure the 
passing of the bill. Lord Audley and his 
colleagues on their knees besought their 
master to forbear, lest by an overthrow in 
his own presence, he might be contemned by 
his own subjects, and dishonoured through- 
out Christendom for ever, — adding, that they 
doubted not that they should find a more 
meet occasion " to serve his turn ;" for that 
in this case of the nun he was so clearly in- 
nocent, that men deemed him far worthier 
of praise than of reproof. Henry was com- 
pelled to yield.* Such was the power of 
defenceless virtue over the slender remains 
of independence among slavish peers, and 
over the lingering remnants of common hu- 
manity which might still be mingled with a 
cooler policy in the bosoms of subservient 
politicians. One of the worst of that race, 
Thomas Cromwell, on meeting Roper in the 
Parliament House next day after the King 
assented to the prayer of his ministers, told 
him to tell More that he was put out of the 
bill. Roper sent a messenger to Margaret 
Roper, who hastened to her beloved father 
with the tidings. More answered her, with 
his usual gaiety and fondness, "In faith, 
Megg, what is put off is not given up."t 



* The House of Lords addressed the King, 
praying him to declare whether it would be agree- 
able to his pleasure that Sir Thomas More and 
others should not be heard in their own defence 
before "the lords in the royal senate called the 
Stere Chamber." Nothing more appears on the 
Journals relating to this matter. Lords' Journals, 
fith March, 1533. The Journals prove the narra- 
tive of Roper, from which the text is composed, 
to be as accurate as it is beautiful. 

t He spoke to her in his conversational Latin, — 
" Quod differtur non aufertur." 



LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 



75 



Soon after, the Duke of Norfolk said to him. 
— u By the mass ! Master More, it is peril- 
ous striving with princes; the anger of a 
prince brings death." — - : Is that all. my lord ? 
then the difference between you and me is 
but this, — that I shall die to-day. and you to- 
morrou'.'' ) No life in Plutarch is more full 
of happy sayings and striking retorts than 
that of More; but the terseness and liveli- 
ness of his are justly overlooked in the 
contemplation of that union of perfect sim- 
plicity with moral grandeur, which, perhaps, 
no other human being has so uniformly 
reached . 

By a tyrannical edict, miscalled a a law," 
in the same session of 1533-4, it was made 
high treason, after the 1st of May, 1534, by 
writing, print, deed or act, to do or to pro- 
cure, or cause to be done or procured, any 
thing to the prejudice, slander, disturbance, 
or derogation of the King's lawful matrimony 
with Queen Anne. If the same offences 
should be committed by words, they were 
to be only misprision. The same act en- 
joined all persons to take an oath to main- 
tain its whole contents ; and an obstinate re- 
fusal to make oath was subjected to the 
penalties of misprision. No form of oath 
was enacted, but on the 30th of March,* 
1534. which was the day of closing the ses- 
sion, the Chancellor Audley, when the com- 
mons were at the bar, but when they could 
neither deliberate nor assent, read the King's 
letters patent, containing one, and appointing 
the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Chancel- 
lor, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, to be 
commissioners for administering it. 

More was summoned to appear before 
these commissioners at Lambeth, on Mon- 
day the 13th of April. On other occasions 
he had used, at his departure from his wife 
and children, whom he tenderly loved, to 
have them brought to his boat, and there to 
kiss them, and bid them all farewell. At 
this time he would suffer none of them to 
follow him forth of the gate, but pulled the 
wicket after him, and shut them all from 
him. and with Roper and four servants took 
boat towards Lambeth. He sat for a while; 
but at last, his mind being lightened and re- 
lieved by those high principles to which with 
him every low consideration yielded, whis- 
pered : — " Son Roper ! I thank our Lord, the 
field is won." — -As I conjectured," says 
Roper. " it was for that his love to God con- 
quered his carnal affections." What follows 
is from an account of his conduct during the 
subsequent examination at Lambeth, sent to 
his darling child, Margaret Roper. After 
having read the statute and the form of the 
oath, he declared his readiness to swear that 
he would maintain and defend the order of 
succession to the crown as established by 
parliament. He disclaimed all censure of 
those who had imposed, or on those who had 
taken, the oath, but declared it to be impos- 
sible that he could swear to the whole con- 



* Lords' Journals, vol. i. p. 82. 



tents of it, without offending against his own 
conscience; adding, that if they doubted 
whether his refusal proceeded from pure 
scruple of conscience or from his own phan- 
tasies, he was willing to satisfy their doubts 
by oath. The commissioners urged that he 
was the first who refused it ; they showed 
him the subscriptions of all the lords and 
commons who had sworn; and they held 
out the King's sure displeasure against him 
should he be the single recusant. When he 
was called on a second time, they charged 
him with obstinacy for not mentioning any 
special part of the oath which wounded his 
conscience. He answered, that if he were 
to open his reasons for refusal farther, he 
should exasperate the King still more : he 
offered, however, to assign them if the lords 
would procure the King's assurance' that the 
avowal of the grounds of his defence should 
not be considered as offensive to the King, 
nor prove dangerous to himself. The com- 
missioners answered that such assurances 
would be no defence against a legal charge : 
he offered, however, to trust himself to the 
King's honour. Cranmer took some advan- 
tage of More's candour, urging that, as he 
had disclaimed all blame of those w ho had 
sworn, it was evident that he thought it only 
doubtful whether the oath was unlawful ; 
and desired him to consider whether the ob- 
ligation to obey the King was not absolutely 
certain. More was struck with the subtilty 
of this reasoning, which took him by sur- 
prise, — but not convinced of its solidity : 
notwithstanding his surprise, he seems to 
have almost touched upon the true answer, 
that as the oath contained a profession of 
opinion, — such, for example, as the lawful- 
ness of the King's marriage, on which men 
might differ, — it might be declined by some 
and taken by others with equal honesty. 
Cromwell, whom More believed to favour 
him, loudly swore that he would rather see 
his only son had lost his head than that More 
had thus refused the oath; he it was who 
bore the answer to the King, the Chancellor 
Audley distinctly enjoining him to state very 
clearly More's willingness to swear to the 
succession. ''Surely," said More, "as to 
swearing to the succession, I see no peril." 
Cromwell was not a good man ; but the gen- 
tle virtue of More subdued even the bad. 
To his own house More never more returned, 
being on the same day committed to the 
custody of the Abbot of Westminster, in 
which he continued four days; and at the 
end of that time, on Friday the 17th, he was 
conveyed to the Tower.* 



* Roper tells us that the King, who had intended 
to desist from his importunities, was exasperated 
by Queen Anne's clamour to tender the oath at 
Lambeth ; but he detested that unhappy lady, 
whose marriage was the occasion of More's ruin: 
and though Roper was an unimpeachable witness 
relating to Sir Thomas' conversation, he is of less 
weight as to what passed in the interior of the 
palace. The ministers might have told such a 
story to excuse themselves to Roper : Anne could 
have had no opportunity of contradiction. 



76 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



Soon after the commencement of the ses- 
sion, which began on the 3d of November 
following,* an act was passed which ratified, 
and professed to recite, the form of oath pro- 
mulgated on the day of the prorogation : and 
enacted that the oath therein recited should 
be reputed to be the very oath intended by the 
former act ;t though there were, in fact, some 
substantial and important interpolations in 
the latter act; — such as the words '-'most 
dear and entirely beloved, lawful wife, Queen 
Anne," which tended to render that form 
still less acceptable than before, to the scru- 
pulous consciences of More and Fisher. Be- 
fore the end of the same session two statutes* 
were passed attainting More and Fisher of 
misprision of treason, and specifying the pun- 
ishment to be imprisonment of body and loss 
of goods. By that which relates to More, 
the King's grants of land to him in 1523 and 
1525 are resumed ; it is also therein recited 
that he refused the oath since the 1st of May 
of 1534, with an intent to sow sedition ; and 
he is reproached for having demeaned him- 
self in other respects ungratefully and un- 
kindly to the King, his benefactor. 

That this statement of the legislative mea- 
sures which preceded it is necessary to a 
consideration of the legality of More's trial, 
which must be owned to be a part of its jus- 
tice, will appear in its proper place. In the 
mean time, the few preparatory incidents 
which occurred during thirteen months' im- 
prisonment, must be briefly related. His 
wife Alice, though an excellent housewife, 
yet in her visits to the Tower handled his 
misfortunes and his scruples loo roughly. 
"Like an ignorant, and somewhat worldly, 
woman, she bluntly said to him, — 'How can 
a man taken for wise, like you, play the fool 
in this close filthy prison, when you might 
be abroad at your liberty, if you would but 
do as the bishops have done 1 ?'" She en- 
larged on his fair house at Chelsea — "his 
library, gallery, garden, and orchard, together 
with the company of his wife and children." 
He bore with kindness in its most unpleasing 
form, and answered her cheerfully after his 
manner, which was to blend religious feeling 
with quaintness and liveliness : — "Is not this 
house as nigh heaven as mine own'?" She 
answered him in what then appears to have 
been a homely exclamation of contempt,^ 
" TiUy valle, iilly vdlle. "|| He treated her 
harsh language as a wholesome exercise for 
his patience, and replied with equal mild- 
ness, though with more gravity, "Why should 
I joy in my gay house, when, if I should rise 
from the grave in seven years, I should not 
fail to find some one there who would bid 
me to go out of doors, for it was none of 
mine?" It was not thus that his Margaret 
Roper conversed or corresponded with him 

* 26 H. VIII. c. 2. 

1 25 Id. c. 22. § 9. Compare Lords' Journals, 
vol. i. p. 82. 

X 26 H. VIII. c. 22, 23. 

i Roper, p. 78. 

II Nares' Glossary, London, 1822. 



during his confinement. A short note writ- 
ten to her a little while after his conmit- 
ment, with a coal (his only pen and ink) 
begins, "'Mine own good daughter," and 
is closed in the following fond and pious 
words: — "Written with a coal, by your ten- 
der loving father, who in his poor prayers 
forgetteth none of you, nor your babes, nor 
your good husband, nor your father's shrewd 
wife neither." Shortly after, mistaking the 
sense of a letter from her, which he thought 
advised him to compliance, he wrote a rebuke 
of her supposed purpose with the utmost 
vehemence of affection, and the deepest re- 
gard to her judgment ! — " I hear many terri- 
ble things towards me; but they all never 
touched me, never so near, nor were they so- 
grievous unto me as to see you, my well be- 
loved child, in such a piteous and vehement 
manner, labour to persuade me to a thing 
whereof I have of pure necessity, for respect 
unto myne own soul, so often given you so 
precise an answer before. The matters that 
move my conscience I have sundry times 
shown you, that I will disclose them to no 
one."* Margaret's reply was worthy of 
herself: she acquiesces in his "faithful and 
delectable letter, the faithful messenger of 
his virtuous mind," and almost rejoices in 
his victory over all earthborn cares ; — con- 
cluding thus: — "Your own most loving obe- 
dient daughter and bedeswoman,t Margaret 
Roper, who desireth above all worldly things 
to be in John Wood's! stede to do you some 
service." After some time pity prevailed so- 
far that she obtained the King's licence to 
resort to her father in the Tower. On her 
first visit, after gratefully performing their 
accustomed devotions, his first care was to 
soothe her afflicted heart by the assurance 
that he saw no cause to reckon himself in 
worse case there than in his own house. On 
another occasion he asked her how Queen 
Anne did? "'In faith, father," said she, 
"never better." — "Never better, Megg!" 
quoth he ; "alas ! Megg, it pitieth me to re- 
member into what misery, poor soul, she 
shall shortly come." Various attempts con- 
tinued still to be made to cajole him ; partly, 
perhaps, with the hope that his intercourse 
with ihe beloved Margaret might have soft- 
ened him. Cromwell told him that the King 
was still his good master, and did not wish 
to press his conscience. The lords commis- 
sioners went twice to the Tower to tender 
the oath to him : but neither he nor Fisher 
would advance farther than their original 
declaration of perfect willingness to maintain 
the settlement of the crown, which, being a 
matter purely political, was within the un- 
disputed competence of parliament. They 
refused to include in their oath any other 
matter on account of scruples of conscience, 
which they forbore to particularise, lest they 
might thereby furnish their enemies with a 



* English Woiks, vol. i. p. 1430. 
t His waiting-man, Ibid. p. 1431. 
— one who prays for another. 
t Roper, p. 72. 



Bedesman 



LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 



77 



pretext for representing their defence as a | 
new crime. A statement of their real ground 
of objection, — that it would be insincere in 
them to declare upon oath, that they be- 
lieved the King's marriage with Anne to be 
lawful, — might, in defending themselves 
against a charge of misprision of treason, 
have exposed them to the penalties of high 
treason. 

Two difficulties occurred in reconciling 
the destruction of the victim with any form 
or colour of law. The first of them consisted 
in the circumstance that the naked act of 
refusing the oath was, even by the late 
statute, punishable only as a misprision ; and 
though concealment of treason was never 
expressly declared to be only a misprision 
till the statute to that effect was passed un- 
der Philip and Mary,* — chiefly perhaps oc- 
casioned by the case of More, — yet it seemed 
strange thus to prosecute him for the refusal, 
as an act of treason, after it had been posi- 
tively made punishable as a misprision by a 
general statute, and after a special act of 
attainder for misprision had been passed 
against him. Both these enactments were, 
on the supposition of the refusal being in- 
dictable for treason, absolutely useless, and 
such as tended to make More believe that 
he was safe as long as he remained silent. 
The sacond has been already intimated, that 
he had yet said nothing which could be tor- 
tured into a semblance of those acts deroga- 
tory to the King's marriage, which had been 
made treason. To conquer this last diffi- 
culty, Sir Robin Rich, the solicitor-general, 
undertook the infamous task of betraying 
More into some declaration, in a confidential 
conversation, and under pretext of familiar 
friendship, which might be pretended to be 
treasonable. What the success of this flagi- 
tious attempt was, the reader will see in the 
account of More's trial. It appears from a 
letter of Margaret Roper, apparently written 
sometime in the winter, that his persecutors 
now tried another expedient for vanquishing 
his constancy, by restraining him from at- 
tending church; and she adds, "from the 
company of my good mother and his poor 
children.""! More, in his answer, expresses 
his wonted affection in very familiar, but in 
most significant language: — "If I were to 
declare in writing how much pleasure your 
daughterly loving letters gave me, a peck of 
coais would not suffice to make the pens." 
So confident was he of his innocence, and so 
safe did he deem himself on the side of law, 
that "he believed some new causeless sus- 
picion, founded upon some secret sinister in- 
formation," had risen up against him. J 

On the 2d or 3d of May, 1535, More in- 
formed his dear daughter of a visit from 
Cromwell, attended by the attorney and so- 
licitor-general, and certain civilians, at which 
Cromwell had urged to him the statute which 



* 1 & 2 Phil, and Mar. c. 10. 
t English Works, vol. i. p. 1446. 
t Ibid. p. 1447. 



made the King head of the Church, and re- 
quired an answer on that subject ; and that 
he had replied : — "'I am the King's true 
faithful subject, and daily bedesman : I say 
no harm, and do no harm : and if this be not 
enough to keep a man alive, in good faith I 
long not to live." This ineffectual attempt 
was followed by another visit from Cranmer, 
the Chancellor, the Duke of Suffolk, the Earl 
of Wiltshire, and Cromwell, who, after much 
argument, tendered an oath, by which he 
was to promise to make answers to questions 
which they might put ;* and on his decisive 
refusal, Cromwell gave him to understand 
that, agreeably to the language at the former 
conference, "his grace would follow the 
course of his laws towards such as he should 
find obstinate." Cranmer, who too generally 
complied with evil counsels, but nearly al- 
ways laboured to prevent their execution, 
wrote a persuasive letter to Cromwell, ear- 
nestly praying the King to be content with 
More and Fisher's proffered engagement to 
maintain the succession, which would ren- 
der the whole nation unanimous on the prac- 
tical part of that great subject. 

On the 6th of the same month, almost im- 
mediately after the defeat of every attempt 
to practise on his firmness, More was brought 
to trial at Westminster; and it will scarcely 
be doubted, that no such culprit stood at any 
European bar for a thousand years. It is 
rather from caution than from necessity that 
the ages of Roman domination are excluded 
from the comparison. It does not seem that 
in any moral respect Socrates himself could 
claim a superiority. It is lamentable that 
the records of the proceedings against such 
a man should be scanty. We do not cer- 
tainly know the specific offence of which he 
was convicted. There does not seem, how- 
ever, to be much doubt that the prosecution 
was under the act "for the establishment 
of the king's succession," passed in the ses- 
sion of 1 533-4, t which made it high treason 
"to do anything to the prejudice, slander, 
disturbance, or derogation of the lawful mar- 
riage" between Henry and Anne. Almost 
any act, done or declined, might be forced 
within the undefined limits of such vague 
terms. In this case the prosecutors proba- 
bly represented his refusal to answer certain 
questions which, according to them, must 
have related to the marriage, his observa- 
tions at his last examination, and especially 
his conversation with Rich, as overt acts of 
that treason, inasmuch as it must have been 
known by him that his conduct on these oc- 
casions tended to create a general doubt of 
the legitimacy of the marriage. 

To the first alleged instance of his resist- 
ance to the King, which consisted in his 
original judgment against the marriage, he 
answered in a manner which rendered reply 
impossible ; "that it could never be treason 
for one of the King's advisers to give him 

* English Works, vol. i. p. 1452. 
t 25 H. VIII. c. 22. 
G2 



78 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



honest advice.'' On the like refusal respect- 
ing the King's headship of the Church, he 
answered that " no man could be punished 
for silence." The attorney-general said, that 
the prisoner's silence was "malicious:" — 
More justly answered, that "he had a right 
to be silent where his language was likely 
to be injuriously misconstrued." Respect- 
ing his letters "to Bishop Fisher, they were 
burnt, and no evidence was offered of their 
contents, which he solemnly declared to have 
no relation to the charges. And as to the 
last charge, that he had called the Act of Set- 
tlement "a two-edged sword, which would 
destroy his soul if he complied with it, and 
his body if he refused," it was answered by 
him, that "he supposed the reason of his 
refusal to be equally good, whether the 
question led to an offence against his con- 
science, or to the necessity of criminating 
himself." 

Cromwell had before told him, that though 
he was suffering perpetual imprisonment for 
the misprision, that punishment did not re- 
lease him from his allegiance, and that he 
was amenable to the law for treason ; — over- 
looking the essential circumstances, that the 
facts laid as treason were the same on which 
the attainder for misprision was founded. 
Even if this were not a strictly maintainable 
objection in technical law, it certainly show- 
ed the flagrant injustice of the whole pro- 
ceed ing. 

The evidence, however, of any such strong 
circumstances attendant on the refusal as 
could raise it into an act of treason must 
have seemed defective ; for the prosecutors 
were reduced to the necessity of examining 
Rich, one of their own number, to prove cir- 
cumstances of which he could have had no 
knowledge, without the foulest treachery on 
his part. He said, that he had gone to More 
as a friend, and had asked him, if an act of 
parliament had made him, Rich, king, would 
not he, More, acknowledge him. More had 
said, "Yes, sir, that I would'?" — "If they 
declared me pope, would you acknowledge 
me?" — "In the first case. I have no doubt 
about temporal governments; but suppose 
the parliament should make a law that God 
should not be God, would you then, Mr. 
Rich, say that God should not be God ?" — 
"No," says Rich, "no parliament could 
make such a law." Rich went on to swear, 
that More had added, "No more could the 
parliament make the King the supreme head 
of the Church." More denied the latter 
part of Rich's evidence altogether ; which is, 
indeed, inconsistent with the whole tenor 
of his language : he was then compelled to 
expose the profligacy of Rich's character. 
"I am," he said, "more sorry for your per- 
jury, than for mine own peril. Neither I, nor 
any man, ever took you to be a person of 
such credit as I could communicate with on 
such matters. We dwelt near in one parish, 
and you were always esteemed very light of 
your tongue, and not of any commendable 
fame. Can it be likely to your lordships that 



I should so unadvisedly overshoot myself, as 
to trust Mr. Rich with what I have concealed 
from the King, or any of his noble and grave 
counsellors ?" The credit of Rich was so 
deeply wounded, that he was compelled to 
call Sir Richard Southwell and Mr. Palmer, 
who were present at the conversation, to 
prop his tottering evidence. They made a 
paltry excuse, by alleging that they were so 
occupied in removing More's books, that 
they did not listen to the words of this ex- 
traordinary conversation. 

The jury,* in spite of all these circum- 
stances, returned a verdict of "guilty." 
Chancellor Audley, who was at the head of 
the commission, of which Spelman and Fitz- 
herbert, eminent lawyers, were members, 
was about to pronounce judgment, when he 
was interrupted by More, who claimed the 
usual privilege of being heard to show that 
judgment should not be passed. More urged, 
that he had so much ground for his scruples 
as at least to exempt his refusal from the 
imputation of disaffection, or of what the 
law deems to be malice. The chancellor 
asked him once more how his scruples could 
balanpe the weight of the parliament, peo- 
ple, and Church of England ? — a topic which 
had been used against him at every inter- 
view and conference since he was brought 
prisoner to Lambeth. The appeal to weight 
of authority influencing Conscience was,how- 
ever, singularly unfortunate. More answer- 
ed, as he had always done, "Nine out of ten 
of Christians now in the world think with 
me ; nearly all the learned doctors and holy 
fathers who are already dead, agree with 
me ; and therefore I think myself not bound 
to conform my conscience to the councell of 
one realm against the general consent of all 
Christendom." Chief Justice Fitzjames con- 
curred in the sufficiency of the indictment ; 
which, after the verdict of the jury, was the 
only matter before the court. 

The chancellor then pronounced the sa- 
vage sentence which the law then directed 
in cases of treason. More, having no longer 
any measures to keep, openly declared, that 
after seven years' study, " he could find no 
colour for holding that a layman could be 
head of the Church." The commissioners 
once more offered him a favourable audience 
for any matter which he had to propose. — 
"More have I not to say, my lords," he re- 
plied, " but that as St. Paul held the clothes 
of those who stoned Stephen to death, and 
as they are both now saints in heaven, and 
shall continue there friends for ever; so I 
verily trust, and shall therefore right heartily 
pray, that though your lordships have now 
here on earth been judges to my condemna- 
tion, we may, nevertheless, hereafter cheer- 



* Sir T. Pnlmer, Sir T. Bent, G. Lovell, es- 
quire. Thomas Burbage, esquire, nnd G. Cham- 
ber, Edward Stoekmore, William Brown. Ja.-per 
Leake. Thomas Brllington, John Pamell, Ri- 
chard Bellamy, and G. Stoakes. genllemen, were 
the jury. 



LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 



79 



fully meet in heaven, in everlasting salva- 
tion."* 

Sir VV. Kingston, " his very dear friend," 
constable of the Tower, as, with tears run- 
ning down his cheeks, he conducted him 
from Westminster, condoled with his prison- 
er, who endeavoured to assuage the sorrow 
of his friend by the consolations of religion. 
The same gentleman said afterwards to 
Roper, — " I was ashamed of myself when I 
found my heart so feeble, and his so strong." 
Margaret Roper, his good angel, watched for 
his landing at the Tower wharf. "After his 
blessing upon her knees reverently received, 
without care of herself, pressing in the midst 
of the throng, and the guards that were about 
him with halberts and bills, she hastily ran 
to him, and openly, in sight of them all, em- 
braced and kissed him. He gave her again 
his fatherly blessing. After separation she, 
all ravished with the entire love of her dear 
father, suddenly turned back again, ran to 
him as before, took him about the neck, and 
divers times kissed him most lovingly, — a 
sight which made many of the beholders 
weep and mourn. "t Thus tender was the 
heart of the admirable woman who had at 
the same time the greatness of soul to 
strengthen her father's fortitude, by disclaim- 
ing the advice for which he, having mistaken 
her meaning, had meekly rebuked her. — to 
prefer life to right. 

On the 14th of June, More was once more 
examined by four civilians in the Tower. 
" He was asked, first, whether he would 
obey the King as supreme head of the 
Church of England on earth immediately 
under Christ 1 to which he said, that he could 
make no answer: secondly, whether he 
would consent to the King's marriage with 
jiueen Anne, and affirm the marriage with 
the lady Catharine to have been unlawful ? 
to which he answered that he did never 
speak nor meddle against the same : and, 
thirdly, whether he was not bound to answer 
the said question, and to recognise the head- 
ship as aforesaid 1 to which he said, that he 
could make no answer. "J It is evident that 
these interrogatories, into which some terms 
peculiarly objectionable to More were now 
for the first time inserted, were contrived 
for the sole purpose of reducing the illustri- 
ous victim to the option of uttering a lie, or 
of suffering death. The conspirators against 
him might, perhaps, have had a faint idea 
that they had at length broken his spirit ; 
and if he persisted, they might have hoped 
that he could be represented as bringing de- 
struction on himself by his own obstinacy. 
Such, however, was his calm and well-order- 
ed mind, that he said and did nothing to pro- 
voke his fate. Had he given affirmative 
answers, he would have sworn falsely : he 
was the martyr of veracity ; he perished 
only because he was sincere. 

On Monday, the 5th of July, he wrote a 
farewell letter to Margaret Roper, with his 



* Roper, p. 90. f Ibid. p. 90. t Ibid. p. 92. 



usual materials of coal. It contained bless- 
ings on all his children byname, with a kind 
remembrance even to one of Margaret's 
maids. Adverting to their last interview, 
on the quay, he says. — "I never liked your 
manner towards me better than when you 
kissed me last ; for I love when daughterly- 
love ami dear charity have no leisure to look 
to worldly courtesy."' 

Early the next morning Sir Thomas Pope, 
•'•'his singular good friend," came to him 
with a message from the King and council, 
to say that he should die before nine o'clock 
of the same morning. "The King's plea- 
sure," said Pope, "is that you shall not use 
many words." — :, I did purpose," answered 
More, "to have spoken somewhat, but I 
will conform myself to the King's command- 
ment, and I beseech you to obtain from him 
that my daughter Margaret may be present 
at my burial." — "The King is already con- 
tent that your wife, children, and other 
friends shall be present thereat." The lieu- 
tenant brought him to the scaffold, which 
was so weak that it was ready to fall ; on 
which he said, merrily, "Master lieutenant, 
I pray you see me safe up, and for my com- 
ing down let me shift for myself." When 
he laid his head on the block he desired the 
executioner to wait till he had removed his 
beard, "for that had never offended his 
highness," — ere the axe fell. 

He has been censured by some for such 
levities at the moment of death. These are 
censorious cavils, which would not be wor- 
thy of an allusion if they had not occasioned 
some sentences of as noble reflection, and 
beautiful composition, as the English lan- 
guage contains. " The innocent mirth, which 
had been so conspicuous in his life, did not 
forsake him to the last. His death was of a 
piece with his life; there was nothing in it 
new, forced, or affected. He did not look 
upon the severing his head from his body as 
a circumstance which ought to produce any 
change in the disposition of his mind; and 
as he died in a fixed and settled hope of im- 
mortality, he thought any unusual degree of 
sorrow and concern improper."* 

According to the barbarous practice of 
laws which vainly struggle to carry their 
cruelty beyond the grave, the head of Sir 
Thomas More was placed on London bridge. 
His darling daughter, Margaret, had the 
courage to procure it to be taken down, that 
she might exercise her affection by continu- 
ing to look on a relic so dear; and carrying 
her love beyond the grave, she desired that 
it might be buried with her when she died.t 
The remains of this precious relic are said 
to have been since observed, lying on what 
had once been her bosom. The male de- 
scendants of this admirable woman appear 
to have been soon extinct : her descendants 
through females are probably numerous. t 

* Spectator, No. 349. 

tShe survived her father about nine years. 
t One of them, Mr. James Hinton Baverstock, 
inserted his noble pedigree from Margaret, in 



80 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



She resembled her father in mind, in man- 
ner, in the features and expression of her 
countenance, and in her form and gait. Her 
learning was celebrated throughout Christen- 
dom. It is seldom that literature wears a 
more agreeable aspect than when it becomes 
a bond of union between such a father and 
such a daughter. 

Sir Thomas More's eldest son. John, mar- 
ried Anne Cresacre, the heiress of an estate, ' 
still held by his posterity through females, 
at Barnborough, near Doncaster,* where the 
mansion of the Mores still subsists. The last 
male desendant was Thomas More, a Jesuit, 
who was principal of the college of Jesuits 
at Bruges, and died at Bath in 1795, having 
survived his famous order, and, according to 
the appearances of that time, his ancient re- 
ligion ; — as if the family of More were one 
of the many ties which may be traced, 
through the interval of two centuries and 
a half, between the revolutions of religion 
and those of government. 

The letters and narratives of Erasmus dif- 
fused the story of his friend's fate through- 
out Europe. Cardinal Pole bewailed it with 
elegance and feeling. It filled Italy, then 
the most cultivated portion of Europe, with 
horror. Paulo Jovio called Henry •■'a Phala- 
ris," though .we shall in vain look in the story 
of Phalaris, or of any other real or legendary 
tyrant, for a victim worthy of being compared 
lo More. The English ministers throughout 
Europe were regarded with averted eyes as 
the agents of a monster. At Venice, Henry, 
after this deed, was deemed capable of any 
crimes : he was believed there to have mur- 
dered Catharine, and to be about lo murder 
his daughter Mary.t The Catholic zeal of 
Spain, and the resentment of the Spanish 
people against the oppression of Catharine, 
quickened their sympathy with More, and 
aggravated their detestation of Henry. Ma- 
son, the envoy at Valiadolid, thought every 
pure Latin phrase too weak for More, and 
describes him by one as contrary to the 
rules of that language as "thrice greatest"; 
would be to those of ours. When intelli- 
gence of his death was brought to the Em- 
peror Charles V., he sent for Sir T. Elliot, 
the English ambassador, and said to him, 
u My lord ambassador, we understand that 
the king your master has put his wise coun- 
sellor Sir Thomas More to death." Elliot, 
abashed, made answer that he understood 
nothing thereof. "Well," said the Emperor, 
"it is too true ; and this we will say, that, if 
we had been master of such a servant, we 
should rather have lost the best city in our 
dominions than have lost such a worthy 
counsellor;" — u which matter," says Roper, 
in the concluding words of his beautiful 
narrative, " was by Sir T. Elliot told to my- 



1819, in a copy of More's English Works, at this 
moment before me. 

* Hunter's South Yorkshire, vol. i. pp. 374, 375. 

t Ellis' Original Letters. 2d series, lett. cxvii. 

J Ibid. lett. ex. " Ter maximus ille Morus." 



self, my wife, to Mr. Clement and his wife, 
and to Mr. Heywood and his wife."* 

Of all men nearly perfect, Sir Thomas 
More had, perhaps, the clearest marks of in- 
dividual character. His peculiarities, though 
distinguishing him from all others, were yet 
withheld from growing into moral faults. 
It is not enough to say of him that he was 
unaffected, that he was natural, that he was 
simple ; so the larger part of truly great men 
have been. But there is something home- 
spun in More which is common to him with 
scarcely any other, and which gives to all 
his faculties and qualities the appearance of 
being the native growth of the soil. The 
homeliness of his pleasantry purifies it from 
show. He walks on the scaffold clad only 
in his household goodness. The unrefined 
benignity with which he ruled his patri- 
archal dwelling at Chelsea enabled him to 
look on the axe without being disturbed by 
feeling hatred for the tyrant. This quality- 
bound together his genius and learning, his 
eloquence and fame, with his homely and 
daily duties. — bestowing a genuineness on 
all his good qualities, a dignity on the most 
ordinary offices of life, and an accessible fa- 
miliarity on the virtues of a hero and a mar- 
tyr, which silences every suspicion that his 
excellencies were magnified. He thus sim- 
ply performed great acts, and uttered great 
thoughts, because they were familiar to his 
great soul. The charm of this inborn and 
homebred character seems as if it would 
have been taken off by polish. It is this 
household character which relieves our no- 
tion of him from vagueness, and divests per- 
fection of that generality and coldness to 
which the attempt to paint a perfect man is 
so liable. 

It will naturally, and very strongly, excite' 
the regret of the good in every age, that the 
life of this best of men should have been in 
the power of one who has been rarely sur- 
passed in wickedness. But the execrable 
Henry was the means of drawing forth the 
magnanimity, the fortitude, and the meek- 
ness of More. Had Henry been a just and 
merciful monarch, we should not have known 
the degree of excellence to which human 
nature is capable of ascending. Catholics 
ought to see in More, that mildness and can- 
dour are the true ornaments of all modes of 
faith. Protestants ought to be taught hu- 
mility and charity from this instance of the 
wisest and best of men falling into, what they 
deem, the most fatal errors. All men, in the 
fierce contests of contending factions, should, 
from such an example, learn the wisdom to 
fear lest in their most hated antagonist they 
may strike down a Sir Thomas More : for 
assuredly virtue is not so narrow as to be 
confined to any party ; and we have in the 



* Instead of Heywood, perhaps we ought to 
read " Heron ?" In that case the three daughters 
of Sir Thomas More would be present: Mrs. 
Roper was the eldest, Mrs. Clement the second, 
and Cecilia Heron the youngest. 



LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 



81 



case of More a signal example that the near- 1 proof, that we should beware of hating men 
est approach to perfect excellence does not for their opinions, or of adopting their doc- 
exempt men from mistakes which we may trines because we love and venerate their 
justly deem mischievous. It is a pregnant ( virtues. 



. APPENDIX. 



Some particulars in the life of Sir Thomas More 
I am obliged to leave to more fortunate inquirers. 
They are, indeed, very minute ; but they may ap- 
pear to others worthy of being ascertained, as they 
appeared to me, from their connection with the 
life of a wise and good man. 

The records of the Privy Council are preserved 
only since 1540, so that we do not exactly know 
the date of his admission into that body. The 
time when he was knighted (then a matter of some 
moment) is not known. As the whole of his life 
passed during the great chasm in writs for elec- 
tion, and returns of members of parliament, from 
1477 to 1542, the places for which he sat, and the 
year of his early opposition to a subsidy, are un- 
ascertained ; — notwithstanding the obliging exer- 
tion of the gentlemen employed in the repositories 
at the Tower, and in the Rolls' chapel. We 
know that he was speaker of the House of Com- 
mons in 1523 and 1524.* Browne Willis owns 
his inability to fix the place which he represented ;t 
but he conjectured it to have been " either Mid- 
dlesex, where he resided, or Lancaster, of which 
duchy he was chancellor." But that laborious 
and useful writer would not have mentioned the 
latter branch of his alternative, nor probably the 
former, if he had known that More was not Chan- 
cellor of the Duchy till two years after his speaker- 
ship. 

B. 

An anecdote in More's chancellorship is con- 
nected with an English phrase, of which the origin 
is not quite satisfactorily explained. An attorney 
in his court, named Tubb, gave an account in 
court of a cause in which he was concerned, which 
the Chancellor (who with all his gentleness loved 
a joke) thought so rambling and incoherent, that 
he said at the end of Tubb's speech, " This is a 
tale of a tub ;" plainly showing that the phrase 
was then familiarly known. The learned Mr. 
Douce has informed a friend of mine, that in Se- 
bastian Munster's Cosmography, there is a cut of 
aship, to which a whale was coming too close for 
her safety, and of the sailors throwing a tub to the 
■whale, evidently to play with. The practice of 
throwing a tub or barrel to a large fish, to divert the 
animal from gambols dangerous to a vessel, is also 
mentioned in an old prose translation of The Ship 
of Fools. These passages satisfactorily explain 
the common phrase of throwing a tub to a whale ; 
but they do not account for leaving out the whale, 
and introducing the new word " tale." The 
transition from the first phrase to the second is a 
considerable stride. It is not, at least, directly 
explained by Mr. Douce's citations ; and no ex- 
planation of it has hitherto occurred which can be 
supported by proof. It may be thought probable 
that, in process of time, some nautical wag com- 
pared a rambling story, which he suspected of 
being lengthened and confused, in order to turn 
his thoughts from a direction not convenient to the 

* Rolls of Parliament in Lords' Journals, vol. i. 
+ Notitia Parliamentaria, vol. iii. p. 112. 
11 



story-teller, with the tub which he and his ship- 
mates were wont to throw out to divert the whale 
irom striking the bark, and perhaps said, "This 
tale is, like our tub to the whale." The com- 
parison might have become popular ; and it might 
gradually have been shortened into "a tale of a 
tub." 



EXTRACTS FROM THE RECORDS OF THE CITY 
OF LONDON RELATING TO THE APPOINTMENT 
OF SIR THOMAS MORE TO BE UNDER-SHERIFF 
OF LONDON, AND SOME APPOINTMENTS OF HIS 
IMMEDIATE PREDECESSORS AND OF HIS SUC- 
CESSOR. 

(A. D. 1496. 27th September.) 

" Commune consilium tenlum die Martij 

Vicegimo Septimo die Septembf Anno 

Regni Regis Henr Septimi duo decimo. 

" In isto Comun Consilio Thomas Sail et 

Thomas Marowe confirmati sunt in Subvic Civi- 

tati : London p anno sequent, &c." 

(1497.) 

" Comune Consiliu tent die Lune xxv to die 
Sepf anno Regni Regs Hen? vii. xiij". 
" Isto die Thomas Marowe et Ed" Dudley con- 
firmaf sunt in Sub Vic Sit 8 London p anno sequ.'' 

(1498 & 1501.) 

Similar entries of the confirmation of Thomas 
Marowe and Edward Dudley are made in the 
14th, 15th, 16th, and 17th Henry VII., and at a 
court of aldermen, held on the 

(1502.) 

17th Nov. 18 Henry 7. the following entry 
appears : — 
"Ad hanc Cur Thomas Marowe uns sub vice- 
cornitu sponte resignat offim suit." 

And at a Common Council held on the 

same day, is entered — 

" In isto Communi Consilio Radiis adye Gen- 

tilman elect est in unit Subvic" Civitats London 

loco Thome Marwe Gentilman qui illud officiii 

sponte resignavit, capiend feoct consuet." 

" Coe Consiliu tent die Martis iij° die Sep- 

tembris anno Regni Reg 8 Henrici Oc- 

tavi Secundo. 

" Eodm die Thorns More Gent elect est in unu 

Subvic" Civitats London loc Ric" Broke Gent qui 

nup elect fuit in Recordator London." 

" Martis viij die Maii 6 th Henry 8. 
" Court of Aldermen. 
" Yt ys agreed that Thomas More Gent oon 
of Undersheryfes of London which shall go ov 
the Kings AmbasseTin to fflaunders shall occupie 
his Rowme and office by his sufficient Depute 
unlyll his cumyng home ageyn" 

" Martis xj die Marcii 7 Henry VIII th 
" Court of Aldermen. 



82 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



" Ye shall sweare that ye shall kepe the Secrets 
of this Courte and not to disclose eny thing ther 
spoken for the coen welthe of t his ciiie that niyght 
hurt eny psone <>r brother of the seyd courte onles 
yi be 6poken to his broihr or 10 oilier which in his 
conscience ;md discreeon shall ihynk yt to be for 
the coen wehhe of this citie. 

So help you God." 

" Jovis xiij die March 7 Henry 8. 
" Cuurt of Aldermen. 
"Itm ad ista Cur Thomas More and Wills' 
Shelley Sulivice 08 Ct 13 London jur sunt ad articlm 
supdcfh spect xj die march." 



" Venis 23 July, 10 Henry 8. 
Court of Aldermen. 
" Ad istam Cur Thomas More Gent un Sub- 
vie Ci'* in CompuT Pulletr London libe et sponte 
Sur? et resign officm pdem in manu Maioris et 
Aldror." 

" Coie Consiliu tent die Venis xxiij die 

Julii anno regni regis Henrici Octavi de- 

cimo." 

" Isto die .lohes Pakyngton Gent admissus est 

in unu subvicCivitais London loco Thome More 

qui spont et libe resignavit Officiu illud in Man 

Maioris aldror et Cols consilii. Et jur est &c" 



A REFUTATION OF THE CLAIM ON BEHALF 

OF 

KING CHARLES I. 

TO THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

THE EIK^N BASIAIKH.* 



A succession of problems or puzzles in the 
literary and political history of modern times 
has occasionally occupied some ingenious 
writers, and amused many idle readers. 
Those who think nothing useful which does 
not yield some palpable and direct advan- 
tage, have, indeed, scornfully rejected such 
inquiries as frivolous and useless. But their 
disdain has not repressed such discussions: 
and it is fortunate that it has not done so. 
Amusement is itself an advantage. The 
vigour which the understanding derives from 
exercise on every subject is a great advan- 
tage. If there is to be any utility in history, 
the latter must be accurate, — which it never 
will be, unless there be a solicitude to ascer- 
tain the truth even of its minutest parts. 
History is read with pleasure, and with moral 
effect, only as far as it engages our feelings 
in the merit or demerit, in the fame or for- 
tune, of historical personages. The breath- 
less anxiety with which the obscure and con- 
flicting evidence on a trial at law is watched 
by the bystander is but a variety of the same 
feeling which prompts the reader to examine 
the proofs against Mary, Queen of Scots, 
with as deep an interest as if she were alive, 
and were now on her trial. And it is wisely 
ordered that it should be so : for our condi- 
tion would not, upon the whole, be bettered 



* Contributed to the Edinburgh Review (vol. 
xliv p. 1.) as a review of " Who wrote Eik> 
B*t!\:k>i ?" by Chris'npher Wordsworth. D. D., 
Ma-"er nf Trinity College, Cambridge. London, 
1824— Ed. 



by our feeling less strongly about each 
others concerns. 

The question -'Who wrote Icon Basilike V 1 
seemed more than once to be finally deter- 
mined. Before the publication of the pri- 
vate letters of Bishop Gauden, the majority 
of historical inquirers had pronounced it 
spurious ; and the only writers of great 
acuteness who maintained its genuineness — 
Watbttrton and Hume — spoke in a tone 
which rather indicated an anxious desire that 
others should believe, than a firm belief in 
their own minds. It is perhaps the only 
matter on which the former ever expressed 
himself with diffidence; and the case must 
indeed have seemed doubtful, which com- 
pelled the most dogmatical and arrogant of 
disputants to adopt a language almost scep- 
tical. The successive publications of those 
letters in Maty's Review, in the third volume 
of the Clarendon Papers, and lastly, but 
most decisively, by Mr. Todd, seemed to 
have closed the dispute. 

The main questions on which the whole 
dispute hinges are, Whether the acts and 
words of Lord Clarendon, of Lord Bristol, of 
Bishop Morley, of Charles If., and James II., 
do not amount to a distinct acknowledgment 
of Gauden's authorship ? and, Whether an 
admission of that claim by these persons be 
not a conclusive evidence of its truth? If 
these questions can be answered affirma- 
tively, the other parts of the case will not 
require very long consideration. 

The Icon Basilike was intended to pro- 
duce a favourable effect during the Kiwi's- 



ICON BASILIKE. 



83 



trial ; but its publication was retarded till 
some days after his death, by the jealous 
and rigorous precautions of the ruling powers. 
The impression made on the public by a 
work which purported to convey the pious 
and eloquent language of a dying King, 
could not fail to be very considerable ; and, 
though its genuineness was from the begin- 
ning doubted or disbelieved by some,* it 
would have been wonderful and unnatural, 
if unbounded faith in it had not become one 
of the fundamental articles of a Royalist's 
creed. f Though much stress, therefore, is 
laid by Dr. Wordsworth on passages in anony- 
mous pamphlets published before the Re- 
storation, Ave can regard these as really no 
more than instances of the belief which 
must then have only prevailed among that 
great majority of Royalists who had no pe- 
culiar reasons for doubt. Opinion, even 
when it was impartial, of the genuineness 
of a writing given before its authenticity 
was seriously questioned, and when the at- 
tention of those who gave the opinion was 
not strongly drawn to the subject, must be 
classed in the lowest species of historical 
evidence. One witness who bears testimony 
to a forgery, when the edge of his discern- 
ment is sharpened by an existing dispute, 
outweighs many whose language only indi- 
cates a passive acquiescence in the unex- 
amined sentiments of their own party. It is 
obvious, indeed, that such testimonies must 
be of exceedingly little value; for every im- 
posture, in any degree successful, must be 
able to appeal to them. Without them, no 
question on such a subject could ever be 
raised ; since it would be idle to expose the 
spuriousness of what no one appeared to 
think authentic. 

Dr. Gauden, a divine of considerable ta- 
lents, but of a temporizing and interested 
character, was, at the beginning of the Civil 
War, chaplain to the Earl of Warwick, a 
Presbyterian leader. In November 1640. 
after the close imprisonment of Lord Straf- 
ford, he preached a sermon before the House 
of Commons, so agreeable to that assembly, 
that it is said they presented him with a 
silver tankard, — a token of their esteem 
which (if the story be true) may seem to be 
the stronger for its singularity and unseemli- 
ness, t This discourse seems to have con- 
tained a warm invective against the eccle- 
siastical policy of the Court; and it was 
preached not only at a most critical time, 
but on the solemn occasion of the sacrament 
being first taken by the whole House. As a 
reward for so conspicuous a service to the 
Parliamentary cause, he soon after received 

x Milton. Goodwyn, Lilly, &c. 

t See Wags'affe's Vindication of King Charles, 
pp. 77 — 79. London, 1711. 

X The Journals say nnihing of the tankard, 
which was probably the gift of some zealous mem- 
bers, hut hear. " That the (hanks of this house 
be given to Mr. Gaudy and Mr. Morley for their 
sermons last Sunday, and that they lie desired, il 
they please, to print the same." Vol. ii. p. 40. 



the valuable living of Bucking in Essex, 
which he held through all the succeeding 
changes of government, — forbearing, of ne- 
cessity, to use the Liturgy, and complying 
with all the conditions which the law then 
required from the beneficed clergy. It has 
been disputed whether he took the Cove- 
nant, though his own evasive answers imply 
that he had : but it is certain that he pub- 
lished a Protest* against the trial of the 
King in 1648, though that never could have 
pretended to the same merit with the solemn 
Declaration of the whole Presbyterian clergy 
of London against the same proceeding, 
which, however, did not save them at the 
Restoration. 

At the moment of the Restoration of 
Charles II. , he appears, therefore, to have 
had as little public claim on the favour of 
that prince as any clergyman who had con- 
formed to the ecclesiastical principles of the 
Parliament and the Protectorate ; and he 
was, accordingly, long after called by a 
zealous Royalist "the false Apostate!"! 
Bishoprics were indeed offered to Baxter, 
who refused, and to Reynolds, who accepted r 
a mitre ; but if they had not been, as they 
were, men venerable for every virtue, they 
were the acknowledged leaders of the Pres- 
byterians, whose example might have much 
effect in disposing that powerful body to con- 
formity. No such benefit could be hoped 
from the preferment of Gauden : and that his 
public character must have rendered him 
rather the object of disfavour than of patron- 
age to the Court at this critical and jealous 
period, will be obvious to those who are 
conversant with one small, but not insignifi- 
cant circumstance. The Presbyterian party- 
is well known to have predominated in the 
Convention Parliament, especially when it 
first assembled ; and it was the policy of the 
whole assembly to give a Presbyterian, or 
moderate and mediatorial colour, to their 
collective proceedings. On the 25th April 
1660, they chose Mr. Calamy, Dr. Gauden, 
and Mr. Baxter, to preach before them, on 
the fast which they then appointed to be 
held, — thus placing Gauden between two 
eminent divines of the Presbyterian persua- 
sion, on an occasion when they appear stu- 
diously to have avoided the appointment of 
an Episcopalian. It is evident that Gauden 
was then thought nearer in principle to Bax- 
ter than to Juxon. He was sufficiently a 
Presbyterian in party to make him no favour- 
ite with the Court : yet he Mas not so deci- 
ded a Presbyterian in opinion as to have the 
influence among his brethren which could 
make him worth so high a price as a mitre. 
They who dispute his claim to be the writer 
of the Icon, will be the last to ascribe his 
preferment to transcendent abilities: he is 
not mentioned as having ever shown kind- 
ness to Royalists; there is no trace of his 
correspondence with the exiled Court; he 

* The Religious and Loyal Protestation of John 
Gauden, &c London, 1648. 
t Kenuet, Register, p. 773. 



84 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



contributed nothing to the recall of the King; 
nor indeed had he the power of performing 
such atoning services. 

Let ihe reader then suppose himself to 
be acquainted only with the above circum- 
stances, and let him pause to consider whe- 
ther, in the summer of 1660, there could be 
many clergymen of the Established Church 
who had fewer and more scanty pretensions 
to a bishopric than Gauden : yet he was 
appointed Bishop of Exeter on the 3d of 
November following. He received, in a few 
months, 20,000?. in lines for the renewal of 
leases ;* and yet he had scarcely arrived at 
his epispocal palace when, on the 21st of 
December, he wrote a letter to the Lord 
Chancellor Clarendon, t bitterly complaining 
of the "distress." " infelicity," and "horror" 
of such a bishopric ! — "a hard fate which" 
(he reminds the Chancellor) "he had before 

deprecated." "I make this complaint." 

(he adds,) "to your Lordship, because you 
chiefly put me on this adventure. Your 
Lordship commanded mee to trust in your 
favour for an honourable maintenance and 
some such additional support as might sup- 
ply the defects of the bishopric." * * * 
u Nor am I so unconscious to the service I have 
done to the Church and to his Majesty's family, 
as to beare with patience such a ruine most un- 
deservedly put upon mee. Are these the effects 
of his liberall expressions, who told mee I 
might have what I would desire 1 * * * 
Yf your Lordship will not concern yourselfe 
in my affaire, I must make my last complaint 
to the Bang." In five days after (26th De- 
cember 1660) he wrote another long letter, 
less angry and more melancholy, to the 
same great person, which contains the fol- 
lowing remarkable sentence: — u Dr. Morly 
once offered mee my option, upon account of 
some service which he thought I had done ex- 
traordinary for the Church and the Royall 
Family, of which he told mee your Lordship 
was informed. This made mee modestly 
secure of your Lordship's favour ; though I 
found your Lordship would never owne your 
consciousnes to mee, as if it would have given 
mee too much confidence of a proportionable 
expectation. * * * I knew your Lord- 
ship knew my service and merit to be no 
way inferior to the best of your friends, or 
enemyes.^X 

In these two letters, — more covertly in the 
first, more openly in the second, — Gauden 
apprises Lord Clarendon, that Dr. Morly 
(who was Clarendon's most intimate friend) 
had acknowledged some extraordinary service 
done by Gauden to the Royal Family, which 
had been made known to the Chancellor ; 
thovgh that nobleman had avoided a direct 
acknowledgment of it to the bishop before 
he left London. Gauden appears soon after 
to have written to Sir E.Nicholas, Secretary 
of State, a letter of so peculiar a character 

* Biographia Briiannica, article " Gauden." 
t Wordsworth, Documentary Supplement, p. 9. 
X Ibid. pp. 11—13. 



as to have been read by the King; for an 
answer was sent to him by Nicholas, dated 
on the 19th January 1661, in which the fol- 
lowing sentence deserves attention: — "As 
for your owne particular, he desires you not 
to be discouraged at the poverty of your 
bishoprick at present : and if that answer 
not the. expectation of what was promised 
you, His Majesty will take you so particularly 
into his care, that he bids me assure you, that 
you shall have no cause to remember BocJcivg.''* 
These remarkable words by no means imply 
that Gauden did not then believe that the 
nature of his "extraordinary service" had 
been before known to the King. They evi- 
dently show his letter to have consisted of 
a complaint of the poverty of his bishopric, 
with an intelligible allusion to this service, 
probably expressed with more caution ana 
reserve than in his addresses to the Chan- 
cellor. What was really then first made 
known to the King was not his merits, but 
his poverty. On the 21st January, the im- 
portunate prelate again addressed to Claren- 
don a letter, explicitly stating the nature of 
his services, probably rendered necessary 
in his opinion by the continued silence of 
Clarendon, who did not answer his applica- 
tions till the 13th March. From this letter 
the following extract is inserted : — 

"All I desire 19 an augment of 500Z. per annum, 
j't if cannot bee at present had in a commendam ; 
yet possible the King's favor to me will not grudg 
mee this pension out of the first fruits and tenths 
of this diocesse ; till I bee removed or oiherwayes 
provided for : Nor will y r Lordship startle at this 
motion, or wave the presenting of it to hys Ma- 
jesty, yf you please to consider the preiensions 
I may have beyond a?iy of my calling, not as to 
merit, but duty performed to the Royall Family. 
True, I once presumed y r Lordship had fully 
known that arcanam, forsoe Dr. Morleytold mee, 
at the King's first coming ; when lie assured 
mee the greatnes of that service was such, that 
I might have any preferment I desired. This 
consciousnes of your Lordship (as I supposed) 
and Dr. Morley, made mee confident my affaires 
would bee carried on to some proportion of what 
I had done, and he thought deserved. Hence 
my silence of it to your Lordship : as to the King 
and Duke of York, whom before I came away 
I acquainted with it, when I saw myself not so 
much considered in my present disposition as I 
did hope I should have beene, what trace their 
Royall goodnes hath of it is best expressed by 
themselves ; nor do I doubt but I shall, by your 
Lordship's favor, find the fruiis as to somihing 
extraordinary, since the service was soe : not as' 
to what was known to the world wider my name, 
in order to vindicate the Crowne and the Church, 
but what goes under the late blessed Ring's name, 
' the hjO or portraiture ol hys Mdjesty in hys 
solitudes and sufferings. ' This book and figure 
was wholy and only my invention, making and 
designe ; in order to vindicaie the King's wisdome, 
honor and piety. My wife indeed was conscious 
to it, and had an hand in disguising the letters of 
that copy which I sent to the King in the ile of 
Wight, by favor of the late Marquise of Hartford, 
which was delivered to the King by the now 
Bishop of Winchester :t hys Majesty graciously 
accepted, owned, and adopted it as hys sense and 

* Wordsworth, Documentary Supplement, p. 14. 
t Duppa. 



ICON BASILIKE. 



89 



genius; not only with great approbation, but ad- 
miration. Hee kept it with hym ; and though 
hys cruel murtherers went on to perfect hys mar- 
tyrdomc, yet God preserved and prospered this 
book to revive hys honor, and redeeme hys Ma- 
jesty's name from that grave of contempt and 
abhorrence or infamy, in which they aymed to 
bury hym. When it came out, just upon the 
King's death; Good God! what shame, rage and 
despite, filled hys murtherers ! What comfort 
hys friends ! How many enemyes did it convert ! 
How many hearts did it mollify and melt 1 What 
devotions it raysed to hys posterity, as children of 
such a father! What preparations it made in all 
men's minds for this happy restauration, and which 
I hope shall not prove my affliction! In a word, 
it was an army, and did vanquish more than any 
sword could. My Lord, every good subject con- 
ceived hopes of restauration ; meditated reveng 
and separation. Your Lordship and all good sub- 
jects with hys Majesty enjoy the reeall and now 
ripe fruites of that plant. O let not mee wither! 
who was the author, and ventured wife, children, 
estate, liberty, life, and all but my soule, in so 
great an atelhevement, which hath filled England 
and all the world with the glory of it. I did lately 
present my fayth in it to the Duke of York, and 
by hym to the King ; both of them were pleased 
to give mee credit, and owne it as a rare service 
in those horrors of times. True, I played this 
best card in my hand something too late ; else I 
might have sped as well as Dr. Reynolds and 
some others ; but I did not lay it as a ground of 
ambition, nor use it as a ladder. Thinking my- 
selfe secure in the just valew of Dr. Morely, who 
I was sure knew it, and told mee your Lordthip 
did soe too ;* who, I believe, intended mee som- 
thing at least competent, though lesse convenient, 
in this preferment. All that 1 desire is, that your 
Lordship would make that good, which 1 think 
you designed ; and which I am confident the 
King will not deny mee, agreeable to hys royall 
munificence, which promise! h extraordinary re- 
wards to extraordinary services : Certainly tins 
service is such, for the matter, manner, timing 
and efficacy, as was never exceeded, nor will 
ever be equalled, yf I may credit the judgment 
of the best and wisest men that have read it ; and 
I know your Lordship, who is soe great a master 
of wisdome and eloquence, cannot but esteeme 
the author of that peice ; and accordingly, make 
mee to see those effects which may assure mee 
that my loyalty, paines, care, hazard and silence, 
are accepted by the King and Royall Family, to 
which your Lordship's is now grafted." 

The Bishop wrote three letters more to 
Clarendon. — on the 25th January, 20th Feb- 
ruary, and 6th of March respectively, to 
which on the 13th of the last month the 
Chancellor sent a reply containing the fol- 
lowing sentence : — The particular ■which you 
often renewed^ I do confesse icas imparted to 
mei under secrecy, and of which I did not take 
myself to be at liberty to take notice ; and truly 
when it ceases to be a secrett, I know nobody 
will be gladd of it but Mr. Milton ; I have 
very often wished I had never been trusted 
with it. 

It is proper here to remark, that all the 
letters of Gauden are still extant, endorsed 



* Tt is not to be inferred from this and the like 
passages, that Gauden doubted the previous com- 
munication of Morley to Clarendon: he uses 
such language as a reproach to the Chancellor 
for his silence. 

+ Evidently by Morley. 



by Lord Clarendon, or by his eldest son. In 
the course of three months, then, it appears 
that Gauden, with unusual importunity and 
confidence, with complaints which were dis- 
guised reproaches, and sometimes with an 
approach to menaces, asserted his claim to 
be richly rewarded, as the author of the Icon. 
He affirms that it was sent to the King by the 
Duke of Somerset, who died about a month 
before his first letter, and delivered to his 
Majesty by Dr. Duppa, Bishop of Winchester, 
who was still alive. He adds, that he had ac- 
quainted Charles II. with the secret through 
the Duke of York, that Morley, then Bishop 
of Worcester, had informed Clarendon of it, 
and that Morley himself had declared the 
value of the service to be such, as to entitle 
Gauden to choose his own preferment. Gau- 
den thus enabled Clarendon to convict him 
of falsehood, — if his tale was untrue, — in 
three or four circumstances, differing indeed 
in their importance as to the main question, 
but equally material to his own veracity. A 
single word from Duppa would have over- 
whelmed him with infamy. How easy was 
it for the Chancellor to ascertain whether 
the information had been given to the King 
and his brother! Morley was his bosom- 
friend, and the spiritual director of his daugh- 
ter, Anne Duchess of York. How many other 
persons might have been quietly sounded by 
the numerous confidential agents of a great 
minister, on a transaction which had occur- 
red only twelve years before ! To suppose 
that a statesman, then at the zenith of his 
greatness, could not discover the truth on 
this subject, without a noise like that of a 
judicial inquiry, would betray a singular 
ignorance of affairs. Did Clarendon relin- 
quish, without a struggle, his belief in a 
book, which had doubtless touched his feel- 
ings when he read it as the work of his Royal 
Master? Even curiosity might have led* 
Charles II., when receiving the blessing of 
Duppa on his deathbed, to ask him a short 
confidential question. To how many chances 
of detection did Gauden expose himself? 
How nearly impossible is it that the King, 
the Duke, the Chancellor, and Morley should 
have abstained from the safest means of in- 
quiry, and, in opposition to their former opi- 
nions and prejudices, yielded at once to 
Gauden's assertion. 

The previous belief of the Royalist party 
in the Icon very much magnifies the im- 
probability of such suppositions. The truth 
might have been discovered by the parties 
appealed to. and conveyed to the audacious 
pretender, without any scandal. There was 
no need of any public exposure: a private 
intimation of the falsehood of one material 
circumstance must have silenced Gauden. 
But what, on the contrary, is the answer of 
Lord Clarendon? Let any reader consider 
the above cited sentence of his letter, and 
determine for himself whether it does not 
express such an unhesitating assent to the 
claim as could only have flowed from in- 
quiry and evidence. By confessing that the 



II 



S6 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



secret was imparted to him, he admits the 
other material part of Gauden's statement, 
that the information -came through Morley. 
Gauden, if his story was true, chose the per- 
sons to whom he imparted it both prudently 
and fairly. He dealt with it as a secret of 
which the disclosure would injure the Royal 
cause; and he therefore confined his com- 
munications to the King's sons and the Chan- 
cel lor. who could not be indisposed to his 
cause by it, and whose knowledge of il was 
necessary to justify his own legitimate chums. 
Had it been false, no choice could have been 
more unfortunate. He appealed to those who, 
for aught he knew, might have in their pos- 
session the means of instantly demonstrating 
that he was guilty of a falsehood so impru- 
dent and perilous, that nothing parallel to it 
has ever been hazarded by a man of sound 
mind. How could Gauden know that the 
King did not possess his father's MS., and 
that Royston the printer was not ready to 
prove that he had received it from Charles I., 
through hands totally unconnected with Gau- 
den 1 How* great must have been the risk if 
we suppose, with Dr. Wordsworth, and Mr. 
Wagstaffe, that more than one copy of the 
MS. existed, and that parts of it had been 
seen by many ! It is without any reason that 
Dr. Wordsworth and others represent the 
secrecy of Gauden's communications to Cla- 
rendon as a circumstance of suspicion ; for 
he was surely bound, by that sinister honour 
which prevails in the least moral confedera- 
cies, to make no needless disclosures on this 
delicate subject. 

Clarendon's letter is a declaration that he 
was converted from his former opinion about 
the author of the Icon : that of Sir E. Nicho- 
las is a declaration to the same purport on 
his own part, and on that of the King'. The 
confession of Clarendon is more important, 
from being apparently wrung from him, after 
the lapse of a considerable time ; in the for- 
mer part of which he evaded acknowledg- 
ment in conversation, while in the latter part 
he incurred the blame of incivility, by de- 
laying to answer letters, — making his ad- 
mission at last in the hurried manner of an 
unwilling witness. The decisive words, how- 
ever, were at length extorted from him, 
'•' When it ceases to be a secret, I knoii; nobody 
will be glad of it, but Mr. Milton: 1 Wagstaffe 
argues this question as if Gauden's letters 
were to be considered as a man's assertions 
in his own cause ; without appearing ever to 
have observed that they are not offered as 
proof Of the facts which they affirm, but as 
a claim which circumstances show to have 
been recognized by the adverse party. 

The course of another year did not abate 
the solicitations of Gauden. In the end of 
1661 and beginning of 1662, the infirmities 
of Duppa promised a speedy vacancy in the 
great bishopric of Winchester, to which 
Gauden did not fail to urge his pretensions 
with undiminished confidence, in a letter to 
the Chancellor (28th December), in a letter to 
the Duke of York (17th January), and in a 
-memorial to the King, without a date, but 



written on the same occasion. The two let- 
ters allude to the particulars of former com- 
munications. The memorial, as the nature 
of such a paper required, is fuller and more 
minute: it is expressly founded on "a pri- 
vate service," for the reality of which it 
again appeals to the declarations of Mor- 
ley, to the evidence of Duppa, (-'v. ho," 
says Gauden, "encouraged me in that great 
work,'') still alive, and visited on his sick- 
bed by the King, and to the testimony of 
the Duke of Somerset.* It also shows that 
Gauden had applied to the King for Win- 
chester as soon as it should become vacant, 
about or before the time of his appointment 
to Exeter. 

On the 19th of March, 1662. Gauden was 
complimented at Court as the author of the 
Icon, by George Digby, second Earl of Bris- 
tol, a nobleman of line genius and brilliant 
accomplishments, but remarkable for his in- 
constancy in political and religious opinion. 
The bond of connection between them seems 
to have been their common principles of 
toleration, which Bristol was solicitous to ob- 
tain for the Catholics, whom he had secretly 
joined, and which Gauden was willing to 
grant, not only to the Old Nonconformists, 
but to the more obnoxious Quakers. On the 
day following Gauden writes a letter, in 
which it is supposed that " the Grand Arca- 
num" had been disclosed to Bristol "by the 
King or the Royal Duke." In six days after 
he writes again, on the death of Duppa, to 
urge his claim to Winchester. This third 
letter is more important. He observes, with 
justice, that he could not expect "any extra- 
ordinary instance of his Majesty's favour on 
account of his signal service only, because 
that might put the world on a dangerous 
curiosity, if he had been in other respects 
unconspicuous ;"' but he adds, in effect, that 
his public services would be a sufficient rea- 
son or pretext for the great preferment to 
which he aspired. He appeals to a new wit- 
ness on the subject of the Icon, — Dr. Shel- 



*Doc. Sup. p. 30. We have no positive proof 
that these two letters were sent, or the memorial 
delivered. It seems (Ibid. p. 27) that there are 
marks of the letters having been sealed and broken 
open ; and it is said to be singular that such letters 
should be found among the papers of him who 
wrote ihem. But as the early history of these 
papers is unknown, it is impossible to expect an 
explanation of every fact. A collector might have 
found them elsewhere, and added them to the 
Gauden papers. An anxious writer might have 
broken open two important letters, in which he 
was fearful that some expression was indiscreet, 
and afterwards sent corrected duplicates, without 
material variation. Gauden might have received 
information respecting the disposal of Winchester 
and Worcester, or about the state of parties at 
Court, before the letters were dispatched, which 
would render them then unseasonable. What is 
evident is, that they were written with an inten- 
tion to send them, — diat they coincide with his 
previous statements, — and that the determination 
?iot to se?id them was not occasioned by any douha 
entertained by the Chancellor of his veracity ; for 
j such doubts would have prevented his preferment to 
I the bishopric of Worcester, — one of the most co- 
| veted dignities of the Church. 



ICON BASILIKE. 



87 



don, then Bishop' of London; — thus, once 
more, if his story were untrue, almost' wan- 
tonly adding to the chance of easy, immedi- 
ate, and private detection. His danger would 
have, indeed, been already enhanced by the 
disclosure of the secret to Lord Bristol, who 
was very intimately acquainted with Charles 
I., and among whose good qualities discretion 
and circumspection cannot be numbered. The 
belief of Bristol must also be considered as 
a proof that Gauden continued to be believed 
by the King and the Duke, from whom Bris- 
tol's information proceeded. A fiiendly cor- 
respondence, between the Bishop and the 
Earl, continued till near the death of the for- 
mer, in the autumn of 1662. 

In the mean time, the Chancellor gave a 
still more decisive proof of his continued con- 
viction of the justice of Gauden's pretensions, 
by his translation in May to Worcester. The 
Chancellor's personal ascendant over the 
King was perhaps already somewhat impair- 
ed ) but his power was still unshaken ; and 
he was assuredly the effective as well as 
formal adviser of the Crown on ecclesiastical 
promotions. It would be the grossest injus- 
tice to the memory of Lord Clarendon to be- 
lieve, that if, after two years' opportunity 
for inquiry, any serious doubts of Gauden's 
veracity had remained in his mind, he would 
have still farther honoured and exalted the 
contriver of a falsehood, devised for merce- 
nary purposes, to rob an unhappy and belov- 
ed Sovereign of that power which, by his 
writings, he still exercised over the generous 
feelings of men. It cannot be doubted, and 
ought not to be forgotten, that a false claim 
to the Icon is a crime of a far deeper dye 
than the publication of it under the false ap- 
pearance of a work of the King. To publish 
such a book in order to save the King's life, 
was an offence, attended by circumstances 
of much extenuation, in one who believed, 
or perhaps knew, that it substantially con- 
tained the King's sentiments, and who deep- 
ly deprecated the proceedings of the army 
and of the remnant of the House of Commons 
against him. But to usurp the reputation of 
the work so long after the death of the Royal 
Author, for sheer lucre, is an act of baseness 
perhaps without a parallel. That Clarendon 
should wish to leave the more venial decep- 
tion undisturbed, and even shrink from such 
refusals as might lead to its discovery, is not 
far beyond the limits which good men may 
overstep in very diffiult situations: but that 
he should have rewarded the most odious of 
impostors by a second bishopric, would place 
him far lower than a just adversary would 
desire. If these considerations seem of such 
moment at this distant time, what must have 
been their force in the years 1660 and 1662, in 
the minds of Clarendon, and Somerset, and 
Duppa, and Morley, and Sheldon ! It would 
have been easy to avoid the elevation of Gau- 
den to Worcester: he had himself opened the 
way for offering him a pension ; and the Chan- 
cellor might have answered almost in Gau- 
. den's own words, that farther preferment 
might lead to perilous inquiry. Clarendon, in 



1662, must either have doubted who was the 
author of the Icon, or believed the claim of 
Gauden, or adhered to his original opinion. 
If he believed it to be the work of the King, 
he could not have been so unfaithful to his 
memory as to raise such an impostor to a 
second bishopric: if he believed it to be the 
production of Gauden, he might have thought 
it an excusable policy to recompense a pious 
fraud, and to silence the possessor of a dan- 
gerous secret: if he had doubts, they would 
have prompted him to investigation, -which, 
conducted by him, and relating to tiansac- 
tions so recent, must have terminated in cer- 
tain knowledge. 

Charles II. is well known, at the famous 
conference between the Episcopalians and 
Presbyterians, when the Icon was quoted as 
his father's, to have said, "All that is in that 
book is not gospel." Knowing, as we now 
do, that Gauden's claim was preferred to him 
in 1660, this answer must be understood to 
have been a familiar way of expressing his 
scepticism about its authenticity. In this 
view of it, it coincides with his declaration 
to Lord Anglesea twelve years after ; and it 
is natural indeed to suppose, that his opinion 
was that of those whom he then most trusted 
on such matters, of whom Clarendon was 
certainly one. To suppose, with some late 
writers, that he and his brother looked with 
favour and pleasure on an attempt to weaken 
the general interest in the character of their 
father, merely because the Icon is friendly 
to the Church of England, is a wanton act 
of injustice to them. Charles II. was neither 
a bigot, nor without regard to his kindred ; 
the family affections of James were his best 
qualities, — though by a peculiar perverse- 
ness of fortune, they proved the source of 
his sharpest pangs. 

But to return to Lord Clarendon, who sur- 
vived Gauden twelve years, and who, almost 
to the last day of his life, was employed in 
the composition of an historical work, origi- 
nally undertaken at the desire of Charles I., 
and avowed, with honest partiality to be 
destined for the vindication of his character 
and cause. This great work, not intended 
for publication in the age of the writer, was 
not actually published till thirty years after 
his death, and even then not without the 
suppression of important passages, which it 
seems the public was not yet likely to re- 
ceive in a proper temper. Now. neither in 
the original edition, nor in any of the recent- 
ly restored passages,* is there any allusion 
to the supposed work of the King. No rea- 
son of temporary policy can account for 
this extraordinary silence. However the 
statesman might be excused for the mo- 
mentary sacrifice of truth to quiet, the histo- 
rian could have no temptation to make the 
sacrifice perpetual. Had he believed that 
his Royal Master was the writer of the 
only book ever written by a dying monarch 
on his own misfortunes) it would have been 
unjust as an historian, treacherous as a 

* In the Oxford Ediuon of 1826. 



88 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



friend, and unfeeling as a man, to have pas- 
sed over in silence such a memorable and 
affecting- circumstance. Merely as a fact, 
his narrative was defective without it. But 
it was a fact of a very touching and interest- 
ing nature, on which his genius would have 
expatiated with affectionate delight. No 
later historian of the Royal party has failed 
to dwell on it. How should he then whom 
it must have most affected be silent, unless 
his pen had been stopped by the knowledge 
of the truth ? He had even personal induce- 
ments to explain it, at least in those more 
private memoirs of his administration, which 
form part of what is called his "Life." Had 
he believed in the genuineness of the Icon, 
it would have been natural for him in these 
memoirs to have reconciled that belief with 
the successive preferments of the impostor. 
He had good reason to believe that the claims 
of Gauden would one day reach the public ; 
he had himself, in his remarkable letter of 
March 13th, 1(561, spoken of such a disclo- 
sure as likely. This very acknowledgment 
contained in that letter, which he knew to 
be in the possession of Gauden's family, in- 
creased the probability. It was scarcely 
possible that such papers should for ever 
elude the search of curiosity, of historical 
justice, or of party spirit. But besides these 
probabilities, Clarendon, a few months be- 
fore his death, " had learned that ill people en- 
deavoured to persuade the King that his father 
was not the author of the book that goes by his 
7iame. ,} This information was conveyed to 
him from Bishop Morley through Lord Corn- 
bury, who went to visit his father in France 
in May 1674. On hearing these words. 
Clarendon exclaimed, 'Good God ! I thought 
the Marquis of Hertford had satisfied the King 
in that matter.''* By this message Clarendon 
was therefore warned, that the claim of 
Gauden was on its way to the public, — that 
it was already assented to by the Royal 
Family themselves, and was likely at last to 
appear with the support of the most formida- 
ble authorities. What could he now con- 
clude but that, if undetected and unrefuted, 
or. still more, if uncontradicted in a history 
destined to vindicate the King, the claim 
would be considered by posterity as estab- 
lished by his silence 1 Clarendon's language 
on this occasion also strengthens very much 
another part of the evidence; for it proves, 
beyond all doubt, that the authorship of the 
Icon had been discussed by the King with the 
Duke of Somerset before that nobleman's death 
in October 1660, — a fact nearly conclusive 
of the whole question. Had the Duke as- 
sured the King that his father was the au- 
thor, what a conclusive answer was ready to 
Gauden, who asserted that the first had been 
the bearer of the manuscript of the Icon from 
Gauden to Charles I. ! As there had been 

* The first letter of the second Earl of Claren- 
don to Wagstaffe in 1694, about twenty years 
after the event, has not, as far as we, know, been 
published. We know only the extracts in Wag- 
staffe. The second letter written in 1699 is printed 
entire in Wagstaffe's Defence, p. 37. 



such a communication between the King and 
the Duke of Somerset, it is altogether incredi- 
ble that Clarendon should not have recurred 
to the same pure source of information. 
The only admissible meaning of Clarendon's 
words is, that " Lord Hertford (afterwards 
Duke of Somerset) had satisfied the King^ of 
the impropriety of speaking on the subject. 
We must otherwise suppose that the King 
and Clarendon had been " satisfied," or per- 
fectly convinced, that Charles was the writer 
of the Icon: — a supposition which would 
convert the silence of the Chancellor and 
the levity of the Monarch into heinous of- 
fences. The message of Morley to Claren- 
don demonstrates that they had previous 
conversation on the subject. The answer 
shows that both parties knew of information 
having been given by Somerset to the King, 
before Gauden's nomination to Exeter : but 
Gauden had at that time appealed, in his 
letters, both to Morley and Somerset as his 
witness. That Clarendon therefore knew all 
that Morley and Somerset could tell, is no 
longer matter of inference, but is established 
by the positive testimony of the two survi- 
vors in 1674. Wagstaffe did not perceive 
the consequences of the letter which he pub- 
lished, because he had not seen the whole 
correspondence of Gauden. But it is much 
less easy to understand, how those who have 
compared the letters of Gauden with the 
messages between Clarendon and Morley, 
should not have discovered the irresistible 
inference which arises from the comparison. 

The silence of Lord Clarendon, as an his- 
torian, is the strongest moral evidence that 
he believed the pretensions of Bishop Gau- 
den : and his opinion on the question must 
be held to include the testimony in point of 
fact, and the judgment in point of opinion, 
of all those men whom he had easy opportu- 
nities and strong inducements to consult. It 
may be added, that however Henry Earl 
of Clarendon chose to express himself, (his 
language is not free from an air of mental 
reservation), neither he nor his brother Lord 
Rochester, when they published their father's 
history in 1702, thought fit, in their preface, 
to attempt any explanation of his silence 
respecting the Icon, though their attention 
must have been called to that subject by the 
controversy respecting it which had been 
carried on a few years before with great zeal 
and activity. Their silence becomes the 
more remarkable, from the strong interest 
taken by Lord Clarendon in the controversy. 
He wrote two letters on it to Wagstaffe, in 
1694 and 1699; he was one of the few per- 
sons present at the select consecration of 
Wagstaffe as a nonjuring bishop, in 1693 : yet 
there is no allusion to the Icon in the preface 
to his falher's history, published in 1702. 

It cannot be pretended that the final silence' 
of Clarendon is agreeable to the rigorous rules 
of historical morality: it is no doubt an in- 
firmity which impairs his credit as an histo- 
rian. But it is a light and venial fault com- 
pared with that which must be laid to his 
charge, if we suppose, that, with a conviction 



ICON BASILIKE. 



89 



of the genuineness of the Icon, and with such 
testimony in support of it as the evidence 
of Somerset and Morley, — to say nothing of 
others, — he should not have made a single 
effort, in a work destined for posterity, to 
guard from the hands of the impostor the 
most sacred property of his unfortunate mas- 
ter, The partiality of Clarendon to Charles I. 
has never been severely blamed ; his silence 
in his history, if he believed Gauden. would 
only be a new instance of that partiality: but 
the same silence, if he believed the King to 
be the author, would be fatal to his character 
as an historian and a man. 

The knowledge of Gauden's secret was 
obtained by Clarendon as a minister; and he 
might deem his duty with respect to secrets 
of state still to be so far in force, as at least 
to excuse him from disturbing one of the 
favourite opinions of his party, and for not 
disclosing what he thought could gratify none 
but regicides and agitators. Even this ex- 
cuse, on the opposite supposition, he wanted. 
That Charles was the author of the Icon 
(if true) was no state secret, but the preva- 
lent and public opinion. He might have 
collected full proofs of its truth, in private 
conversation with his friends. He had only 
to state such proof, and to lament the neces- 
sity which made him once act as if the truth 
were otherwise, rather than excite a contro- 
versy with an unprincipled enemy, danger- 
ous to a new government, and injurious to 
the interests of monarchy. His mere testi- 
mony would have done infinitely more for 
the King's authorship, than all the volumes 
which have been written to maintain it :— 
even that testimony is withheld. If the 
Icon be Gauden's. the silence of Clarendon 
is a vice to which he had strong temptations : 
if it be the King's, it is a crime without a 
motive. Those who are willing to ascribe 
the lesser fault to the historian, must deter- 
mine against the authenticity of the Icon. 

That good men, of whom Lord Clarendon 
was one. were, at the period of the Restora- 
tion, ready to use expedients of very dubious 
morality to conceal secrets dangerous to the 
Royal cause, will appear from a fact, which 
seems to have escaped the notice of the 
general historians of England. It is uncer- 
tain, and not worth inquiring, when Chaihs 
II. threw over his doubts and vices that slight 
and thin vesture of Catholicism, which he 
drew a little closer round him at the sight 
of death :* but we know with certainty, that, 
in the beginning of the year 1659. the Duke 
of Ormonde accidentally discovered the con- 
version, by finding him on his knees at mass 
in a church at Brussels. Ormonde, after it 
was more satisfactorily proved to him, by 
communication with Henry Bennett and 
Lord Bristol.! imparted the secret in Eng- 
land to Clarendon and Southampton, who 
agreed with him in the necessity of prevent- 
ing the enemies of monarchy, or the friends 

* His formal reconciliation probably took place 
at Cologne in 1658, under the direction of Dr. 
Peter Talbot, Catholic Archbishop of Armagh. 

t Carte, Life of Ormonde, vol. ii. pp. 254 — 256. 



of Popery, from promulgating this fatal se- 
cret. Accordingly, the " Act for the better 
security of his Majesty's person and govern- 
ment "* provided, that to affirm the King to 
be a Papist, should be punishable by •'• dis- 
ability to hold any office or promotion, civil, 
military, or ecclesiastical, besides being lia- 
ble to such other punishments as by common 
or statute law might be inflicted." 

As soon as we take our stand on the 
ground, that the acquiescence of all the 
Royalists in the council and court of Charles 
II.. and the final silence of Clarendon in his 
history, on a matter so much within his pro- 
vince, and so interesting to his feelings, are 
irreconcilable with the supposition, that they 
believed the Icon to be the work of the King, 
all the other circumstances on both sides not 
only dwindle into insignificance, but assume 
a different colour. Thus, the general credit 
of the book among Royalists before the Re- 
storation serves to show, that the evidence 
which changed the opinion of Clarendon and 
his friends must have been very strong, — 
probably far stronger than what we now pos- 
sess; the firmer we suppose the previous 
conviction to have been, the more probable 
it becomes, that the proofs then discovered 
were of a more direct nature than those 
which remain. Let it be very especially 
observed, that those who decided the ques- 
tion practically in 1660 were within twelve 
years of the fact ; while fifty years had pas- 
sed before the greater part of the traditional 
and hearsay stories, ranged on the opposite 
side, were brought together by Wagstaffe. 

Let us consider, for example, the effect of 
the proceedings of 1660, upon the evidence 
of the witnesses who speak of the Icon as 
having been actually taken from the King at 
Naseby, and afterwards restored to him by 
the conquerors. Two of the best known are 
the Earl of Manchester and Mr. Prynne. 
Eales, a physician at Welwyn in Hertford- 
shire, certifies, in 1699, that some j 7 ears be- 
fore the Restoration (i. e. about 1656), he 
heard Lord Manchester declare, that the 
MS. of the Icon was taken at Naseby, and 
that he had seen it in the King's own hand.t 
Jones, at the distance of fifty years, says 
that he had heard from Colonel Stroud that 
Stroud had heard from Prynne in 1649, that 
In', by order of Parliament, had read the 
MS. of the Icon taken at Naseby. J Now it 
is certain that Manchester was taken into 
favour, and Prynne was patronised at the 
Restoration. If this were so, how came 
matters, of which they spoke so publicly, to 
remain unknown to Clarendon and South- 
ampton? Had the MS. Icon been intrusted 
to Prynne by Parliament, or even by a com- 
mittee, its existence must have been known 
to a body much too large to allow the sup- 
position of secrecy. The application of the 
same remark disposes of the mob of second- 
hand witnesses. The very number of the 
witnesses increases the incredibility that 



* 13 Car. 2. st. 1. 

t " Who wrote," &,c. p. 93. Wagstaffe'a Vin. 
dication, p. 19. t Ibid. p. 80. 

H2 



90 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



their testimony could have escaped notice 
in 1660. Huntingdon, a Major in Cromwell's 
regiment, who abandoned the Parliamentary 
pause, is a more direct witness. In the year 
1679. he informed Dogdale that he had pro- 
cured the MS. Icon taken at Naseby to be 
restored to the Kins at Hampton, — that it 
was written by Sir E. Walker, but interlined 
by tic King, who wrote all the devotions. 
In 1681, Dugdale published The Short View, 
in which is the same story, with the varia- 
tion, "that it was written with the King's 
own hand;" — a statement which, in the 
summary language of a general narrative, 
■can hardly be said to vary materially from 
the former. Now, Major Huntingdon had 
particularly attracted the notice of Claren- 
don : he is mentioned in the history with 
commendation.* He tendered his services 
to the King before the Restoration ;t and, 
what is most important of all to our present 
purpose, his testimony regarding the con- 
duct of Berkeley and Ashburnham, in the 
journey from Hampton Court, is expressly 
mentioned by the historian as being, in 
1660, thought worthy of being weighed even 
against that of Somerset and Southampton.! 
When we thus trace a direct communication 
between him and the minister, and when we 
remember that it took place at the very time 
of the claim of Gauden, and that it related 
to events contemporary with the supposed 
recovery of the Icon, it is scarcely necessary 
to ask, whether Clarendon would not have 
sounded him on that subject, and whether 
Huntingdon would not then have boasted 
of such a personal service to the late King. 
It would be contrary to common sense not 
to presume that something then passed on 
that subject, and that, if Huntingdon's ac- 
count at that time coincided with his sub- 
sequent story, it could not have been re- 
jected, unless it was outweighed by contrary 
evidence. § He must have been thought 
either a deceiver or deceived : for the more 
candid of these suppositions there was abun- 
dant scope. It is known that one MS. {not 
the Icon) written by Sir Edward Walker 
and corrected by the King, was taken with 
the King's correspondence at Naseby, and 
restored to him by Fairfax through an offi- 
cer at Hampton Court. II This was an ac- 
count of the military transactions in the 
Civil War, written by Walker, and published 
in his Historical Discourses long after. It 
was natural that the King should be pleased 
at the recovery of this manuscript, which he 



* Vol. v. p. 484. t Ibid. vol. vii. p. 432. 

t Iliid. vol. v. p. 495. 

§ Dr. Wordsworfh admits, that if Clarendon 
had consulted Duppa, Juxon, Sheldon, Morley, 
Kendal, Barwick, Legge, Herbert, &.c. &,c. ; nay, 
if he had consulted only Morley alone, he must 
have been satisfied, — (Dr. Wordswoiih, of course, 
says for the King.) Now, it is certain, from the 
message of Morley to Clarendon in 1674, that pre- 
vious discussion had taken place between them. 
Does not this single fact decide the question on 
Dr. Wordsworth's own admission ? 

II Clarendon, vol. v. p. 476; and Warburton's 
note. 



soon after sent from Hampton Court to Lord 
Clarendon in Jersey, as a '•'contribution" 
towards his H. story. How easily Hunting- 
don, an old soldier little versed in manu- 
scripts, might, thirty years afterwards, have 
confounded these memorials with the Icon! 
A lew prayers in the King's handwriting 
might have formed a part of the papers re- 
stored. So slight and probable are the only 
suppositions necessary to save the veracity 
of Huntingdon, and to destroy the value of 
his evidence. 

Sir Thomas Herbert, who wrote bis Me- 
moirs thirty years after the event, in the 
seventy-third year of his age, when, as he 
told Antony Wood, " he was grown old, and 
not in such a capacity as he could wish to 
publish it," found a copy of the Icon among 
the books which Charles I. left to him, and 
thought " the handwriting was the King's." 
Sir Philip Warwick states Herbert's testi- 
mony (probably from a conversation more 
full than the Memoirs) to be, that "he saw 
the MS. in the King's hand, as he believes; 
but it was in a running character, and not in 
that which the King usually wrote.''* Now, 
more than one copy of the Icon might have 
been sent to Charles; they might have been 
written with some resemblances to his hand- 
writing; but assuredly the original MS. would 
not have been loosely left to Herbert, while 
works on general subjects were bequeathed 
to the King's children. It is equally certain 
that this was not the MS. from which the 
Icon was published a few days afterwards; 
and. above all, it is clear that information 
from Herbert!' would naturally be sought, 
and would have been easily procured, in 
1660. The ministers of that time perhaps 
examined the MS. ; or if it could not be 
produced, they might have asked why it 
was not preserved, — a question to which, on 
the supposition of its being written by the 
King, it seems now impossible to imagine 
a satisfactory answer. The same observa- 
tions are applicable to the story of Levett. a 
page, who said that he had seen the King 
wnting the Icon, and had read several chap- 
ters of it, — but more forcibly, from his being 
less likely to be intrusted, and more liable to 
confusion and misrecollection; — to say no- 
thing' of our ignorance of his character for ve- 
racity, and of the interval of forty-two years 
which had passed before his attestation on 
this subject. 

The Naseby copy being the only fragment 
of positive evidence in support of the King's 
authorship, one more observation on it may 
be excused. If the Parliamentary leaders 
thought the Icon so dangerous to their cause, 
and so likely to make an impression favour- 
able to the King, how came they to restore 
it so easily to its author, whom they had 



* Memoirs, p. 69. How much this coincides 
with Gauden's account, that his wife had dis- 
guised the writing of the copy sent to the Isle of 
Wight. 

t He was made a baronet at the Restoration, 
for his personal services to Charles I. 



ICON BASILIKE. 



91 



deeply injured by the publication of his pri- 
vate letters? The advocates of the King 
charge this publication on them, as an act of 
gross hide] cacy, and at the same lime ascribe 
to them, in the restoration of the Icon, a 
singular instance of somewhat wanton gene- 
rosity. 

It may be a question whether lawyers are 
justified in altogether rejecting hearsay evi- 
dence; but it never can be supposed, in its 
best state, to be other than secondary. When 
it passes through many hands, — when it is 
given after a long time, — when it is to be 
found almost solely in one party, — when it 
relates to a subject which deeply interests 
their feelings, we may confidently place it 
at the very bottom of the scale ; and without 
being able either to disprove many particular 
stories, or to ascertain the proportion in which 
each of them is influenced by unconscious 
exaggeration, inflamed zeal, intentional false- 
hood, inaccurate observation, confused re- 
collection, or eagercredulity, we may safely 
treat the far greater part as the natural pro- 
duce of these grand causes of human delu- 
sion. Among the evidence first collected by 
Wagstaffe, one story fortunately refers to 
authorities still in our possession. Hearne, 
a servant of Sir Philip Warwick, declared 
that he had heard his master and one Oudart 
often say that they had transcribed the Icon 
from a copy in Charles' handwriting.* Sir 
Philip Warwick (who is thus said to have 
copied the Icon from the King's MS.) has 
himself positively told us, '•'• I cannot say I 
know that he wrote, the Icon icliich z;oes under 
his name ;f and Oudart was secretary to Sir 
Edward Nicholas, whose letter to Gauden, 
virtually acknowledging his claim, has been 
already quoted ! 

Two persons appear to have been privy to 
the composition of the Icon by Gauden, — 
his wife, and Walker his curate. Mrs. Gau- 
den, immediately after her husband's death, 
applied to Lord Bristol for favour, on the 
ground of her knowledge of the secret ; ad- 
ding, that the bishop was prevented only by 
death from writing to him, — surely to the 
same effect. Nine years afterwards she sent 
to one of her sons the papers on this subject, 
to be used '•'• if there be a good occasion to 
make it manifest," among which was an 
epitome u drawn out by the hand of him that 
did hope to have made a fortune by it."j 
This is followed by her narrative of the whole 
transactions, on which two short remarks 
will suffice. It coincides with Gauden's let- 
ters, in the most material particulars, in ap- 
peals to the same eminent persons said to be 
privy to the secret, who might and must have 
been consulted after such appeal : it proves 
also her firm persuasion that her husband 
had been ungratefully requited, and that her 
family had still pretensions founded on his 
services, which these papers might one day 
enable them to assert with more effect. 

Walker, the curate, tells us that he had a 



* Who wrote, &c. p. 138. 
X Doc. Sup. pp. 42, 48. 



t Memoirs, p. 



hand in the business all along. He wrote 
his book, it is true, forty-five years after the 
events: but this circumstance, which so 
deeply affects the testimony of men who 
speak of words spoken in conversation, and 
reaching them through three or four hands, 
rather explains the inaccuracies, than lessens 
the substantial weight, of one who speaks 
of his own acts, on the most, and peihaps 
only, remarkable occasion of his life. There 
are two facts in Walker's account which 
seem to be decisive; — namely, that Gauden 
told him. about the time of the fabrication, 
that the MS. was sent by the Duke of So- 
merset to the King, and that two chapters of 
it were added by Bishop Duppa. To both 
these witnesses Gauden appealed at the Re- 
storation, and Mrs. Gauden after his death. 
These communications were somewhat in- 
discreet ; but, if false, what temptation had 
Gauden at that time to invent them, and to 
communicate them to his curate ? They 
were new means of detecting his imposture. 
But the declaration of Gauden, that the book 
and figure was wholly and solely my " in- 
vention, making, and design," is quoted with 
premature triumph, as if it were incompati- 
ble with the composition of two chapters by 
Duppa;* — as if the contribution of a few 
pages to a volume could affect the authorship 
of the man who had planned the whole, and 
executed all the rest. That he mentioned 
the particular contribution of Duppa at the 
time to Walker, and only appealed in general 
to the same prelate in his applications to 
Clarendon and the King, is a variation, but 
no inconsistency. 

Walker early represented the coincidence 
of some peculiar phrases in the devotions of 
the Icon with Gauden's phraseology, as an 
important fact in the case. That argument 
has recently been presented with much more 
force by Mr. Todd, whose catalogues of co- 
incidences between the Icon and the avowed 
writings of Gauden is certainly entitled to 
serious consideration. t They are not all of 
equal importance, but some of the phrases 
are certainly very peculiar. It seems very 
unlikely that Charles should have copied pe- 
culiar phrases from the not very conspicuous 
writings of Gauden's early life; and it is 
almost equally improbable that Gauden, in 
his later writings, when he is said to have 
been eager to reap the fruits of his impos- 
ture, should not have carefully shunned those 
modes of expression which were peculiar to 
the Icon. To the list of Mr. Todd, a very 
curious addition has been made by Mr. Ben- 
jamin Bright, a discerning and liberal col- 
lector, from a manuscript volume of prayers 
by Gauden, t which is of more value than 
the other coincidences, inasmuch as it cor- 
roborates the testimony of Walker, who said 
that he " met with expressions in the devo- 
tional parts of the Icon very frequently used 



* Who wrote, &c. p. 156. 

t Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, pp. 
51—76. 
1 X Ibid. Appendix, No. 1. 



52 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



by Dr. Gauden in his prayers!' 1 Without 
laying great stress on these resemblances. 
they are certainly of more weight than the 
general arguments founded either on the in- 
feriority of Gauden's talents, (which Dr. 
Wordsworth candidly abandons,) or on the 
impure and unostentatious character of his 
style, which have little weight, unless we 
suppose him to have had no power of vary- 
ing his manner when speaking in the person 
of another man. 

Conclusions from internal evidence have 
so often been contradicted by experience, 
that prudent inquirers seldom rely on them 
when there are any other means of forming 
a judgment. But in such cases as the pre- 
sent, internal evidence does not so much de- 
pend on the discussion of words, or the dis- 
section of sentences, as on the impression 
made by the whole composition, on minds 
long accustomed to estimate and compare 
the writings of different men in various cir- 
cumstances. A single individual can do 
little more than describe that impression ; 
and he must leave it to be determined by 
experience, how far it agrees with the im- 
pressions made on the minds of the majority 
of other men of similar qualifications. To 
us it seems, as it did to Archbishop Herring, 
that the Icon is greatly more like the work 
of a priest than a king. It has more of dis- 
sertation than effusion. It has more regular 
division and systematic order than agree 
with the habits of the King. The choice 
and arrangement of words show a degree of 
care and neatness which are seldom attained 
but by a practised writer. "The views of 
men and affairs, too, are rather those of a 
bystander than an actor. They are chiefly 
reflections, sometimes in themselves obvious, 
but often ingeniously turned, such as the 
surface of events would suggest to a specta- 
tator not too deeply interested. It betrays 
none of those strong feelings which the most 
vigilant regard to gravity and dignity could 
not have uniformly banished from the com- 
position of an actor and a sufferer. It has 
no allusion to facts not accessible to any 
moderately informed man ; though the King- 
must have (sometimes rightly) thought that 
his superior knowledge of affairs would en- 
able him to correct vulgar mistakes. If it 
be really the private effusion of a man's 
thoughts on himself and his own affairs, it 
would be the only writing of that sort in the 
world in which it is impossible to select a 
trace of peculiarities and weaknesses, — of 
partialities and dislikes, — of secret opinions, 
— of favourite idioms, and habitual familiari- 
ties of expression : every thing is impersonal. 
The book consists entirely of generalities; 
while real writings of this sort never fail to 
be characterised by those minute and cir- 
cumstantial touches, which parties deeply- 
interested cannot, if they would, avoid. It 
is also very observable, that the Icon dwells 
little on facts, where a mistake might so 
easily betray its not being the King's, and 
expatiates in reasoning and reflection, of 



which it is impossible to try the genuineness 
by any palpable test. The absence of every 
allusion to those secrets of which it would 
be very hard for the King himself wholly to 
conceal his knowledge, seems, indeed, to 
indicate the hand of a writer who was afraid 
of venturing on ground where his ignorance 
might expose him to irretrievable blunders. 
Perhaps also the want of all the smaller 
strokes of character betrays a timid and fal- 
tering forger, who, though he ventured to 
commit a pious fraud, shrunk from an irreve- 
rent imitation of the Royal feelings, and was 
willing, after the great purpose was served, 
so to soften the imposture, as to leave his 
retreat open, and to retain the means, in 
case of positive detection, of representing 
the book to have been published as what 
might be put into the King's mouth, rather 
than as what was actually spoken by him. 

The section which relates to the civil war 
in Ireland not only exemplifies the above re- 
marks, but closely connects the question 
respecting the Icon with the character of 
Charles for sincerity. It certainly was not 
more unlawful for him to seek the aid of the 
Irish Catholics, than it was for his opponents 
to call in the succour of the Scotch Presby- 
terians. The Parliament procured the as- 
sistance of the Scotch army, by the imposi- 
tion of the Covenant in England- and the 
King might, on the like principle, purchase 
the help of the Irish, by promising to tole- 
rate, and even establish, the Catholic religion 
in Ireland. Warburton justly observes, that 
the King was free from blame in his negotia- 
tions with the Irish, "as a politician, and 
king, and governor of his people ; but the 
necessity of his affairs obliging him at the 
same time to play the Protestant saint and 
confessor, there was found much disagree- 
ment between his professions and declara- 
tions, and actions in this matter."* As long 
as the disagreement was confined to official 
declarations and to acts of state, it must be 
owned that it is extenuated by the practice 
of politicians, and by the consideration, that 
the concealment of negotiations, which is a 
lawful end, can very often be obtained by 
no other means than a disavowal of them. 
The rigid moralist may regret this excuse, 
though it be founded on that high public 
convenience to which Warburton gives the 
name of "necessity." But all mankind will 
allow, that the express or implied denial of 
real negotiations in a private work,— a pic- 
ture of the writer's mind, professing to come 
from the Man and not from the King, mixed 
with solemn appeals and fervid prayers to 
the Deity, is a far blacker and more aggra- 
vated instance of insincerity. It is not, 
therefore, an act of judicious regard to the 
memory of Charles to ascribe to him the 
composition of the twelfth section of the 
Icon. The impression manifestly aimed at 
in that section is, that the imputation of a 
private connexion with the Irish revolters 

* Clarendon, vol. vii. p. 591. 



ICON BASILIKE. 



93 



was a mere calumny; and in the only para- 
graph which approaches to particulars, it 
expressly confines his intercourse with them 
to the negotiation for a time through Or- 
monde, and declares that his only object 
was to save " the poor Protestants of Ireland 
from their desperate enemies." In the sec- 
tion which relates to the publication of his 
letters, when the Parliament had explicitly 
charged him with clandestine negotiations, 
nothing is added on the subject. The gene- 
ral protestations of innocence, not very spe- 
cifically applied even to the first instigation 
of the revolt, are left in that indefinite state 
in which the careless reader may be led to 
apply them to all subsequent transactions, 
which are skilfully, — not to say artfully, — 
passed over in silence. Now it is certain 
that the Earl of Glamorgan, a Catholic him- 
self, was authorised by Charles to negotiate 
with the Catholics in 1645, independently 
of Ormonde, and with powers, into the na- 
ture of which the Lord Lieutenant thought 
himself bound not curiously to pry. It is, 
also, certain that, in the spring of that year, 
Glamorgan concluded a secret treaty with 
the Catholic assembly at Kilkenny, by which, 
— besides the repeal of penalties or disabili- 
ties. — all the churches and Church property 
in Ireland occupied by the Catholics since 
the revolt, were continued and secured to 
them ;* while they, on their parts, engaged 
to send ten thousand troops to the King's as- 
sistance in England. Some correspondence 
on this subject was captured at sea. and 
some was seized in Ireland : both portions 
were immediately published by the Parlia- 
ment, which compelled the King to imprison 
and disavow Glamorgan. t It is clear that 
these were measures of policy, merely in- 
tended to conceal the truth :t and the King, 
if he was the writer of the Icon, must have 
deliberately left on the minds of the readers 
of that book an opinion, of his connexion 
with the Irish Catholics, which he knew to 
be false. On the other hand it is to be ob- 
served, that Gauden could not have known 
the secret of the Irish negotiations, and that 
he would naturally avoid a subject of which 
he was ignorant, and confine himself to a 
general disavowal of the instigation of the 
revolt. The silence of the Icon on this sub- 



* Birch, Inquiry, p. 68. The King's warrant, 
on 12ih March, 1645, gives Glamorgan power 
"to treat with the Roman Catholics upon neces- 
sity, wherein our Lieutenant cannot so well he 
seen " — p. 20. 

t Harleian Miscellany, vol. iv. p. 491. 

X See a curious letter published by Leland (His- 
tory of Ireland, book v. chap. 7), which clearly 
proves that the blindness of Ormonde was volun- 
tary, and that he was either trusted wiih the se- 
cret, or discovered it; and that the imprisonment 
of Glamorgan was, what the Parliament called it, 
"a colourable commitment." Leland is one of 
those writers who deserve more reputation than 
they enjoy : he is not only an elegant writer, but, 
considering his time and country, singularly can- 
did, unprejudiced, and independent. 



ject, if written by Gauden, would be neither 
more wonderful nor more blamable than 
that of Clarendon, who. though he was of 
necessity acquainted with the negotiations 
of Glamorgan, does not suffer an allusion to 
the true state of them to escape him, either 
in the History, or in that apology for Or- 
monde's administration, which he calls "A 
Short View of the State of Ireland." Let it 
not be said, either by Charles' mistaken 
friends, or by his undistinguishing enemies, 
that he incurs the same blame for suffering 
an omission calculated to deceive to remain 
in the Icon of Gauden, as if he had himself 
written the book. If the manuscript were 
sent to him by Gauden in September 1648, 
he may have intended to direct an explana- 
tion of the Irish negotiations to be inserted 
in it ; — he may not have finally determined 
on the immediate publication. At all events, 
it would be cruel to require that he should 
have critically examined, and deliberately 
weighed, every part of a manuscript, which 
he could only occasionally snatch a moment 
to read in secret during the last four months 
of his life. In this troubled and dark period, 
divided between great negotiations, violent 
removals, and preparations for asserting his 
dignity. — if he could not preserve his life, — 
justice, as much as generosity requires that 
we should not hold him responsible for a 
negative offence, however important, in a 
manuscript which he had then only read. 
But if he was the author, none of these ex- 
tenuations have any place : he must then 
have composed the work several years be- 
fore his death ; he was likely to have fre- 
quently examined it ; he doubtless read it 
with fresh attention, after it was restored to 
him at Hampton Court; and he afterwards 
added several chapters to it. On that sup- 
position, the fraudulent omission must have 
been a contrivance ''aforethought" carried 
on for years, persisted in at the approach of 
death, and left, as the dying declaration of 
a pious monarch, in a state calculated to im- 
pose a falsehood upon posterity.* 



* Alter sketching the above, we have been con- 
vinced, by a reperusal of the note of Mr. Laing on 
this subject (History of Scotland, vol. iii. p. 565), 
that if he had employed his great abilities as much 
in unfolding facts as in ascertaining them, nothing 
could have been written for the Icon, or ought to 
have been written against it, since that decisive 
note. His merit, as a critical inquirer into history, 
an enlightened collector of materials, and a saga- 
cious judge of evidence, has never been surpassed. 
If any man believes the innocence of Queen Mary, 
after an impartial and dispassionate perusal of Mr. 
Laing's examination of her case, the slate of such 
a man's mind would be a subject worthy of much 
consideration by a philosophical observer ol hu- 
man nature. In spite of his ardent love of liberty, 
no man has yet presumed to charge him with the 
slightest sacrifice of historical integrity to his zeal. 
That he never perfectly attained the art of full, 
clear, and easy narrative was owing to the pecu- 
liar style of those writers who were popular in his 
youth, and may be mentioned as a remarkable 
instance of the disproportion of particular talen's 
to a general vigour of mind. 



94 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



DISSERTATION 



ON THE PROGRESS OF 



ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY, 



CHIEFLY DURING THE 



SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. 



[ORIGINALLY PREFIXED TO THE SEVENTH EDITION OF THE ENCYCLOPJEDIA BRITANNICA.l 



INTRODUCTION 



The inadequacy of the words of ordinary 
language for the purposes of Philosophy, is 
an ancient and frequent complaint ; of which 
the justness will be felt by all who consider 
the state to which some of the most import- 
ant arts would be reduced, if the coarse tools 
of the common labourer were the only in- 
struments to be employed in the most deli- 
cate operations of manual expertness. The 
watchmaker, the optician, and the surgeon, 
are provided with instruments which are 
fitted, by careful ingenuity, to second their 
skill; the philosopher alone is doomed to use 
the rudest tools for the most refined purposes. 
He must reason in words of which the loose- 
ness and vagueness are suitable, and even 
agreeable, in the usual intercourse of lite, 
but which are almost as remote from the 
extreme exactness and precision required, 
not only in the conveyance, but in the search 
of truth, as the hammer and the axe would 
be unfit for the finest exertions of skilful 
handiwork : for it is not to be forgotten, that 
he must himself think in these gross words 
as unavoidably as he uses them in speaking 
to others. He is in this respect in a worse 
condition than an astronomer who looked at 
the heavens only with the naked eye, whose 
limited and partial observation, however it 
might lead to error, might not directly, and 
would not necessarily, deceive. He might 
be more justly compared to an arithmetician 
compelled to employ numerals not only cum- 
brous, but used so irregularly to denote dif- 
ferent quantities, that they not only often 
deceive others, but himself. 

The natural philosopher and mathemati- 
cian have in some degree the privilege of 
framing their own terms of art ; though that 
liberty is daily narrowed by the happy dif- 
fusion of these great branches of knowledge, 
which daily mixes their language with the 
general vocabulary of educated men. The 
cultivator of mental and moral philosophy 
can seldom do more than mend the faults 



of his words by definition ; — a necessary, 
but very inadequate expedient, and one in 
a great measure defeated in practice by the 
unavoidably more frequent recurrence of the 
terms in their vague, than in their definite 
acceptation. The mind, to which such de- 
finition is faintly, and but occasionally, pre- 
sent, naturally suffers, in the ordinary state 
of attention, the scientific meaning to disap- 
pear from remembrance, and insensibly as- 
cribes to the word a great part, if not the 
whole, of that popular sense which is so very 
much more familiar even to the most vete- 
ran speculator. The obstacles which stood 
in the way of Lucretius and Cicero, when 
they began to translate the subtile philoso- 
phy of Greece into their narrow and barren 
tongue, are always felt by the philosopher 
when he struggles to express, with the neces- 
sary discrimination, his abstruse reasonings 
in words which, though those of his own lan- 
guage, he must take from the mouths of 
those to whom his distinctions would be 
without meaning. 

The moral philosopher is in this respect 
subject to peculiar difficulties. His state- 
ments and reasonings often call for nicer dis- 
criminations of language than those which 
are necessary in describing or discussing the 
purely intellectual part of human nature; 
but his freedom in the choice of words is 
more circumscribed. As he treats of mat- 
ters on which all men are disposed to form a 
judgment, he can as rarely hazard glaring 
innovations in diction, — at least in an adult 
and mature language like ours, — as the ora- 
tor or the poet. If he deviates from com- 
mon use, he must atone for his deviation by 
hiding it, and can only give a new sense to 
an old word by so skilful a position of it as 
to render the new meaning so quickly un- 
derstood that its novelty is scarcely per- 
ceived. Add to this, that in those most 
difficult inquiries for which the utmost cool- 
ness is not more than sufficient, he is often 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



95 



forced to use terms commonly connected 
with warm feeling, with high praise, with 
severe reproach; — which excite the passions 
of his readers when he most needs their 
calm attention and the undisturbed exer- 
cise of their impartial judgment. There is 
scarcely a neutral term left in Ethics ; so 
quickly are such expressions enlisted on the 
side of Praise or Blame, by the address of 
contending passions. A true philosopher 
must not even desire that men should less 
love Virtue, or hate Vice, in order to fit them 
for a more unprejudiced judgment on his 
speculations. 

There are, perhaps, not many occasions 
where the penury and laxity of language are 
more felt than in entering on the history of 
sciences where the first measure must be to 
mark out the boundary of the whole subject 
with some distinctness. But no exactness 
in these important operations can be ap- 
proached without a new division of human 
knowledge, adapted to the present stage of 
its progress, and a reformation of all those 
barbarous, pedantic, unmeaning, and (what 
is worse) wrong-meaning names which con- 
tinue to be applied to the greater part of its 
branches. Instances are needless where 
nearly all the appellations are faulty. The 
term "Metaphysics" affords a specimen of 
all the faults which the name of a science 
can combine. To those who know only 
their own language, it must, at their entrance 
on the study, convey no meaning: it points 
their attention to nothing. If they examine 
the language in which its parts are signifi- 
cant, they will be misled into the pernicious 
error of believing that it seeks something 
more than the interpretation of nature. It is 
only by examining the history of ancient 
philosophy that the probable origin of this 
name will be found, in its application, as the 
running title of several essays of Aristotle, 
plated in a collection of the manuscripts of 
that great philosopher, after his treatise on 
Physics. It has the greater fault of an un- 
steady and fluctuating signification; — deno- 
ting one class of objects "in the seventeenth 
century, and another in the eighteenth; — 
even in the nineteenth not quite'of the same 
import in the mouth of a German, as in that 
of a French or English philosopher; to say 
nothing of the farther objection that it con- 
tinues to be a badge of undue pretension 
among some of the followers of the science, 
while it has become a name of reproach and 
derision among those who altogether decry 
it. The modern name of the very modern 
science called "Political Economy," though 
deliberately bestowed on it by its most emi- 
nent teachers, is perhaps a still more notable 
sample of the like faults. It might lead the 
ignorant to confine it to retrenchment in na- 
tional expenditure; and a consideration of 
its etymology alone would lead us into the 
more mischievous error of believing it to 
teach, that national wealth is best promoted 
by the contrivance and interference of law- 
givers, in opposition to its surest doctrine, 



and the one which it most justly boasts of 
having discovered and enforced. 

It is easy to conceive an exhaustive analy- 
sis of human knowledge, and a consequent 
division of it into parts corresponding to all 
the classes of objects to which it relates: — a 
representation of that vast edifice, contain- 
ing a picture of what is finished, a sketch of 
what is building, and even a conjectural out- 
line of what, though required by complete- 
ness and convenience, as well as symmetry, 
is yet altogether untouched. A sj stem of 
names might also be imagined derived from 
a few roots, indicating the objects of each 
part, and showing the "relation of the parts to 
each other. An order and a language some- 
what resembling those by which the objects 
of the sciences of Botany and Chemistry 
have, in the eighteenth century, been ar- 
ranged and denoted, are doubtless capable of 
application to the sciences generally, when 
considered as parts of the system of know- 
ledge. The attempts, however, which have 
hitherto been made to accomplish that ana- 
lytical division of knowledge which must 
necessarily precede a new 'nomenclature of 
the sciences, have required so prodigious a 
superiority of genius in the single instance 
of approach to success by Bacon, as to dis- 
courage rivalship nearly as much as the fre- 
quent examples of failure in subsequent 
times could do. The nomenclature itself is 
attended with great difficulties, not indeed 
in its conception, but in its adoption and use- 
fulness. In the Continental languages to the 
south of the Rhine, the practice of deriving 
the names of science from the Greek must 
be continued; which would render the new 
names for a while unintelligible to the ma- 
jority of men. Even if successful in Ger- 
many, where a flexible and fertile language 
affords unbounded liberty of derivation and 
composition from native roots or elements, 
and where the newly derived and com- 
pounded words would thus be as clear to the 
mind, and almost as little startling to the ear 
of every man, as the oldest terms in the 
language, yet the whole nomenclature would 
be unintelligible to other nations. But, the 
intercommunity of the technical terms of 
science in Europe having been so far broken 
down by the Germans, the influence of their 
literature and philosophy is so rapidly in- 
creasing in the greater part of the Continent, 
that though a revolution in scientific nomen- 
clature be probably yet far distant, the foun- 
dation of it may be considered as already 
prepared. 

Although so great an undertaking must be 
reserved for a second Bacon and a future 
generation, it is necessary for the historian 
of any branch of knowledge to introduce his 
work by some account of the limits and con- 
tents of the sciences of which he is about to 
trace the progress; and though it will be 
found impossible to trace throughout this 
treatise a distinct line of demarcation, yet a 
general and imperfect sketch of the bounda- 
ries of the whole, and of the parts, of our 



96 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



present subject, may be a considerable help 
to the reader, as it has been a useful guide 
to the writer. 

There is no distribution of the parts of 
knowledge more ancient than that of them 
into the physical and moral sciences, which 
seems liable to no other objection than that 
it does not exhaust the subject. Even this 
division, however, cannot be safely employed, 
without warning the reader that no science 
is entirely insulated, and that the principles 
of one are often only the conclusions and re- 
sults of another. Every branch of know- 
ledge has its root in the theory of the Under- 
standing, from which even the mathemati- 
cian must learn what can be known of his 
magnitude and his numbers; moral science 
is founded on that other, — hitherto unnamed, 
— part of the philosophy of human nature 
(to be constantly and vigilantly distinguished 
from intellectual philosophy), which contem- 
plates the laws of sensibility, of emotion, of 
desire and aversion, of pleasure and pain, of 
happiness and misery : and on which arise 
the august and sacred landmarks that stand 
conspicuous along the frontier between 
Right and Wrong. 

But however multiplied the connections of 
the moral and physical sciences are, it is not 
difficult to draw a general distinction be- 
tween them. The purpose of the physical 
sciences throughout all their provinces, is to 
answer the question What is ! They consist 
only of facts arranged according to their like- 
ness, and expressed by general names given 
to every class of similar facts. The purpose 
of the moral sciences is to answer the ques- 
tion What ought to be ?■ They aim at ascer- 
taining the rules which ought to govern vo- 
luntary action, and to which those habitual 
dispositions of mind which are the source of 
voluntary actions ought to be adapted. 

It is obvious that ' : will." "action," "habit," 
"disposition," are terms denoting facts in 
human nature, and that an explanation of 
them must be sought in mental philosophy, 
which, if knowledge be divided into physi- 
cal and moral, must be placed among physi- 
cal sciences, though it essentially differs 
from them all in having for its chief object 
those laws of thought which alone render 
any other sort of knowledge possible. But 
it is equally certain that the word "ought" 
introduces the mind into a new region, to 
which nothiftg physical corresponds. How- 
ever philosophers may deal with this most 
important of words, it is instantly understood 
by all who do not attempt to define it. No 
civilized speech, perhaps no human lan- 
guage, is without correspondent terms. It 
would be as reasonable to deny that "space" 
and "greenness" are significant words, as to 
affirm that "ought," "'right," "duty," "vir- 
tue," are sounds without meaning. It would 
be fatal to an ethical theory that it did not 
explain them, and that it did not comprehend 
all the conceptions and emotions which they 
call up. There never yet was a theory 
which did not attempt such an explanation. 



SECTION I. 

PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 

There is no man who, in a case where 
he was a calm bystander, would not look 
with more satisfaction on acts of kindness 
than on acts of cruelty. No man, after the 
first excitement of his mind has subsided, 
ever whispered to himself with self-appro- 
bation and secret joy that he had been guilty 
of cruelty or baseness. Every criminal is 
strongly impelled to hide these qualities of 
his actions from himself, as he would do 
from others, by clothing his conduct in some 
disguise of duty, or of necessity. There is 
no tribe so rude as to be without a faint 
perception of a difference between Right 
and Wrong. There is no subject on> which 
men of all ages and nations coincide in so 
many points as in the general rules of con- 
duct, and in the qualities of the human 
character which deserve esteem. Even the 
grossest deviations from the general consent 
will appear, on close examination, to be not 
so much corruptions of moral feeling, as 
ignorance of facts ; or errors with respect to 
the consequences of action ; or cases in 
which the dissentient party is inconsistent 
with other parts of his own principles, which 
destroys the value of his dissent; or where 
each dissident is condemned by all the other 
dissidents, which immeasurably augments 
the majority against him. In the first three 
cases he may be convinced by argument that 
his moral judgment should be changed on 
principles which he recognises as just ; and 
he can seldom, if ever, be condemned at 
the same time by the body of mankind who 
agree in their moral systems, and by those 
who on some other points dissent from that 
general code, without being also convicted 
of error by inconsistency with himself. The 
tribes who expose new-born infants, condemn 
those who abandon their decrepit parents to 
destruction: those who betray and murder 
strangers, are condemned by the rules of 
faith and humanity which they acknowledge 
in their intercourse with their countrymen. 
Mr. Hume, in a dialogue in which he inge- 
niously magnifies the moral heresies of two 
nations so polished as the Athenians and the 
French, has very satisfactorily resolved his 
own difficulties: — "In how many circum- 
stances would an Athenian and a French- 
man of merit certainly resemble each other ! 
— Humanity, fidelity, truth, justice, courage, 
temperance, constancy, dignity of mind." 
" The principles upon which men reason in 
Morals are always the same, though the 
conclusions which they draw are often very 
different."* He might have added, that 
almost every deviation which he imputes to 
each nation is at variance with some of the 
virtues justly esteemed by both, and that 



* Philosophical Works, (Edinb. 1826,) vol. iv. 
pp. 420, 422. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



97 



the reciprocal condemnation of each other's 
errors which appears in his statement en- 
titles us, on these points, to strike out the 
suffrages of both when collecting the general 
judgment of mankind. If we bear in mind 
that the question relates to the coincidence 
of all men in considering the same qualities 
as virtues, and not to the preference of one 
class of virtues by some, and of a different 
class by others, the exceptions from the 
agreement of mankind, in their system of 
practical morality, will be reduced to abso- 
lute insignificance ; and we shall learn to 
view them as no more affecting the harmony 
of our moral faculties, than the resemblance 
of our limbs and features is affected by mon- 
strous conformations, or by the unfortunate 
effects of accident and disease in a very few 
individuals.* 

It is very remarkable, however, that 
though all men agree that there are acts 
which ought to be done, and acts which 
ought not to be done ; though the far greater 
part of mankind agree in their list of virtues 
and duties, of vices and crimes • and though 
the whole race, as it advances in other im- 
provements, is as evidently tending towards 
the moral system of the most civilized na- 
tions, as children in their growth tend to the 
opinions, as much as to the experience and 
strength, of adults ; yet there are no questions 
in the circle of inquiry to which answers 
more various have been given than — How 
men have thus come to agree in the ' Rule 
of Life V Whence arises their general reve- 
rence for it ? and, What is meant by affirm- 
ing that it ought to be inviolably observed 1 
It is singular, that where we are most nearly 
agreed respecting rules, we should perhaps 
most widely differ as to the causes of our 
agreement, and as to the reasons which justify 
us for adhering to it. The discussion of these 
subjects composes what is usually called 
the " Theory of Morals" in a sense not in 
all respects coincident with what is usually 
considered as theory in other sciences. 
When we investigate the causes of our moral 
agreement, the term "theory" retains its 



* " On convient le plus souvent de ces instincts 
de la conscience. La plus grande et la plus saine 
partie du genre humain leur rend temoignage. 
Les Orientaux, et les Grecs, et les Romains con- 
viennent en cela; et il faudroit eire aussi abruti 
que les sauvages Americains pour approuver leurs 
coutumes, pleines d'une cruaute qui passe merae 
celle des betes. Cependant ces mimes sauvages 
sentent bien ce que c'est que la justice en d'autres 
occasions ; et quoique il n'y ait point de mauvaise 
pratique peut-etre qui ne soit autorisee quelque 
part, il y en a peu pourtant qui ne soient con- 
damnees le plus souvent, et par la plus grande 
partie des hommes." — Leibnitz, CEuvres Philo- 
sophiques, (Amst. et Leipz. 1765, 4to.) p. 49. 
There are some admirable observations on this 
subject in Hartley, especially in the development 
of the 49th Proposition : — " The rule of life drawn 
from the practice and opinions of mankind corrects 
and improves itself perpetually, till at last it de- 
termines entirely for virtue, and excludes all kinds 
and degrees of vice." — Observations on Man, 
vol. ii. p. 214. 

13 



ordinary scientific sense ; but when we en- 
deavour to ascertain the reasons of it, we 
rather employ the term as importing the 
theory of the rules of an art. In the first 
case, ' theory' denotes, as usual, the most 
general laws to which certain facts can be 
reduced ; whereas in the second, it points out 
the efficacy of the observance, in practice, 
of certain rules, for producing the effects 
intended to be produced in the art. These 
reasons also may be reduced under the ge- 
neral sense by stating the question relating 
to them thus : — What are the causes why 
the observance of certain rules enables us 
to execute certain purposes 1 An account of 
the various answers attempted to be made 
to these inquiries, properly forms the history 
of Ethics. 

The attentive reader may already per- 
ceive, that these momentous inquiries relate 
to at least two perfectly distinct subjects : — 

1. The nature of the distinction between 
Right and Wrong in human conduct, and 

2. The nature of those feelings with which 
Right and Wrong are contemplated by hu- 
man beings. The latter constitutes what 
has been called the ' Theory of Moral Sen- 
timents ;' the former consists in an investiga- 
tion into the criterion of Morality in action. 
Other most important questions arise in this 
province : but the two problems which have 
been just stated, and the essential distinction 
between them, must be clearly apprehended 
by all who are desirous of understanding 
the controversies which have prevailed on 
ethical subjects. The discrimination has 
seldom been made by moral philosophers; 
the difference between the two problems 
has never been uniformly observed by any 
of them : and it will appear, in the sequel, 
that they have been not rarely altogether 
confounded by very eminent men, to the 
destruction of all just conception and of all 
correct reasoning in this most important, 
and, perhaps, most difficult, of sciences. 

It may therefore be allowable to deviate 
so far from historical order, as to illustrate 
the nature, and to prove the importance, of 
the distinction, by an example of the ef- 
fects of neglecting it taken from the recent 
works of justly celebrated writers; in which 
they discuss questions much agitated in the 
present age, and therefore probably now 
familiar to most readers of this Disserta- 
tion. 

Dr. Paley represents the principle of a 
Moral Sense as being opposed to that of utili- 
ty.* Now, it is evident that this represen- 
tation is founded on a confusion of the two 
questions which have been started above. 
That we are endued with a Moral Sense, or, 
in other words, a faculty which immediately 
approves what is right, and condemns what 
is wrong, is only a statement of the feelings 
with which we contemplate actions. But 



* Principles of Moral and Political Philoso- 
phy. Compare book i. chap. v. with book ii. 
chap, vi, 

I 



98 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



to affirm that right actions are those which 
conduce to the well-being of mankind, is a 
proposition concerning the outward effects 
by which right actions themselves may be 
recognised. As these affirmations relate to 
different subjects, they cannot be opposed to 
each other, any more than the solidity of 
earth is inconsistent with the fluidity of 
water; and a very little reflection will show 
it to be easily conceivable that they may be 
both true. Man may be so constituted as 
instantaneously to approve certain actions 
without any reference to their consequences ; 
and yet Reason may nevertheless discover, 
that a tendency to produce general happiness 
is the essential characteristic of such actions. 
Mr. Bentham also contrasts the principle of 
Utility with that of Sympathy, of which he 
considers the Moral Sense as being one of 
the forms.* It is needless to repeat, that 
propositions which affirm, or deny, anything 
of different subjects, cannot contradict each 
other. As these celebrated persons have 
thus inferred or implied the non-existence of 
a Moral Sense, from their opinion that the 
morality of actions depends upon their use- 
fulness, so other philosophers of equal name 
have concluded, that the utility of actions 
cannot be the criterion of their morality, be- 
cause a perception of that utility appears to 
them to form a faint and inconsiderable part 
of our Moral Sentiments, — if indeed it be at 
all discoverable in them.t These errors are 
the more remarkable, because the like con- 
fusion of perceptions with their objects, of 
emotions with their causes, or even the omis- 
sion to mark the distinctions, would in every 
other subject be felt to be a most serious 
fault in philosophizing. If, for instance, an 
element were discovered to be common to 
all bodies which our taste perceives to be 
sweet, and to be found in no other bodies, it 
is apparent that this discovery, perhaps im- 
portant in other respects, would neither 
affect our perception of sweetness, nor the 
pleasure which attends it. Both would con- 
tinue to be what they have been since the 
existence of mankind. Every proposition 
concerning that element would relate to 
sweet bodies, and belong to the science of 
Chemistry ; while every proposition respect- 
ing the perception or pleasure of sweetness 
would relate either to the body or mind 
of man, and accordingly belong either to the 
science of Physiology, or to that of Mental 
Philosophy. During the many ages which 
passed before the analysis of the sun's beams 
had proved them to be compounded of differ- 
ent colours, white objects were seen, and 
their whiteness was sometimes felt to be 
beautiful, in the very same manner as since 

* Introduction to the Principles of Morality and 
Legislation, chap. ii. 

t Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, part iv. 
Even Hume, in the third book of his Treatise of 
Human Nature, the most precise, perhaps, of his 
philosophical writings, uses the following as the 
title of one of the sections : " Moral Distinctions, 
derived from a Moral Sense," 



that discovery. The qualities of light are 
the object of Optics; the nature of beauty 
can be ascertained only by each man's ob- 
servation of his own mind; the changes in 
lire living frame which succeed the refrac- 
tion ul light in the eye, and precede mental 
operation, will, if they are ever to be known 
by man, constitute a part of Physiology. 
But no proposition relating to one of these 
orders of phenomena can contradict or sup- 
port a proposition concerning another order. 
The analogy of this latter case will justi- 
fy another preliminary observation. In the 
case of the pleasure derived from beauty, 
the question whether that pleasure be ori- 
ginal, or derived, is of secondary importance. 
It has been often observed that the same 
properties which are admired as beautiful in 
the horse, contribute also to his safety and 
speed ; and they who infer that the admira- 
tion of beauty was originally founded on the 
convenience of fleetness and firmness, if they 
at the same time hold that the idea of useful- 
ness is gradually effaced, and that the admi- 
ration of a certain shape at length rises in- 
stantaneously, without reference to any pur- 
pose, may, with perfect consistency, regard 
a sense of beauty as an independent and 
universal principle of human nature. The 
laws of such a feeling of beauty are dis- 
coverable only by self-observation : those of 
the qualities which call it forth are ascer- 
tained by examination of the outward things 
which are called beautiful. But it is of the 
utmost importance to bear in mind, that he 
who contemplates the beautiful proportions 
of a horse, as the signs and proofs of security 
or quickness, and has in view these conveni- 
ent qualities, is properly said to prefer the 
horse for his usefulness, not for his beauty; 
though he may choose him from the same 
outward appearance which pleases the ad- 
mirer of the beautiful animal. He alone 
who derives immediate pleasure from the 
appearance itself, without reflection on any 
advantages which it may promise, is truly 
said to feel the beauty. The distinction, 
however, manifestly depends, not on the 
origin of the emotion, but on its object and 
nature when completely formed. Many of 
our most important perceptions through the 
eye are universally acknowledged to be ac- 
quired : but they are as general as the ori- 
ginal perceptions of that organ ; they arise as 
independently of our will, and human nature 
would be quite as imperfect without them. 
The case of an adult who did not immediate- 
ly see the different distances of objects from 
his eye, would be thought by every one to 
be as great a deviation from the ordinary 
state of man, as if he were incapable of dis- 
tinguishing the brightest sunshine from the 
darkest midnight. Acquired perceptions and 
sentiments may therefore be termed natural, 
as much as those which are more common- 
ly so called, if they be as rarely found want- 
ing. Ethical theories can never be satisfac- 
torily discussed by those who do not con* 
I stantly bear in mind, that the question 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



99 



concerning the existence of a moral faculty 
in man, which immediately approves or dis- 
approves, without reference to any farther 
object, is perfectly distinct, on the one hand, 
from that which inquires into the qualities 
of actions, thus approved or disapproved ; 
and on the other, from an inquiry whether 
that faculty be derived from other parts of 
our mental frame, or be itself one of the 
ultimate constituent principles of human 
nature. 



SECTION II. 

RETROSPECT OF AXCIENT ETHICS. 

Inquiries concerning the nature of Mind, 
the first principles of Knowledge, the origin 
and government of the world, appear to have 
been among the earliest objects which em- 
ployed the understanding of civilized men. 
Fragments of such speculation are handed 
down from the legendary age of Greek phi- 
losophy. In the remaining monuments of 
that more ancient form of civilization which 
sprung up in Asia, we see clearly that the 
Braminical philosophers, in times perhaps 
before the dawn of Western history, had run 
round that dark and little circle of systems 
which an unquenchable thirst of knowledge 
has since urged both the speculators of an- 
cient Greece and those of Christendom to 
retrace. The wall of adamant which bounds 
human inquiry in that direction has scarcely 
ever been discovered by any adventurer, 
until he has been roused by the shock which 
drove him back. It is otherwise with the 
theory of Morals. No controversy seems to 
have arisen regarding it in Greece till the 
rise and conflict of the Stoical and Epicurean 
schools; and the ethical disputes of the 
modern world originated with the writings 
of Hobbes about the middle of the seven- 
teenth century. Perhaps the longer absti- 
nence from debate on this subject may have 
sprung from reverence for Morality. Per- 
haps also, where the world were unanimous 
in their practical opinions, little need was 
felt of exact theory. The teachers of Morals 
were content with partial or secondary prin- 
ciples, — with the combination of principles 
not always reconcilable, — even with vague 
but specious phrases which in any degree 
explained or seemed to explain the Rules 
of the Art of Life, appearing, as these last 
did, at once too evident to need investiga- 
tion, and too venerable to be approached by 
controversy. 

Perhaps the subtile genius of Greece was 
in part withheld from indulging itself in 
ethical controversy by the influence of So- 
crates, who was much more a teacher of 
virtue than even a searcher after Truth — 

Whom, well inspired, the oracle pronounced 
Wisest of men. 

It was doubtless because he chose that 
better part that he was thus spoken of by 



the man whose commendation is glory, and 
who, from the loftiest eminence of moral 
genius ever reached by a mortal, was per- 
haps alone worthy to place a new crown on 
the brow of the martyr of Virtue. 

Aristippus indeed, a wit and a worldling, 
borrowed nothing from the conversations of 
Socrates but a few maxims for husbanding 
the enjoyments of sense. Antisthenes also, 
a hearer but not a follower, founded a school 
of parade and exaggeration, which caused 
his master to disown him by the ingenious 
rebuke, — : -'Isee your vanity through your 
threadbare cloak."* The modest doubts of 
the most sober of moralists, and his indispo- 
sition to fruitless abstractions, were in pro- 
cess of time employed as the foundation of 
a systematic scepticism; — the most pre- 
sumptuous, inapplicable, and inconsistent of 
all the results of human meditation. But 
though his lessons were thus distorted by the 
perverse ingenuity of some who heard him, 
the authority of his practical sense may be 
traced in the moral writings of those most 
celebrated philosophers who were directly 
or indirectly his disciples. 

Plato, the most famous of his scholars, the 
most eloquent of Grecian writers, and the 
earliest moral philosopher whose writings 
have come down to us, employed his genius 
in the composition of dialogues, in which 
his master performed the principal part. 
These beautiful conversations would have 
lost their charm of verisimilitude, of dra- 
matic vivacity, and of picturesque represen- 
tation of character, if they had been sub- 
jected to the constraint of method. They 
necessarily presuppose much oral instruction. 
They frequently quote, and doubtless oftener 
allude to, the opinions of predecessors and 
contemporaries whose works have perished, 
and of whose doctrines only some fragments 
are preserved. In these circumstances, it 
must be difficult for the most learned and 
philosophical of his commentators to give a 
just representation of his doctrines, even if 
he really framed or adopted a system. The 
moral part of his works is more accessible.! 
The vein of thought which runs through 
them is always visible. The object is to in- 
spire the love of Truth, of Wisdom, of Beauty, 
especially of Goodness — the highest Beauty, 
and of that Supreme and Eternal Mind, 
which contains all Truth and Wisdom, all 
Beauty and Goodness. By the love or de- 
lightful contemplation and pursuit of these 
transcendent aims for their own sake only, 
he represented the mind of man as raised 
from low and perishable objects, and pre- 
pared for those high destinies which are ap- 
pointed for all those who are capable of en- 
joying them. The application to moral quali- 
ties of terms which denote outward beauty, 
though by him perhaps carried to excess, is 

* Diog. Laert. lib. vi. ^Elian, lib. ix. cap. 35. 

t Heyse, Init. Phil. Plat. 1827 ;— a hitherto in 
complete work of great perspicuity and elegance, 
in which we must excuse the partiality which be- 
longs to a labour of love. 



100 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



an illustrative metaphor, as well warranted 
by the poverty of language as any other em- 
ployed to signify the acts or attributes of 
Mind.* The "beautiful" in his language 
denoted all that of which the mere contem- 
plation is in- itself delightful, without any 
admixture of organic pleasure, and without 
being regarded as the means of attaining any 
farther end. The feeling which belongs to 
it he called i: love;" a word which, as com- 
prehending complacency, benevolence, and 
affection, and reaching from the neighbour- 
hood of the senses to the most sublime of 
human thoughts, is foreign to the colder and 
more exact language of our philosophy; but 
which, perhaps, then happily served to lure 
both the lovers of Poetry, and the votaries 
of Superstition, to the school of Truth and 
Goodness in the groves of the Academy. He 
enforced these lessons by an inexhaustible 
variety of just and beautiful illustrations, — 
sometimes striking from their familiarity, 
sometimes subduing by their grandeur ; and 
his works are the storehouse from which 
moralists have from age to age borrowed the 
means of rendering moral instruction easier 
and more delightful. Virtue he represented 
as the harmony of the whole soul; — as a 
peace between all its principles and desires, 
assigning to each as much space as they can 
occupy, without encroaching on each other; 
— as a state of perfect health, in which every 
function was performed with ease, pleasure, 
and vigour; — as a well-ordered common- 
wealth, where the obedient passions exe- 
cuted with energy the laws and commands 
of Reason. The vicious mind presented the 
odious character, sometimes of discord, of 
war; — sometimes of disease; — always of 
passions warring with each other in eternal 
anarchy. Consistent with himself, and at 
peace with his fellows, the good man felt in 
the quiet of his conscience a foretaste of the 
approbation of God. ' : Oh, what ardent love 
would virtue inspire if she could be seen." 
"If the heart of a tyrant could be laid bare, 
we should see how it was cut and torn by 
its own evil passions and by an avenging 
conscience/'! 

* The most probable etymology of "xaxoc" 
seems to be from *a/ai to burn. What burns com- 
monly shines. " Schon," in German, which 
means beautiful, is derived from "scheinen," to 
shine. The word xatxoc was used for right, so 
early as the Homeric Poems. U. xvii. 19. In the 
philosophical age it became a technical term, with 
little other remains of the metaphorical sense than 
what the genius and art of a fine writer might 
sometimes rekindle. " Honestum" the term by 
which Cicero translates the "mMf," being de- 
rived from outward honours, is a less happy me- 
taphor. In our language, the terms, being from 
foreign roots, contribute nothing to illustrate the 
progress of thought. 

t Let it not be forgotten, that for this terrible 
descripiion, Socrates, to whom it is ascribed by 
Plato (riox. I.) is called " Praestantissimus sapien- 
tiae," by a writer of the most masculine under- 
standing, the least subject to be transported by 
enthusiasm. — Tac. Ann. lib. vi. cap. 6. " Qua? 
vulnera !" says Cicero, in alluding to the same 
passage. — De Off. lib. iii. cap. 21. 



Perhaps in every one of these illustrations, 
an eye trained in the history of Ethics may- 
discover the germ of the whole or of a part 
of some subsequent theory. But to examine 
it thus would not be to look at it with the 
eye of Plato. His aim was as practical as 
that of Socrates. He employed every topic, 
widiout regard to its place in a system, or 
even always to its argumentative force, which 
could attiact the small portion of the com- 
munity then accessible to cultivation ; who, 
it should not be forgotten, had no moral in- 
structor but the Philosopher, unaided, if not 
thwarted, by the reigning superstition: for 
Religion had not then, besides her own dis- 
coveries, brought down the most awful and 
the most beautiful forms of Moral Truth to 
the humblest station in human society.* 

Ethics retained her sober spirit in the 
hands of his great scholar and rival Aristo- 
tle, who, though he certainly surpassed all 
men in acute distinction, in subtile argument, 
in severe method, in the power of analyzing 
what is most compounded, and of reducing 
to simple principles the most various and 
unlike appearances, yet appears to be still 
more raised above his fellows by the prodi- 
gious faculty of laying aside these extraor- 
dinary endowments whenever his present 
purpose required it; — as in his History of 
Animals, in his treatises on philosophical cri- 
ticism, and in his practical writings, political 
as well as moral. Contrasted as his genius 
was to that of Plato, not only by its logical 
and metaphysical attributes, but by the re- 
gard to experience and observation of Nature 
which, in him perhaps alone, accompanied 
them; (though the two maybe considered 
as the original representatives of the two 
antagonist tendencies of philosophy — that 
which would ennoble man, and that which 
seeks rather to explain nature;) yet opposite 
as they are in other respects, the master and 
the scholar combine to guard the Rule of 
Life against the licentious irruptions of the 
Sophists. 

In Ethics alone their systems differed 
more in words than in things.! That hap- 



* There can hardly be a finer example of Plato's 
practical morals than his observations on the treat- 
ment of slaves. "Genuine humanity and real 
probity," says he, "are brought to the test, by 
the behaviour of a man to slaves, whom he may 
wrong with impunity." A/aJW.oc yap o q>v<m mt 
fj.ii 7rxxo-rZ( o-iCuv tw Jikhv. /uktZv Se ovrcn; to aJincv 

€V T0VT0K TZv aV$pl7ra>V h OH CtUTZ PuSlOV L-JtKHV, — No//. 

lib. vi. cap. 19. That Plato was considered as 
the fountain of ancient morals, would be suffi- 
ciently evident from Cicero alor.e : " Ex hoc igiiur 
Platonis, quasi qtiodam sr.ncto augustoque fonte, 
nostra omnis manabit oratio." — Tusc. Quaest. 
lib. v. cap. 12. Perhaps the sober Quintilian 
meant to mingle some censure with the highest 
praise: "Plato, qui eloquendi facultate divina 
qundam et Homerica, multum supra prosam ora- 
tionem surgii." Dc Inst. Orat. lib. x. cap. 1. 

f " Unaet consentiensduobus vocnbulis philoso- 
phise forma inslituta est, Academicorum et Peri- 
pateticorum; qui rebus congruentes nominibus 
differebant."— Cic. Acad, jiuaest. lib i. cap. 4. 
Bot/ASTa/ (Kf>i7Toii>M) fnrov man iov kato. <pihoo-opict.\i 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



101 



piness consisted in virtuous pleasure, chiefly 
dependent on the state of mind, but not un- 
affected by outward agents, was the doctrine 
of both. Both would with Socrates have 
called happiness "unrepented pleasure." 
Neither distinguished the two elements 
which they represented as constituting the 
Supreme Good from each other ; partly, per- 
haps, from fear of appearing to separate 
them. Plato more habitually considered 
happiness as the natural fruit of Virtue; 
Aristotle oftener viewed Virtue as the means 
of attaining happiness. The celebrated doc- 
trine of the Peripatetics, which placed all 
virtues in a medium between opposite vices, 
was probably suggested by the Platonic re- 
presentation of its necessity to keep up har- 
mony between the different parts of our na- 
ture. The perfection of a compound machine 
is attained where all its parts have the fullest 
scope for action. Where one is so far exert- 
ed as to repress others, there is a vice of ex- 
cess: where any one has less activity than 
it might exert without disturbing others, 
there is a vice of defect. The point which 
all reach without collision with each other, 
is the mediocrity in which the Peripatetics 
placed Virtue. 

It was not till near a century after the 
death of Plato that Ethics became the scene 
of philosophical contest between the adverse 
schools of Epicurus and Zeno j whose errors 
afford an instructive example, that in the 
formation of a theory, partial truth is equi- 
valent to absolute falsehood. As the astro- 
nomer who left either the centripetal or the 
centrifugal force of the planets out of his 
view, would err as completely as he who 
excluded both, so the Epicureans and Stoics, 
who each confined themselves to real but 
not exclusive principles in Morals, departed 
as widely from the truth as if they had 
adopted no part of it. Every partial theory 
is indeed directly false, inasmuch as it as- 
cribes to one or few causes what is produced 
by more. As the extreme opinions of one, 
if not of both, of these schools have been 
often revived with variations and refine- 
ments in modern times, and are still not 
without influence on ethical systems, it may 
be allowable to make some observations on 
this earliest of moral controversies. 

"All other virtues," said Epicurus, '-'grow 
from prudence, which teaches that we can- 
not live pleasurably without living justly and 
virtuousty, nor live justly and virtuously with- 
out living pleasurably."* The illustration 
of this sentence formed the whole moral dis- 
cipline of Epicurus. To him we owe the 
general concurrence of reflecting men in 
succeeding times, in the importanttruth that 
men cannot be happy without a virtuous 
frame of mind and course of life; a truth of 
inestimable value, not peculiar to the Epi- 

xiyov rev jj.h TTf/HX.TiH'jv, t;v <f j ■3*i»wt/xov. tt-ni tou 

TffaUi/TUUlV, TOV Tt iBjX.it KAI TC'AtTtKOV ToS cTs S'fd^MTi- 

x.o-j, tjv ts pwriKiv, x.xi Xoyix.ov, — Diog. Laert. lib. 
. v. % 28. 

* Diog. Laert. lib. x. § 132. 



cureans, but placed by their exaggerations 
in a stronger light: — a truth, it must be ad- 
ded, of less importance as a motive to right 
conduct than as completing Moral Theory, 
which, however, it is very far from solely 
constituting. With that truth the Epicure- 
ans blended another position, which indeed 
is contained in the first words of the above 
statement ; namely, that because Virtue pro- 
motes happiness, every act of virtue must be 
done in order to promote the happiness of 
the agent. They and their modern follow- 
ers tacitly assume, that the latter position is 
the consequence of the former; as if it were 
an inference from the necessity of food to 
life, that the fear of death should be substi- 
tuted for the appetite of hunger as a motive 
for eating. "Friendship," says Epicurus, 
" is to be pursued by the wise man only for 
its usefulness, but he will begin ; as he sows 
the field in order to reap."* It is obvious, 
that if these words be confined to outward 
benefits, they may be sometimes true, but 
never can be pertinent ; for outward acts 
sometimes show kindness, but never com- 
pose it. If they be applied to kind feeling, 
they would indeed be pertinent, but they 
would be evidently and totally false : for it is 
most certain that no man acquires an affec- 
tion merely from his belief that it would be 
agreeable or advantageous to feel it. Kind- 
ness cannot indeed be pursued on account 
of the pleasure which belongs to it ; for man 
can no more know the pleasure till he has 
felt the affection, than he can form an idea 
of colour without the sense of sight. The 
moral character of Epicurus was excellent ; 
no man more enjoyed the pleasure, or better 
performed the duties of friendship. The let- 
ter of his system was no more indulgent to 
vice than that of any other moralist.!' Al- 
though, therefore, he has the merit of having 
more strongly inculcated the connection of 
Virtue with happiness, perhaps by the faulty 
excess of treating it as an exclusive pripci- 
ple ; yet his doctrine was justly charged with 
indisposing the mind to those exalted and 
generous sentiments, without which no pure, 
elevated, bold, generous, or tender virtues 
can exist. % 

As Epicurus represented the tendency of 
Virtue, which is a most important truth in 
ethical theory, as the sole inducement to 
virtuous practice; so Zeno, in his disposition 



* T»v Qtxioiv fia a)7; xpilit;. — Diog. Laert. lib. x- 
§120. "Hie est locus," Gassendi confesses, 
" ob quern Epicurus non parum vexatur, quando 
nemo non reprehendit, parari amicitiam non sui, 
sed utilitatis gratia" 

t It is due to him to observe, that he treated 
humanity towards slaves, as one of the character- 
istics of a wise man. "Outs x.'jxd<ruv oi«5t«c, e>,s»- 
<ruv (Av tg/, kcl\ truyyvlfAiiv t/vj \Ziiv t^v avrouS'a.iw. — 
Diog. Laert. lib. x. § 118. It is not unworthy of 
remark, that neither Plato nor Epicurus thought 
it necessary to abstain from these topics in a city 
full of slaves, many of whom were men not desti- 
tute of knowledge. 

X " Nil generosum, nil magnificum sapit." — De 
Fin. lib. i. cap. 7. 

12 



102 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



towards the opposite extreme, was inclined 
to consider the moral sentiments, which are 
the motives of right conduct, as being the 
sole principles of moral science. The con- 
fusion was equally great in a philosophical 
view, but that of Epicurus was more fatal 
to interests of higher importance than those 
of Philosophy. Had the Stoics been content 
with affirming that Virtue is the source of 
all that part of our happiness which depends 
on ourselves, they would have taken a posi- 
tion from which it would have been impos- 
sible to drive them: they would have laid 
down a principle of as great comprehension 
in practice as their wider pretensions ; a 
simple and incontrovertible truth, beyond 
which every thing is an object of mere cu- 
riosity to man. Our information, however, 
about the opinions of the more celebrated 
Stoics is very scanty. None of their own 
writings are preserved. We know little of 
them but from Cicero, the translator of Gre- 
cian philosophy, and from the Greek com- 
pilers of a later age : authorities which would 
be imperfect in the history of facts, but which 
are of far less value in the history of opinions, 
where a right conception often depends upon 
the minutest distinctions between words. 
We know that Zeno was more simple, and 
that Chrysippus, who was accounted the 
prop of the Stoic Porch, abounded more in 
subtile distinction and systematic, spirit.* 
His power was attested as much by the an- 
tagonists whom he called forth, as by the 
scholars whom he formed. "Had there 
been no Chrysippus, there would have been 
no Carneades," was the saying of the latter 
philosopher himself; as it might have been 
said in the eighteenth century, "Had there 
been no Hume, there would have been no 
Kant and no Reid." Cleanthes, when one 
of his followers would pay court to him by 
laying vices to the charge of his most for- 
midable opponent, Arcesilaus the academic, 
answered with a justice and candour un- 
happily too rare, "Silence, — do not malign 
him ; — though he attacks Virtue by his argu- 
ments, he confirms its authority by his life." 
Arcesilaus, whether modestly or churlishly, 
replied, "I do not choose to be nattered." 
Cleanthes, with a superiority of repartee, as 
well as charity, replied, "Is it flattery to say 
that you speak one thing and do another?" 
It would be vain to expect that the frag- 
ments of the professors who lectured in the 
Stoic School for five hundred years, should 
be capable of being moulded into one con- 
sistent system; and we see that in Epictetus 
at least, the exaggeration of the sect was 
lowered to the level of Reason, by confining 
the sufficiency of Virtue to those cases only 
where happiness is attainable by our volun- 

* " Chrysippus, qui fulcire pntatur porticum 
Stoicorum." — Acad. Quaest. lib. ii. cap. 24. Else- 
where (De Orat. lib. i. cap. 12. — De Fin. lib. iv. 
cap. 3.), " Acutissimus, sed in scribendo exilis et 
jejunus, scripsit rhetoricam sen potiiis obmute- 
scendi artem ;" — nearly as we should speak of a 
Schoolman. 



tary acts. It ought to be added, in extenua- 
tion of a noble error, that the power of habit 
and character to struggle against outward 
evils has been proved by experience to be 
in some instances so prodigious, that no man 
can presume to fix the utmost limit of its 
possible increase. 

The attempt, however, of the Stoics to 
si retell the bounds of their system beyond 
the limits of Nature, doomed them to fluc- 
tuate between a wild fanaticism on the one 
hand. and. on the other, concessions which 
left their differences from other philosophers 
purely verbal. Many of their doctrines ap- 
pear to be modifications of their original 
opinions, introduced as opposition became 
more formidable. In this manner they were 
driven to the necessity of admitting that the 
objects of our desires and appetites are wor- 
thy of preference, though they are denied to 
be constituents of happiness. It was thus 
that they were obliged to invent a double 
morality; one for mankind at large, from 
whom was expected no more than the xaO-q- 
xov, — which seems principally to have deno- 
ted acts of duty done from inferior or mixed 
motives; and the other (which they appear 
to have hoped from their ideal wise man) 
xat6p9co^.a, or perfect observance of rectitude, 
— which consisted only in moral acts done 
from mere reverence for Morality, unaided 
by any feelings; all which (without the ex- 
ception of pity) they classed among the ene- 
mies of Reason and the disturbers of the 
human soul. Thus did they shrink from 
their proudest paradoxes into verbal eva- 
sions. It is remarkable that men so acute 
did not perceive and acknowledge, that if 
pain were not an evil, cruelty would not be 
a vice ; and that, if patience were of power 
to render torture indifferent, Virtue must ex- 
pire in the moment of victory. There can 
be no more triumph, when there is no ene- 
my left to conquer.* 

The influence of men's opinions on the 
conduct of their lives is checked and modi- 
fied by so many causes; it so much depends 
on the strength of conviction, on its habitual 
combination with feelings, on the concur- 
rence or resistance of interest, passion, ex- 
ample, and sympathy, — that a wise man is 
not the most forward in attempting to deter- 
mine the power of its single operation over 
human actions. In the case of an individual 
it becomes altogether uncertain. But when 
the experiment is made on a large scale, 
when it is long continued and varied in its 
circumstances, and especially when great 
bodies of men are for ages the subject of it, 
we cannot reasonably reject the considera- 
tion of the inferences to which it appears to 
lead. The Roman Patriciate, trained in the 
conquest and government of the civilized 
world, in spite of the tyrannical vices which 
sprung from that training, were raised by 

*" Patience, sovereign o'er transmuted ill." 
But an soon as the ill was really " transmuted" 
into good, it is evident that there was no longer 
any scope left for the exercise of patience. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



103 



the greatness of their objects to an elevation 
of genius and character unmatched by any 
other aristocracy, ere the period when, after 
preserving their power by a long course of 
wise compromise with the people, they were 
betrayed by the army and the populace into 
the hands of a single tyrant of their own or- 
der — the most accomplished of usurpers, 
and, if Humanity and Justice could for a mo- 
ment be silenced, one of the most illustrious 
of men. There is no scene in history so 
memorable as that in which Caesar mastered 
a nobility of which Lucullus and Hortensius, 
Sulpicius and Catulus, Pompey and Cicero, 
Brutus and Cato were members. This re- 
nowned body had from the time of Scipio 
sought the Greek philosophy as an amuse- 
ment or an ornament. Some few, " in thought 
more elevate/' caught the love of Truth, and 
were ambitious of discovering a solid founda- 
tion for the Rule of Life. The influence of 
the Grecian systems was tried, during the 
five centuries between Carneades and Con- 
stantine, by their effect on a body of men of 
the utmost originality, energy, and variety 
of character, in their successive positions of 
rulers of the world, and of slaves under the 
best and under the worst of uncontrolled 
masters. If we had found this influence 
perfectly uniform, we should have justly 
suspected our own love of system of having 
in part bestowed that appearance on it. Had 
there been no trace of such an influence dis- 
coverable in so great an experiment, we must 
have acquiesced in the paradox, that opinion 
does not at all affect conduct. The result is 
the more satisfactory, because it appears to 
illustrate general tendency without excluding 
very remarkable exceptions. Though Cassius 
was an Epicurean, the true representative of 
that school was the accomplished, prudent, 
friendly, good-natured time-server Atticus. 
the pliant slave of every tyrant, who could 
kiss the hand of Antony, imbrued as it was 
in the blood of Cicero. The pure school of 
Plato sent forth Marcus Brutus, the signal 
humanity of whose life was both necessary 
and sufficient to proye that his daring breach 
of venerable rules flowed only from that dire 
necessity which left no other means of up- 
holding the most sacred principles. The Ro- 
man orator, though in speculative questions 
he embraced that mitigated doubt which al- 
lowed most ease and freedom to his genius, 
yet in those moral writings where his heart 
was most deeply interested, followed the se- 
verest sect of Philosophy, and became almost 
a Stoic. If any conclusion may be hazard- 
ed from this trial of systems, — the greatest 
which History has recorded, we must not re- 
fuse our decided, though not undistinguish- 
ing, preference to that noble school which 
preserved great souls untainted at the court 
of dissolute and ferocious tyrants; which ex- 
alted the slave of one of Nero's courtiers to 
be- a moral teacher of aftertimes; — which 
for the first, and hitherto for the only time, 
breathed philosophy and justice into those 
rules of law which govern the ordinary con- 



cerns of every man; and which, above all, 
has contributed, by the examples of Marcus 
Portius Cato and of Marcus Aurehus Anto- 
ninus, to raise the dignity of our species, to 
keep alive a more ardent love of Virtue, and 
a more awful sense of duty throughout all 
generations.* 

The result of this short review of the prac- 
tical philosophy of Greece seems to be. that 
though it was rich in rules for the conduct 
of life, and in exhibitions of the beauty of 
Virtue, and though it contains glimpses of 
just theory and fragments of perhaps every 
moral truth, yet it did not leave behind any 
precise and coherent system ; unless we ex- 
cept that of Epicurus, who purchased con- 
sistency, method, and perspicuity too dearly 
by sacrificing Truth, and by narrowing and 
lowering his views of human nature, so as 
to enfeeble, if not extinguish, all the vigor- 
ous motives to arduous virtue. It is remark- 
able, that while of the eight professors who 
taught in ihe Porch, from Zeno to Posido- 
nius, every one either softened or exaggera- 
ted the doctrines of his predecessor ; and 
while the beautiful and reverend philosophy 
of Plato had, in his own Academy, degene- 
rated into a scepticism which did not spare 
Morality itself, the system of Epicurus re- 
mained without change ; and his disciples 
continued for ages to show personal honours 
to his memory, in a manner which may seem 
unaccountable among those who were taught 
to measure propriety by a calculation of pal- 
pable and outward usefulness. This steady 
adherence is in part doubtless attributable 
to the portion of truth which the doctrine 
contains; in some degree perhaps to the 
amiable and unboastful character of Epicu- 
rus ; not a little, it may be, to the dishonour 
of deserting an unpopular cause ; but pro- 
bably most of all to that mental indolence 
which disposes the mind to rest in a simple 
system, comprehended at a glance, and easily 
falling in, both with ordinary maxims of dis- 
cretion, and with ihe vulgar commonplaces 
of satire on human nature.! When all in- 
struction was conveyed by lectures, and 
when one master taught the whole circle of 
the sciences in one school, it was natural 
that the attachment of pupils to a professor 
should be more devoted than when, as in 



* Of all testimonies lo ihe characterof the Stoics, 
perhaps the most decisive is the speech of the vile 
sycophant Capito, in the mock impeachment of 
Thrasea Pastus, before a senate of slaves: " Ut 
quondam C. Cassarem et M. Catonem, ita nunc 
te, Nero, et Thraseam, avida discordiarum civitas 

loquitur Ista secta Tuberones et Favonios, 

veteri quoque reipublicae ingrata nomina, genuit." 
— Tacit. Ann. lib. xvi. cap. 22. See Appendix, 
Note A. 

t The progress of commonplace satire on sexes 
or professions, and (he might have added) on na- 
tions, has been exquisitely touched by Gray in his 
Remarks on Lydgate ; a fragment containing pas- 
sages as finely thought and written as any in Eng- 
lish prose. General satire on mankind is still 
more absurd ; for no invective can be so unreasona 
ble as that which is founded on falling short of an 
ideal standard. 



104 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



our times, he can teach only a small portion 
of a Knowledge spreading towards infinity, 
and even in his own little province finds a 
rival in every pood writer who has treated 
the same subject. The superior attachment 
of the Epicureans to their master is not with- 
out some parallel among the followers of 
similar principles in our own age, who have 
also revived some part of that indifference 
to eloquence and poetry which may be im- 
puted to the habit of contemplating all things 
in relation to happiness, and to (what seems 
its uniform effect) the egregious miscalcu- 
lation which leaves a multitude of mental 
pleasures out of the account. It may be 
said, indeed, that the Epicurean doctrine has 
continued with little change to the present 
day ; at least it is certain that no other ancient 
doctrine has proved so capable of being re- 
stored in the same form among the moderns: 
and it may be added, that Hobbes and Gas- 
sendi, as well as some of our own contem- 
poraries, are as confident in their opinions, 
and as intolerant of scepticism, as the old 
Epicureans. The resemblance of modern to 
ancient opinions, concerning some of those 
questions upon which ethical controversy 
must always hinge, may be a sufficient ex- 
cuse for a retrospect of the Greek morals, 
which, it is hoped, will simplify and shorten 
subsequent observation on those more recent 
disputes which form the proper subject of 
this discourse. 

The genius of Greece fell with Liberty. 
The Grecian philosophy received its mortal 
wound in the contests between scepticism 
and dogmatism which occupied the Schools 
in the age of Cicero. The Sceptics could only 
perplex, and confute, and destroy. Their oc- 
cupation was gone as soon as they succeeded . 
They had nothing to substitute for what they 
overthrew j and they rendered their own art 
of no further use. They were no more than 
venomous animals, who stung their victims 
to death, but also breathed their last into the 
wound. 

A third age of Grecian literature indeed 
arose at Alexandria, under the Macedonian 
kings of Egypt; laudably distinguished by 
exposition, criticism, and imitation (some- 
times abused for the purposes of literary 
forgery), and still more honoured by some 
learned and highly-cultivated poets, as well 
as by diligent cultivators of History and 
Science ; among whom a few began, about 
the first preaching of Christianity, to turn 
their minds once more to that high Philoso- 
phy which seeks for the fundamental prin- 
ciples of human knowledge. Philo. a learned 
and philosophical Hebrew, one of the flour- 
ishing colony of his nation established in 
that city, endeavoured to reconcile the Pla- 
tonic philosophy with the Mosaic Law and 
the Sacred Books of the Old Testament. 
About the end of the second century, when 
the Christians, Hebrews, Pagans„and various 
other sects of semi- or pseudo-Christian Gnos- 
tics appear to have studied in the same 
schools, the almost inevitable tendency of 



doctrines, however discordant, in such cir- 
cumstances to amalgamate, produced its full 
effect under Ammonius Saccas, a celebrated 
professor, who, by selection from the Greek 
systems, the Hebrew books, and the Oriental 
religions, and by some concession to the ris- 
ing spirit of Christianity, of which the Gnos- 
tics had set the example, composed a very 
mixed system, commonly designated as the 
Eclectic philosophy. The controversies be- 
tween his contemporaries and followers, es- 
pecially those of Clement and Origen, the 
victorious champions of Christianity, with 
Plotmus and Porphyry, who endeavoured to 
preserve Paganism by clothing it in a dis- 
guise of philosophical Theism, are, from the 
effects towards which they contributed, the 
most memorable in the history of human 
opinion.* But their connection with modern 
Ethics is too faint to warrant any observation 
in this place, on the imperfect and partial 
memorials of them which have reached us. 
The death of Boethius in the West, and the 
closing of the Athenian Schools by Justinian, 
may be considered as the last events in the 
history of ancient philosophy.! 



SECTION III. 

RETROSPECT OF SCHOLASTIC ETHICS. 

An interval of a thousand years elapsed 
between the close of ancient and the rise of 
modern philosophy ; the most unexplored, 
yet not the least instructive portion of the 
history of European opinion. In that period 
the sources of the institutions, the manners, 
and the characteristic distinctions of modern 
nations, have been traced by a series of 
philosophical inquirers from Montesquieu to 
Hallam ; and there also, it may be added, 
more than among the Ancienls, are the well- 
springs of our speculative doctrines and con- 
troversies. Far from being inactive, the hu- 
man mind, during that period of exaggerated 
darkness, produced discoveries in Science, 
inventions in Art, and contrivances in Go- 



* The change attempted by Julian, Porphyry, 
and their friends, by which Theism would have 
become the popular Religion, may be estimated 
by the memorable passage of Tacitus on the The- 
ism of the Jews. In the midst of all the obloquy 
and opprobrium with which he loads that people, 
his tone suddenly rises, when he comes to con- 
template them as the only nation who paid re- 
ligious honours to the Supreme and Eternal Mind 
alone, and his style swells at the sight of so sub- 
lime and wonderful a scene. " Summum Mud et 
ffitemum, neque mutabile, neque interiturum." 
Hist. lib. v. cap. 5. 

t The punishment of death was inflicted on 
Pagans by a law of Constantius. "Volumus 
cunctos sacrificiis abstinere : si aliquid hujusmodi 
perpetraverint, gladio ultore sternantur." Cod.' 
Just. lib. i. tit. xi. ' de Paganis.' From the au- 
thorities cited by Gibbon, (note, chap, xi.) as weli 
as from some research, it should seem that the 
edict for the suppression of the Athenian schools 
was not admitted into the vast collection of laws 
enacted or systematized by Justinian. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



105 



vernment, some of which, perhaps, were 
rather favoured than hindered by the dis- 
orders of society, and by the twilight in 
which men and things were seen. Had 
Boethius, the last of the ancients, foreseen, 
that within four centuries of his death, in the 
province of Britain, then a prey to all the 
horrors of barbaric invasion, a chief of one 
of the fiercest tribes of barbarians* should 
translate into the jargon of his freebooters 
the work on The Consolations of Philosophy, 
of which the composition had soothed the 
cruel imprisonment of the philosophic Roman 
himself, he must, even amidst his sufferings. 
have derived some gratification from such 
an assurance of the recovery of mankind 
from ferocity and ignorance. But had he 
been allowed to revisit the earth in the mid- 
dle of the sixteenth century, with what won- 
der and delight might he have contemplated 
the new and fairer order which was begin- 
ning to disclose its beauty, and to promise 
more than it revealed. He would have seen 
personal slavery nearly extinguished, and 
women, first released from Oriental impri- 
sonment by the Greeks, and raised to a higher 
dignity among the Romans.! at length fast 
approaching to due equality; — two revolu- 
tions the most signal and beneficial since the 
dawn of civilization. He would have seen 
the discovery of gunpowder, which for ever 
guarded civilized society against barbarians, 
while it transferred military strength from 
the few to the many; of paper and printing, 
which rendered a second destruction of the 
repositories of knowledge impossible, as well 
as opened a way by which it was to be 
finally accessible to all mankind ; of the 
compass, by means of which navigation had 
ascertained the form of the planet, and laid 
open a new continent, more extensive than 
his world. If he had turned to civil institu- 
tions, he might have learned that some 
nations had preserved an ancient, simple. 
and seemingly rude mode of legal proceed- 
ing, which threw into the hands of the ma- 
jority of men a far larger share of judicial 
power, than was enjoyed by them in any 
ancient democracy. He would have seen 
everywhere the remains of that principle of 
representation, the glory of the Teutonic 
race, by which popular government, an- 
ciently imprisoned in cities, became capa- 
ble of being strengthened by its extension 
over vast countries, to which experience 
cannot even now assign any limits: and 
which, in times still distant, was to exhibit, 
in the newly discovered Continent, a repub- 

* King Alfred. 

t The steps of this important progress, as far as 
relates to Athens and Rome, are well remarked 
upon hy one of the finest of the Roman writers. 
" Quern enim Romanorum pudet uxorem ducere 
in convivium ? aut cujus materfamilias non primum 
locum tenet aedium, atque in celebritate versatur ? 
quod multo fit aliter in Giaecia : nam neque in con- 
vivium adhibetur, nisi propinquorum; neque sedet 
nisi in interiore parte aedium, qua; Gynceco?iitis ap- 
pellatur, quo nemo accedit, nisi propinqua cogna- 
tione conjunctus." Corn. Nep. in Prsefat. 
14 



lican confederacy, likely to surpass the Mace- 
donian and Roman empires in extent, great- 
ness, and duration, but gloriously founded on 
the equal rights, not like them on the uni- 
versal subjection, of mankind. In one re- 
spect, indeed, he might have lamented that 
the race of man had made a really retrograde 
movement ; that they had lost the liberty of 
philosophizing; that the open exercise of 
their highest faculties was interdicted. But 
he might also have perceived that this giant 
evil had received a mortal wound from Lu- 
ther, who in his warfare against Rome had 
struck a blow against all human authority, 
and unconsciously disclosed to mankind that 
they were entitled, or rather bound, to form 
and utter their own opinions, and that most 
certainly on whatever subjects are the most 
deeply interesting : for although this most 
fruitful of moral truths was not yet so re- 
leased from its combination with the wars 
and passions of the age as to assume a dis- 
tinct and visible form, its action was already 
discoverable in the divisions among the Re- 
formers, and in the' fears and struggles of 
civil and ecclesiastical oppressors. The 
Council of Trent, and the Courts of Paris, 
Madrid, and Rome, had before that time fore- 
boded the emancipation of Reason. 

Though the middle age be chiefly memo- 
rable as that in which the foundations of a 
new order of society were laid, uniting the 
stability of the Oriental system, without its 
inflexibility, to the activity of the Hellenic 
civilization, without its disorder and incon- 
stancy ; yet it is not unworthy of notice by 
us here, on account of the subterranean cur- 
rent which flows through it, from the specu- 
lations of ancient to those of modern times. 
That dark stream must be uncovered before 
the history of the European Understanding- 
can be thoroughly comprehended. It was 
lawful for the emancipators of Reason in their 
first struggles to carry on mortal war against 
the Schoolmen. The necessity has long 
ceased; they are no longer dangerous ; and 
it is now felt by philosophers that it is time 
to explore and estimate that vast portion of 
the history of Philosophy from which we 
have scornfully turned our eyes.* A few 
sentences only can be allotted to the subject 
in this place. In the very depths of the Mid- 
dle Age, the darkness of Christendom was 



* Tennemann, Geschichte der Philosophie. 
Cousin. Cours de Philosophie, Paris, 1828. My 
esteem for this last admirable writer encourages 
me to say, that the beauty of his diction has some- 
times the same effect on his thoughts that a sunny 
haze produces on outward objects ; and to submit 
to his serious consideration, whether the allure- 
ments of Schelling's system have not betrayed 
him into a too frequent forgetfulness that princi- 
ples, equally adapted to all phenomena, furnish in 
speculation no possible test of their truth, and lead, 
in practice, to total indifference and inactivity re- 
specting human affairs. I quote with pleasure 
an excellent observation from this worn : " Le 
moyen age n'est pas autre chose que la formation 
penible, lente et sanglante, de tous les elemens de 
la civilisation moderne ; je dis la formation, et non 
leur developpement." (2nd Lecture, p. 27.) 



106 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



faintly broken by a few thinly scattered lights. 
Even then, Moses Ben Maimon taught philo- 
sophy among the persecuted Hebrews, whose 
ancient schools had never perhaps been 
wholly interrupted ; and a series of distin- 
guished Mahometans, among whom two are 
known to us by the names of Avicenua and 
Averroes, translated the Peripatetic writings 
into their own language, expounded their 
doctrines in no servile spirit to their follow- 
ers, and enabled the European Christians to 
make those versions of them from Arabic 
into Latin, which in the eleventh and twelfth 
centuries gave birth to the scholastic philo- 
sophy. 

The Schoolmen were properly theologians, 
who employed philosophy only to define and 
support that system of Christian belief which 
they and their contemporaries had embraced. 
The founder of that theological system was 
Aurelius Augustinus* (called by us Augus- 
tin), bishop of Hippo, in the province of Af- 
rica- a man of great genius and ardent 
character, who adopted, at different periods 
of his life, the most various, but at all times 
the most decisive and systematic, as well as 
daring and extreme opinions. This extra- 
ordinary man became, after some struggles, 
the chief Doctor, and for ages almost the 
sole oracle, of the Latin church. It hap- 
pened by a singular accident, that the School- 
men of the twelfth century, who adopted his 
theology, instead of borrowing their defen- 
sive weapons from Plato, the favourite of 
their master, had recourse for the exposition 
and maintenance of their doctrines to the 
writings of Aristotle, the least pious of phi- 
losophical theists. The Augustinian doc- 
trines of original sin, predestination, and 
grace, little known to the earlier Christian 
writers, who appear indeed to have adopted 
opposite and milder opinions, were espoused 
by Augustin himself in his old age ; when, 
by a violent swing from his youthful Mani- 
cheism, which divided the sovereignity of 
the world between two adverse beings, he 
did not shrink, in his pious solicitude for 
tracing the power of God in all events, from 
presenting the most mysterious parts of the 
moral government of the Universe, in their 
darkest colours and their sternest shape, as 
articles of faith, the objects of the habitual 
meditation and practical assent of mankind - . 
The principles of his rigorous system, though 
not with all their legitimate consequences, 
were taught in the schools; respectfully pro- 
mulgated rather than much inculcated by 
the Western Church (for in the East these 
opinions seem to have been unknown); 
scarcely perhaps distinctly assented to by 
the majority of the clergy; and seldom 
heard of by laymen till the systematic ge- 
nius and fervid eloquence of Calvin ren- 
dered them a popular creed in the most 
devout and moral portion of the Christian 
world. Anselm.t the Piedmontese Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, was the earliest re- 



See Note B. 



t Born, 1033; died, 1109. 



viver of the Augustinian opinions. Aquinas* 
was their most redoubted champion. To 
them, however, the latter joined others of a 
different spirit. Faith, according to him, 
was a virtue, not in the sense in which it 
denotes the things believed, but in that in 
which it signifies the state of mind which 
leads to right Belief. Goodness he regarded 
as the moving principle of the Divine Gov- 
ernment; Justice, as a modification of Good- 
ness ; and, with all his zeal to magnify the 
Sovereignity' of God, he yet taught, that 
though God always wills what is just, no- 
thing is just solely because He wills it. 
ScotuSjt the most subtile of doctors, recoils 
from the Augustinian rigour, though he ra- 
ther intimates than avows his doubts. He 
was assailed for his tendency towards the 
Pelagian or Anti-Augustinian doctrines by 
many opponents, of whom the most famous 
in his own time was Thomas Bradwardine,? 
Archbishop of Canterbury, formerly confes- 
sor of Edward III., whose defence of Pre- 
destination was among the most noted works 
of that age. He revived the principles of 
the ancient philosophers, who, from Plato 
to Marcus Aurelius, taught that error of 
judgment, being involuntary, is not the 
proper subject of moral disapprobation ; 
which indeed is implied in Aquinas' ac- 
count of Faiths But he appears to have 
been the first whose language inclined to- 
wards that most pernicious of moral here- 
sies, which represents Morality to be found- 
ed on Will. II 

William of Ockham, the most justly cele- 
brated of English Schoolmen, went so far 
beyond this inclination of his master, as to 
affirm, that <; if God had commanded his 
creatures to hate Himself, the hatred of God 
would ever be the duty of man;" — a mon- 
strous hyperbole, into which he was perhaps 
betrayed by his denial of the doctrine of 
general ideas, the pre-existence of which in 
the Eternal Intellect was commonly regarded 
as the foundation of the immutable nature of 
Morality. This doctrine of Ockham, which 
by necessary implication refuses moral attri- 
butes to the Deity, and contradicts the ex- 
istence of a moral government, is practically 



* Born, 1224 ; died, 1274. See Note C. 

t Born about 1265 ; died at Cologne (where his 
grave is still shown) in 1308. Whether he was 
a native of Dunston in Northumberland, or of 
Dunse in Berwickshire, or of Down in Ireland, 
was a question long and warmly contested, but 
which seems to be settled by his biographer, Luke 
Wadding, who quotes a passage of Scotus' Com- 
mentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, where he 
illustrates his author thus: "As in the defini- 
tion of St. Francis, or St. Patrick, man is ne- 
cessarily presupposed." Scott. Op. i. 3. As Sco- 
tus was a Franciscan, the mention of St. Patrick 
seems to show that he was an Irishman. See 
Note D. 

t Born about 1290 ; died 1349 ; the contempo- 
rary of Chaucer, and probably a fellow-student 
of Wicliffe and Roger Bacon. His principal 
work was entitled, ' De Causa Dei contra Pela- 
gium, et de Virtute Causarum, Libri tres.' 

§ See Note E. II See Note F. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



107 



equivalent to atheism.* As all devotional 
feelings have moral qualities for their sole 
object ; as no being can inspire love or rever- 
ence otherwise than by those qualities which 
are naturally amiable or venerable, this doc- 
trine would, if men were consistent extin- 
guish piety, or, in other words, annihilate 
Religion. Yet so astonishing are the contra- 
dictions of human nature, that this most im- 
pious of all opinions probably originated in 
a pious solicitude to magnify the Sovereignty 
of God, and to exalt His authority even above 
His own goodness. Hence we may under- 
stand its adoption by John Gerson, the oracle 
of the Council of Constance, and the great 
opponent of the spiritual monarchy of the 
Pope, — a pious mystic, who placed religion 
in devout feeling. t In further explanation, 
it may be added, that Gerson was of the 
sect of the Nominalists, of which Ockham 
was the founder, and that he was the more 
ready to follow his master, because they 
both courageously maintained the indepen- 
dence of the State on the Church, and the 
authority of the Church over the Pope. The 
general opinion of the schools was, however, 
that of Aquinas, who, from the native sound- 
ness of his own understanding, as w-ell as 
from the excellent example of Aristotle, was 
averse from all rash and extreme dogmas on 
questions which had any relation, however 
distant, to the duties of life. 

It is very remarkable, though hitherto un- 
observed, that Aquinas anticipated those 
controversies respecting perfect disinterest- 
edness in the religious affections which oc- 
cupied the most illustrious members of his 
communion} four hundred years after his 
death ; and that he discussed the like ques- 
tion respecting the other affections of human 
nature with a fulness and clearness, an ex- 
actness of distinction, and a justness of 
determination, scarcely surpassed by the 
most acute of modern philosophers. § It 
ought to be added, that, according to the 
most natural and reasonable construction of 
his words, he allowed to the Church a con- 
trol only over spiritual concerns, and recog- 
nised the supremacy of the civil powers in 
all temporal affairs. II 

It has already been stated that the scho- 
lastic system was a collection of dialectical 
subtilties, contrived for the support of the 

* A passage to this effect, from Ockham, wiih 
nearly the same remark, has, since the text was 
written, been discovered on a reperusal of Cud- 
worth's Immutable Morality, p. 10. 

t " Remitto ad quod Occam de hac materia in 
Lib. Sentent. dicit, in qua explicatione si rudis 
iudicetur, nescio quid appellabitur subtilitas."— De 
Vita Spirit. Op. iii. 14. 

t Bossuet and Fenelon. 

$ See Aquinas. — " Utrum Deus sit super omnia 
■diligendus ex caritate." — " Utrum in dilectione 
Dei possit haberi respectus ad aliquam merce- 
dem."— Opera, ix. 322, 325. Some illustrations 
of this memorable anticipation, which has escaped 
the research even of the industrious Tenneman, 
will be found in the Note G. 
• II See Note H. 



corrupted Christianity of that age, by a suc- 
cession of divines, whose extraordinary pow- 
ers of distinction and reasoning were mor- 
bidly enlarged in the long meditation of the 
Cloister, by the exclusion of every other 
pursuit, and the consequent palsy of every 
other faculty; — who were cut off from all 
the materials on which the mind can operate, 
and doomed for ever to toil in defence of 
what they must never dare to examine ; — to 
whom their age and their condition denied 
the means of acquiring literature, of observ- 
ing Nature, or of studying mankind. The 
few in whom any portion of imagination and 
sensibijity survived this discipline, retired 
from the noise of debate, to the contem- 
plation of pure and beautiful visions. They 
were called Mystics. The greater part, dri- 
ven back on themselves, had no better em- 
ployment than to weave cobwebs out of the 
terms of art which they had vainly, though 
ingeniously, multiplied. The institution of 
clerical celibacy, originating in an enthusi- 
astic pursuit of Purity, promoted by a mis- 
take in moral prudence, which aimed at 
raising religious teachers in the esteem of 
their fellows, and at concentrating their whole 
minds on professional duties, at last encour- 
aged by the ambitious policy of the See of 
Rome, which was desirous of detaching 
them from all ties but her own, had the 
effect of shutting up all the avenues which 
Providence has opened for the entrance of 
social affection and virtuous feeling into the 
human heart. Though this institution per- 
haps prevented Knowledge from becoming 
once more the exclusive inheritance of a 
sacerdotal caste ; though the rise of innumer- 
able laymen, of the lowest condition, to the 
highest dignities of the Church, was the 
grand democratical principle of the Middle 
Age, and one of the most powerful agents in 
impelling mankind towards a better order ; 
yet celibacy must be considered as one of 
the peculiar infelicities of these secluded 
philosophers; not only as it abridged their 
happiness, nor even solely, though chiefly, as 
it excluded them from the school in which 
the heart is humanized, but also (an inferior 
consideration, but more pertinent to our pre- 
sent purpose) because the extinction of these 
moral feelings was as much a subtraction 
from the moralist's store of facts and means 
of knowledge, as the loss of sight or of touch 
could prove to those of the naturalist. 

Neither let it be thought that to have been 
destitute of Letters was to them no more 
than a want of an ornament and a curtail- 
ment of gratification. Every poem, every 
history, every oration, every picture, every 
statue, is an experiment on human feeling, 
— the grand object of investigation by the 
moralist. Every work of genius in evary 
department of ingenious Art and polite Lite- 
rature, in proportion to the extent and dura- 
tion of its sway over the Spirits of men, is 
a repository of ethical facts, of which the 
moral philosopher cannot be deprived by his 
own insensibility or by the iniquity of the 



108 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



times, without being robbed of the most pre- 
cious instruments and invaluable materials 
of his science. Moreover, Letters, which 
are closer to human feeling than Science can 
ever be, have another influence on the sen- 
timents with which the sciences are viewed, 
on the activity with which they are pursued, 
on the safety with which they are preserved, 
and even on the mode and spirit in which 
they are cultivated: they are the Channels 
by which ethical science has a constant in- 
tercourse with general feeling. As the arts 
called useful maintain the popular honour of 
physical knowledge, so polite Letters allure 
the world into the neighbourhood of the 
sciences of Mind and of Morals. Whenever 
the agreeable vehicles of Literature do not 
convey their doctrines to the public, they 
are liable to be interrupted by the dispersion 
of a handful of recluse doctors, and the over- 
throw of their barren and unlamented se- 
minaries. Nor is this all : these sciences 
themselves suffer as much when they are 
thus released from the curb of common 
sense and natural feeling, as the public loses 
by the want of those aids to right practice 
which moral knowledge in its sound state is 
qualified to afford. The necessity of being- 
intelligible, at least to all persons who join 
superior understanding to habits of rellec- 
tion, and who are themselves in constant 
communication with the far wider circle of 
intelligent and judicious men, which slowly 
but surely forms general opinion, is the only 
effectual check on the natural proneness of 
metaphysical speculations to degenerate into 
gaudy dreams, or a mere war of words. The 
disputants who are set free from the whole- 
some check of sense and feeling, generally car- 
ry their dogmatism so far as to rouse the scep- 
tic, who from time to time is provoked to look 
into the flimsiness of their cobwebs, and rush- 
es in with his besom to sweep them, and their 
systems, into oblivion. It is true, that Lite- 
rature, which thus draws forth Moral Science 
from the schools into the world, and recalls 
her from thorny distinctions to her natural 
alliance with the intellect and sentiments of 
mankind, may, in ages and nations other- 
wise situated, produce the contrary evil of 
rendering Ethics shallow, declamatory, and 
inconsistent. Europe at this moment affords, 
in different countries, specimens of these 
opposite and alike-mischievous extremes. 
But we are now concerned only with the 
temptations and errors of the scholastic age. 
We ought not so much to wonder at the 
mistakes of men so situated, as that they, 
without the restraints of the general under- 
standing, and with the clogs of system and 
establishment, should in so many instances 
have opened questions untouched by the 
more unfettered Ancients, and veins of spe- 
culation since mistakenly supposed to have 
been first explored in more modern times. 
Scarcely any metaphysical controversy agi- 
tated among recent philosophers was un- 
known to the Schoolmen, unless we except 
that which relates to Liberty and Necessity, 



and this would be an exception of doubtful 
propriety ; for the disposition to it is clearly 
discoverable in the disputes of the Thomists 
and Scotists respecting the Augustinian and 
Pelagian doctrines,* although they were re- 
strained from the avowal of legitimate con- 
sequences on either side by the theological 
authority which both parties acknowledged. 
The Scotists steadily affirmed the blameless- 
ness of erroneous opinion ; a principle which 
is the only effectual security for conscien- 
tious inquiry, for mutual kindness, and for 
public quiet. The controversy between the 
Nominalists and .Realists, treated by some 
modem writers as an example of barbarous 
wrangling, was in truth an anticipation of 
that modern dispute 'which still divides meta- 
physicians, — Whether the human mind can 
form general ideas, or Whether the words 
which are supposed to convey such ideas be 
not terms, representing only a number of 
particular perceptions 1 — questions so far 
from frivolous, that they deeply concern 
both the nature of reasoning and the struc- 
ture of language ; on which Hobbes, Berkeley, 
Hume, Stewart, and Tooke, have followed 
the Nominalist; and Descartes, Locke, Reid, 
and Kant have, with various modifications 
and some inconsistencies, adopted the doc- 
trine of the Realists. t With the Schoolmen 
appears to have originated the form, though 
not the substance, of the celebrated maxim, 
which, whether true or false, is pregnant 
with systems, — " There is nothing in the 
Understanding which was not before in the 
Senses." Ockhamt the Nominalist first de- 
nied the Peripatetic doctrine of the exist- 
ence of certain species (since the time of 
Descartes called "ideas") as the direct ob- 
jects of perception and thought, interposed 
between the mind and outward objects ; the 
modern opposition to which by Dr. Reid has 
been supposed to justify the allotment of so- 
high a station to that respectable philosopher. 
He taught also that we know nothing of 
Mind but its acts, of which we are conscious. 
More inclination towards an independent 
philosophy is to be traced among the School- 
men than might be expected from their cir- 
cumstances. Those who follow two guides, 
will sometimes choose for themselves, and 
may prefer the subordinate one on some oc- 
casions. Aristotle rivalled the Church ; and 
the Church herself safely allowed consider- 

* See Note I. 

t Locke speaks on this subject inconsistently ; 
Reid calls himself a conceptualist ; Kant uses 
terms so different, that he ought perhaps to be 
considered as of neither party. Leibnitz, varying 
in some measure from the general spirit of his 
speculations, warmly panegyrizes the Nominalists : 
" Secta Nominalium, omnium inter scholasticos 
profundissima, et hodiernce reformatae philosoph- 
andi rationi congruentissima." — Op. iv. 59. 

t " Maximi vir ingenii, et eruditionis pro illo 
aevo summae, Wilhelmus Occam, Anglus." lb. 60. 
The writings of Ockham, which are very rare, J 
have never seen. I owe my knowledge of them 
to Tennemann, who however quotes the words 
of Ockham, and of his disciple Biel. 



DISSERTATION OX THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



109 



able latitude to the philosophical reasonings 
of those who were only heard or read in 
colleges or cloisters, on condition that they 
neither impugned her authority, nor dis- 
sented from her worship, nor departed from 
the language of her creeds. The Nominalists 
were a freethinking sect, who. notwithstand- 
ing their defence of kings against the Court 
of Rome, were persecuted by the civil power. 
It should not be forgotten that Luther was a 
Nominalist.* 

If not more remarkable, it is more perti- 
nent to our purpose, that the ethical system 
of the Schoolmen, or, to speak more proper- 
ly, of Aquinas, as the Moral Master of Chris- 
tendom for three centuries, was in its practi- 
cal part so excellent as to leave little need 
of extensive change, with the inevitable ex- 
ception of the connection of his religious 
opinions with his precepts and counsels. 
His Rule of Life is neither lax nor impracti- 
cable. His grounds of duty are solely laid 
in the nature of man, and in the well-being 
of society. Such an intruder as Subtilty sel- 
dom strays into his moral instructions. With 
a most imperfect knowledge of the Peripa- 
tetic writings, he came near the Great Mas- 
ter, by abstaining, in practical philosophy, 
from the unsuitable exercise of that faculty 
of distinction, in which he would probably 
have shown that he was little inferior to 
Aristotle, if he hail been equally unrestrained. 
His very frequent coincidence with modern 
moralists is doubtless to be ascribed chiefly 
to the nature of the subject ; but in part also 
to that unbroken succession of teachers and 
writers, which preserved the observations 
contained in what had been long the text- 
book of the European Schools, after the books 
themselves had been for ages banished and 
forgotten. The praises bestowed on Aquinas 
by every one of the few great men who ap- 
pear to have examined his writings since the 
downfal of his power, among whom may 
be mentioned Erasmus, Grotius, and Leib- 
nitz, are chiefly, though not solely, referable 
to his ethical works. t 

Though the Schoolmen had thus anticipa- 
ted many modern controversies of a properly 
metaphysical sort, they left untouched most 
of those questions of ethical theory which 
were unknown to, or neglected by, the An- 
cients. They do not appear to have discri- 
minated between the nature of moral senti- 
ments, and the criterion of moral acts; to 
have considered to what faculty of our mind 
moral approbation is referable ; or to have 
inquired whether our Moral Faculty, what- 
ever it may be, is implanted or acquired. 
Those who measure only by palpable results, 
have very consistently regarded the meta- 
physical and theological controversies of the 
Schools as a mere waste of intellectual 

* " In Manini Lmheri scriptis prioribus amor 
Nominalium satis elucrt, donee procedente tem- 
pore erga nnines monachos ngqualiier affectus esse 
cospit." — Leibi itz, Opp. iv. 60. 

t See especially the excellent Preface of Leib- 
nitz to Nizolius, § 37.— lb. 59. 



power. But the contemplation of the athletic 
vigour and versatile skill manifested by the 
European understanding, at the moment 
when it emerged from this tedious and rug- 
ged discipline, leads, if not to approbation, 
yet to more qualified censure. What might 
have been the result of a different combina- 
nation of circumstances, is an inquiry which, 
on a large scale, is beyond human power. 
We may, however, venture to say that no 
abstract science, unconnected with Religion, 
is likely to be respected in a barbarous age ; 
and we may be allowed to doubt whether 
any knowledge dependent directly on expe- 
rience and applicable to immediate practice, 
would have so trained the European mind 
as to qualify it for that series of inventions, 
and discoveries, and institutions, which be- 
gins with the sixteenth century, and of which 
no end can now be foreseen but the extinction 
of the race of man. 

The fifteenth century was occupied by the 
disputes of the Realists with the Nominalists, 
in which the scholastic doctrine expired. 
After its close no Schoolman of note appear- 
ed. The sixteenth may be considered as 
the age of transition from the scholastic to 
the modern philosophy. The former, indeed, 
retained possession of the Universities, and 
was long after distinguished by all the en- 
signs of authority. But the mines were al- 
ready prepared : the revolution in Opinion 
had commenced. The moral writings of the 
preceding times had generally been com- 
mentaries on that part of the Summa Theo- 
logian of Aquinas which relates to Ethics. 
Though these still continued to be published, 
yet the most remarkable moralists of the six- 
teenth century indicated the approach of 
other modes of thinking, by the adoption of 
the more independent titles of ''Treatises on 
Justice" and "Law." These titles were 
suggested, and the spirit, contents, and style 
of the writings themselves were materially 
affected by the improved cultivation of the 
Roman law, by the renewed study of ancient 
literature, and by the revival of various sys- 
tems of Greek philosophy, now studied in the 
original, which at once mitigated and rival- 
led the scholastic doctors, and while they 
rendered philosophy more free, re-opened 
its communications with society and affairs. 
The speculative theology which had arisen 
under the French governments of Pan's and 
London in the twelfth century, which flour- 
ished in the thirteenth in Italy in the hands 
of Aquinas, which was advanced in the 
British Islands by Scotus and Ockham in the 
fourteenth, was, in the sixteenth, with una- 
bated acuteness, but with a clearness and 
elegance unknown before the restoration of 
Letters, cultivated by Spain, in that age the 
most powerful and magnificent of the Euro- 
pean nations. 

Many of these writers treated the law of 
war and the practice of hostilities in a juridi- 
cal form.* Francis Victoria, who began to 

* Many of the separate dissertations, on points of 
this nature, are contained in the immense collec- 
K 



110 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



teach at Valladolkl in 1525, is said to have 
first expounded the doctrines of the Schools 
in the language of ihe age of Leo the Tenth. 
Dominic Soto,* a Dominican, the confessor 
of Charles V., and the oracle of the Council 
of Trent, to whom that assembly were in- 
debted for much of the precision and even 
elegance for which their doctrinal decrees 
are not unjustly commended, dedicated his 
Treatise on Justice and Law to Don Carlos, 
in terms of praise which, used by a writer 
who is said to have declined the high dig- 
nities of the Church, led us to hope that he 
was unacquainted with the brutish vices of 
that wretched prince. It is a concise and not 
inelegant compound of the Scholastic Ethics, 
which continued to be of considerable au- 
thority for more than a century.! Both he 
and his master Victoria deserve to be had in 
everlasting remembrance, for the part which 
they took on behalf of the natives of America 
and of Africa, against the rapacity and cruelty 
of the Spaniards. Victoria pronounced war 
against the Americans for their vices, or for 
their paganism, to be unjust. t Soto was the 
authority chiefly consulted by Charles V., on 
occasion of the conference held before him 
at Valladolid, in 1542, between Sepulveda, 
an advocate of the Spanish colonists, and Las 
Casas, the champion of the unhappy Ameri- 
cans, of which the result was a very imper- 
fect edict of reformation in 1543. This, 
though it contained little more than a recog- 
nition of the principle of justice, almost ex- 
cited a rebellion in Mexico. Sepulveda, a 
scholar and a reasoner, advanced many max- 
ims which were specious and in themselves 
reasonable, but which practically tended to 
defeat even the scanty and almost illusive 
reform which ensued. Las Casas was a 
passionate missionary, whose zeal, kindled 
by the long and near contemplation of 
cruelty, prompted him to exaggerations of 
fact and argument ;§ yet, with all its errors. 
it afforded the only hope of preserving the 



lion entitled " Tractaius Tractataum," published 
at Venice in 1584, under the patronage of the Ro- 
man See. There are three De Bello ; one by Lu- 
pus of Segovia, when Francis I. was prisoner in 
Spain ; another, more celebrated, by Francis 
Arias, who, on the 11th June, 1532, discussed be- 
fore the College of Cardinals the legitimacy of a 
war by the Emperor against the Pope. There 
are two De Pace ; and others De Potestate Re- 
gia, De Poena Mortis, &c. The most ancient and 
scholastic is that of J. de Lignano of Milan, De 
Bello. The above writers are mentioned in the 
prolegomena to Grotius, De Jure Belli. Pietro 
Belloni, Counsellor of the Duke of Savoy (De Re 
Militari), treats his subject with the minuteness of 
a Judge- Advocate, and has more modern exam- 
ples, chiefly Italian, than Grotius. 

* Born, 1494; died, 1560.— Antonii Bib. Hisp. 
Nov. The opinion of the extent of Soto's know- 
ledge entertained by his contemporaries is express- 
ed in a jingle, Qui scit Sotum scit lotum. 

t See Note K. 

t " Indis non debere auferri imperium, ideo quia 
sunt peccatores, vel ideoquia non sunt Christiani," 
were the words of Victoria. 

§ See Note L. 



natives of America from extirpation. The 
opinion of Soto could not fail to be conform- 
able to his excellent principle, that "there 
can be no difference between Christians and 
pagans, for the law of nations is equal to all 
nations/'* To Soto belongs the signal hon- 
our of being the first writer .who condemned 
the African slave-trade. "It is affirmed," 
says he, "that the unhappy Ethiopians are 
by fraud or force carried away and sold as 
slaves. If this is true, neither those who 
have taken them, nor those who purchased 
them, nor those who hold them in bondage, 
can ever have a quiet conscience till they 
emancipate them, even if no compensation 
should be obtained."! As the work which 
contains this memorable condemnation of 
man-stealing and slavery was the substance 
of lectures for many years delivered at Sala- 
manca, Philosophy and Religion appear, by 
the hand of their faithful minister, to have 
thus smitten the monsters in their earliest in- 
fancy. It is hard for any man of the present 
age to conceive the praise which is due to the 
excellent monks who courageously asserted 
the rights of those whom they never saw, 
against the prejudices of their order, the 
supposed interest of their religion, the am- 
bition of their government, the avarice and 
pride of their countrymen, and the prevalent 
opinions of their time. 

Francis Suarez,! a Jesuit, w-hose volumi- 
nous works amount to twenty-four volumes 
in folio, closes the list of writers of his class. 
His work on Laws and on God the Lawgiver, 
may be added to the above treatise of Soto, 
as exhibiting the most accessible and per- 
spicuous abridgment of the theological phi- 
losophy in its latest form. Grotius, who,, 
though he was the most upright and candid 
of men, could not have praised a. Spanish 
Jesuit beyond his deserts, calls Suarez the 
most acute of philosophers and divines. § 
On a practical matter, which may be natu- 
rally mentioned here, though in strict method 
it belongs to another subject, the merit of 
Suarez is conspicuous. He first saw that in- 
ternational law was composed not only of 
the simple principles of justice applied to 
the intercourse between states, but of those 
usages, long observed in that intercourse 
by the European race, which have since 
been more exactly distinguished as the con- 
suetudinary law acknowledged by the Chris- 
tian nations of Europe and America. II On 



* " Neque discrepantia (ut reor) est inter Chris- 
tianos et infideles, quoniam jus gentium cunctis 
gentibus aequale est." 

1" De Just, et Jure, lib. iv. quoest. ii. art. 2. 

t Born, 1538; died, 1617. 

§ " Tantaesubtilitatisphilosophum et theologum, 
ut vix quemquam habeat parem." — Grotii Epist. 
apud Anton. Bib. Hisp. Nov. 

II " Nunquam enim civitates sunt sibi tarn suffi- 
cientes quin indigeant mutuo juvamine et. socie- 
tate, interdum ad majorem utilitatem, interdum 
ob necessitatem moralem. Hac igitur ratione in- 
digent aliquo jure quo dirigantur et recle ordinen- 
tur in hoc genere societatis. Et quanivis magna 
ex parte hoc fiat per rationem naiuralem, non 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



this important point his views are more clear 
than those of his contemporary Alberico 
Gentili.* It must even be owned, that the 
succeeding intimation of the same general 
doctrine by Grotius is somewhat more dark, 
— perhaps from his excessive pursuit of con- 
cise diction.! 



SECTION IV. 

MODERN ETHICS. 



GROTIUS — HOBBES. 



The introduction to the great work of 
Grotius,j composed in the first years of his 
exile, and published at Paris in 1625, con- 
tains the most clear and authentic statement 
of the general principles of Morals prevalent 
in Christendom after the close of the Schools, 
and before the writings of Hobbes had given 
rise to those ethical controversies which 
more peculiarly belong to modern times. 
That he may lay down the fundamental 
principles of Ethics, he introduces Carneades 
on the stage as denying altogether the reality 
of moral distinctions ; teaching that law and 
morality are contrived by powerful men for 
their own interest ; that they vary in differ- 
ent countries, and change in successive ages; 
that there can be no natural law, since Na- 
ture leads men as well as other animals to 
prefer their own interest to every other ob- 
ject ; that, therefore, there is either no jus- 
tice, or if there be, it is another name for the 
height of folly, inasmuch as it is a fond at- 
tempt to persuade a human being to injure 
himself for the unnatural purpose of bene- 
fitting his fellow-men. § To this Grotius an- 
swered, that even inferior animals, under the 
powerful, though transient, impulse of pa- 
rental love, prefer their young to their own 
safety or life; that gleams of compassion, 
and, he might have added, of gratitude and 
indignation, appear in the human infant long 
before the age of moral discipline ; that man 
at the period of maturity is a social animal, 
who delights in the society of his fellow- 
creatures for its own sake, independently of 
the help and accommodation which it yields ; 
that he is a reasonable being, capable of 
framing and pursuing general rules of con- 
duct, of which he discerns that the observ- 
ance contributes to a regular, quiet, and 
happy intercourse between all the members 

tamen sufficienter et immediate quoad omnia, 
ideoque specialia jura poterant usu earundem gen- 
tium introduci." — De Leg., lib. ii. cap. ii. 

* Born in the March of Ancona, 155o'; died at 
London, 1608. 

t De Jur. Bell., lib. i. cap. i. § 14. 

t Prolegomena. His letter to Vossius, of 1st 
August, 1(525, determines the exact period of the 
publication of this famous work. — Epist. 74. 

$ The same commonplace paradoxes were re- 
tailed by the Sophists, whom Socrates is intro- 
duced as chastising in the Dialogues of Plato. 
They were common enough to be put by the 
Historian into the mouth of an ambassador in a 
public speech. ' AvJpi is tvpdnm ii noxu ap%m iyoi/<nt 
ouSh a\oyov o ti j>uf*<fipov. Thucyd. lib. vi. cap. 85*. 



nr 

of the community; and that from these con- 
siderations all the precepts of Morality, and 
all the commands and prohibitions of just 
Law, may be derived by impartial Reason. 
"And these principles." says the pious phi- 
losopher. " would have their weight, even if 
it were to be granted (which could not be 
conceded without the highest impiety) that 
there is no God, or that He exercises no 
moral government over human affairs."* — 
•'Natural law is the dictate of right Reason, 
pronouncing that there is in some actions a 
moral obligation, and in other actions a 
moral deformity, arising from their respect- 
ive suitableness or repugnance to the rea- 
sonable and social nature ; and that conse- 
quently such acts are either forbidden or 
enjoined by God, the Author of Nature.— 
Actions which are the subject of this exer- 
tion of Reason, are in themselves lawful or 
unlawful, and are therefore, as such, neces- 
sarily commanded or prohibited by God." 

Such was the state of opinion respecting 
the first principles of the moral sciences,, 
when, after an imprisonment of a thousand 
years in the Cloister, they began once more 
to hold intercourse with the general under- 
standing of mankind. It will be seen in the 
laxity and confusion, as well*as in the pru- 
dence and purity of this exposition, that 
some part of the method and precision of 
the Schools was lost with their endless sub- 
tilties and their barbarous language. It is 
manifest that the latter paragraph is a pro- 
position,— not, what it affects to be, a defini- 
tion; that as a proposition it contains too 
many terms very necessary to be defined; 
that the purpose of the excellent writer is 
not so much to lay down a first principle of 
Morals, as to exert his unmatched power 
of saying much in few words, in order to 
assemble within the smallest compass the 
most weighty inducements, and the most ef- 
fectual persuasions to well-doing. 

This was the condition in which ethical 
theory was found by Hobbes, with whom the 
present Dissertation should have commenced, 
if it had been possible to state modern con- 
troversies in a satisfactory manner, without 
a retrospect of the revolutions in Opinion from 
which they in some measure flowed. 

HOBBES.t 

Thomas Hobbes of Malrrtesbury may be 
numbered among those eminent persons born 



" Et haec quidem locum nliquem haberent, 
etiamsi daretur (quod sine summo scelere dari ne- 
quit) non esse Deum, aut non curari ab eo negotia 
humana."— Proleg. 11. And in another place, 
" Jus naturale est dictatum rectas rationis, indicans 
actui alicui, ex ejus convenientia aut disconvenien- 
tia cum ipsa natura rationali et sociali, inesse mora- 
lem turpitudinem aut necessitatem, moralem, ac 
consequenter ab auctore naturae Deo talem actum 
autvetari aut prapcipi." "Actus de quibus tale 
exstat dictatum, debiti sunt aut illiciti per se, at- 
que ideo a Deo necessario prascepti aut vetiti in 
telliguntur."— De Jur. Bell. lib. i. cap. i. $ 10 
t Born, 1588; died 1679. 



112 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



in the latter half of the sixteenth century, 
who gave a new character to European phi- 
losophy, in the succeeding age.* He was 
one of the late writers and late learners. It 
was not till he was nearly thirty that he sup- 
plied the defects of his early education, by 
-classical studies so successfully prosecuted, 
that he wrote well in the Latin then used by 
his scientific contemporaries ; and made such 
proficiency in Greek as. in his earliest work, 
the Translation of Thucydides, published 
when he was forty, to afford a specimen of 
aversion still valued for its remarkable fide- 
lity, though written with a stiffness and con- 
straint very opposite to the masterly facility 
of his original compositions. It was after 
forty that he learned the- first rudiments of 
Geometry (so miserably defective was his 
education); but yielding to the paradoxical 
.disposition apt to infect those who begin to 
learn after the natural age of commence- 
ment, he exposed himself, by absurd contro- 
versies with the masters of a Science which 
looks down with scorn on the sophist. A 
considerable portion -of his mature age was 
passed on the Continent, where he travelled 
as tutor to two successive Earls of Devon- 
shire;— a family with whom he seems to 
have passed near half a century of his long 
life. In France his reputation, founded at 
that time solely on personal intercourse, be- 
came so great, that his observations on the 
meditations of Descartes were published in 
the works of that philosopher, together with 
those of Gassendi and Arnauld.t It was 
about his sixtieth year that he began to pub- 
lish those philosophical writings which con- 
tain his peculiar opinions; — which set the 
understanding of Europe into general mo- 
tion, and stirred up controversies among me- 
taphysicians and moralists, not even yet de- 
termined. At the age of eighty-seven he 
had the boldness to publish metrical ver 



for that mischief, by the zeal and activity 
which it rouses among followers and oppo- 
nents, who discover truth by accident, when 
in pursuit of weapons for their warfare. A 
system which attempts a task so hard as 
that of subjecting vast provinces of human 
knowledge to one or two principles, if it pre- 
sents some striking instances of conformity 
to superficial appearances, is sure to delight 
the frame'r, and, for a time, to subdue and 
captivate the student too entirely for sober 
reflection and rigorous examination. The 
evil does not, indeed, very frequently recur. 
Perhaps Aristotle, Hobbes, and Kant, are the 
only persons who united in the highest de- 
gree the great faculties of comprehension 
and discrimination which compose the Genius 
of System. Of the three, Aristotle alone 
could throw it off where it was glaringly un- 
suitable ; and it is deserving of observation, 
that the reign of system seems, from these 
examples, progressively to shorten in pro- 
portion as Reason is cultivated and Know- 
ledge advances. But. in the first instance, 
consistency passes for Truth. When prin- 
ciples in some instances have proved suffi- 
cient to give an unexpected explanation of 
facts, the delighted reader is content to ac- 
cept as true all other deductions from the 
principles. Specious premises being assum- 
ed to be true, nothing more can be required 
than logical inference. Mathematical forms 
pass current as the equivalent of mathema- 
tical certainty. The unwary admirer is 
satisfied with the completeness and symme- 
try of the plan of his house, — unmindful of 
the need of examining the firmness of the 
foundation, and the soundness of the mate- 
rials. The system-maker, like the conque- 
ror, long dazzles and overawes the world ; 
but when their sway is past, the vulgar herd, 
unable to measure their astonishing faculties, 
take revenge by trampling on fallen great- 



sions of the Iliad and Odyssey, which the ness. 



The dogmatism of Hobbes was, however 
unjustly, one of the sources of his fame. The 
founders of systems deliver their novelties 
with the undoubting spirit of discoverers; 
and their followers are apt to be dogmatical, 
because they can see nothing beyond their 
own ground. It might seem incredible, if it 
were not established by the experience of 
all ages, that those who differ most from the 
opinions of their fellow-men are most confi- 
dent of the truth of their own. But it com- 
monly requires an overweening conceit of 
the superiority of a man's own judgment, to 
make him espouse very singular notions; 
and when he has once embraced them, they 
are endeared to him by the hostility of those 
whom he contemns as the prejudiced vulgar. 
The temper of Hobbes must have been ori 
ginally haughty. The advanced age at 
which he published his obnoxious opinions, 

time commonly receives small augmentation."— 
Advancement of Learning, book i. " Meihod," 
says he, "carrying a show of total and perfect 
knowledge, has a tendency to generate acquies- 
knowledge into ans and methods, from which [ cence." What pregnant words ! 



greatness of his name, and the singularity 
of the undertaking, still render objects of cu- 
riosity, if not of criticism. 

He owed his influence to various causes ; 
at the head of which may be placed that ge- 
nius for system, which, though it cramps the 
growth of Knowledge,! perhaps finally atones 

* Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, and Grotius. The 
writings of the first are still as delightful and won- 
derful as they ever were, and his authority will 
have no end. Descartes forms an era in the his- 
tory of Metaphysics, of Physics, of Mathematics. 
The controversies excited by Grotius have long 
ceased, but the powerful influence of his works 
will be doubted by those only who are unac- 
quainted with the disputes of the seventeenth cen- 
tury. 

t The prevalence of freethinking under Louis 
XIII., to a far greater degree than it was avowed, 
appears not only from the complaints of Mersenne 
and of Grotius," but from the disclosures of Guy 
Patin ; who, in his Letters, describes his own con- 
versations with Gassendi and Naude, so as to 
leave no doubt of their opinions. 

t "Another error, 1 ' says the Master of Wisdom, 

is the over-early and peremptory reduction of 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



113 



rendered him more impatient of the acrimo- 
nious opposition which they necessarily pro- 
voked : until at length a strong sense of the 
injustice of the punishment impending over 
his head, for the publication of what he be- 
lieved to be truth, co-operated with the pee- 
vishness and timidity of his years, to render 
him the most imperious and morose of dog- 
matists. His dogmatism has indeed one 
quality more offensive than that of most 
others. Propositions the most adverse to the 
opinions of mankind, and the most abhorrent 
from their feelings, are introduced into the 
course of his argument with mathematical 
coldness. He presents them as demonstrated 
conclusions, without deigning to explain to 
his fellow-creatures how they all happened 
to believe the opposite absurdities, and with- 
out even the compliment of once observing 
how widely his discoveries were at variance 
with the most ancient and universal judg- 
ments of the human understanding. The 
same quality in Spinoza indicates a recluse's 
ignorance of the world. In Hobbes it is the 
arrogance of a man who knows mankind and 
despises them. 

A permanent foundation of his fame re- 
mains in his admirable style, which seems 
to be the very perfection of didactic lan- 
guage. Short, clear, precise, pithy, his lan- 
guage never has more than one meaning, 
which it never requires a second thought to 
find. By the help of his exact method, it 
takes so firm a hold on the mind, that it will 
not allow attention to slacken. His little 
tract on Human Nature has scarcely an am- 
biguous or a needless word. He has so great 
a power of always choosing the most signifi- 
cant term, that he never is reduced to the 
poor expedient of using many in its stead. 
He had so thoroughly studied the genius of 
the language, and knew so well how to steer 
between pedantry and vulgarity, that two 
centuries have not superannuated probably 
more than a dozen of his words. His ex- 
pressions are so luminous, that he is clear 
without the help of illustration. Perhaps no 
writer of any age or nation, on subjects so 
abstruse, has manifested an equal power of 
engraving his thoughts on the mind of his 
readers. He seems never to have taken a 
word for ornament or pleasure ; and he deals 
with eloquence and poetry as the natural 
philosopher who explains the mechanism of 
children's toys, or deigns to contrive them. 
Yet his style so stimulates attention, that it 
never tires ; and, to those who are acquainted 
with the subject, appears to have as much 
spirit as can be safely blended with Reason. 
He compresses his thoughts so unaffectedly, 
and yet so tersely, as to produce occasionally 
maxims which excite the same agreeable 
surprise with wit, and have become a sort 
of philosophical proverbs; — the success of 
which he partly owed to the suitableness of 
such forms of expression to his dictatorial 
nature. His words have such an appearance 
of springing from his thoughts, as to impress 
on the reader a strong opinion of his origi- 
15 



nality, and indeed to prove that he was not 
conscious of borrowing : though conversation 
with Gassendi must have influenced his 
mind ; and it is hard to believe that his coin- 
cidence with Ockham should have been 
purely accidental, on points so important as 
the denial of general ideas, the reference of 
moral distinctions to superior power, and the 
absolute thraldom of Religion under the civil 
power, which he seems to have thought ne- 
cessary, to maintain that independence of 
the State on the Church with which Ockham 
had been contented. 

His philosophical writings might be read 
without reminding any one that the author 
was more than an intellectual machine. They 
never betray a feeling except that insupport- 
able arrogance which looks down on his fel- 
low-men as a lower species of beings ; whose 
almost unanimous hostility is so far from 
shaking the firmness of his conviction, or 
even ruffling the calmness of his contempt, 
that it appears too petty a circumstance to 
require explanation, or even to merit notice. 
Let it not be forgotten, that part of his re- 
nown depends on the application of his ad- 
mirable powers to expound Truth when he 
meets it. This great merit is conspicuous 
in that part of his treatise of Human Nature 
which relates to the percipient and reasoning 
faculties. It is also very remarkable in 
many of his secondary principles on the sub- 
ject of Government and Law, which, while 
the first principles are false and dangerous, 
are as admirable for truth as for his accus- 
tomed and unrivalled propriety of expres- 
sion.* In many of these observations he 
even shows a disposition to soften his para- 
doxes, and to conform to the common sense 
of mankind. t 

It was with perfect truth observed by my 
excellent friend Mr. Stewart, that "the ethi- 
cal principles of Hobbes are completely in- 
terwoven with his political system."! He 
might have said, that the whole of Hobbes' 
system, moral, religious, and in part philo- 
sophical, depended on his political scheme; 
not indeed logically, as conclusions depend 
upon premises, but (if the word may be ex- 
cused) psychologically, as the formation of 
one opinion may be influenced by a disposi- 
tion to adapt it to others previously cherished. 
The Translation of Thucydides, as he him- 

* See De Corpore Politico, Part i. chap. ii. iii. 
iv. and Leviathan, Part i. chap. xiv. xv. for re- 
marks of I his sort, full of sagacity. 

t " The laws of Nature are immutable and eter- 
nal ; for injustice, ingratitude, arrogance, pride, 
iniquity, acception of persons, and the rest, can 
never he made lawful. For it can never be that 
war shall preserve life, and peace destroy it." — 
Leviathan, Part i chap, xv.— See also Part ii. chap, 
xxvi. xxviii. on Laws, and on Punishments. 

t Sre Encyc. Brit. i. 42. The political state of 
England is indeed said by himself to have occa- 
sioned his first philosophical publication. 
Nascitur interea scelus execrabile belli. 

Florreo specfans, 

Meqne ad dilectam confero Luteiiam, 
Postque duos annos edo De Cive Libellum. 
K2 



114 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



self boasts, "was published to show the evils 
of popular government.* Men he repre- 
sented as being originally equal, and having 
an equal right to all things, but as being 
taught by Reason to sacrifice this right for 
the advantages of peace, and to submit to a 
common authority, which can preserve quiet, 
only by being the sole depositary of force, 
and must therefore be absolute and unlimi- 
ted. The supreme authority cannot be suf- 
ficient for its purpose, unless it be wielded 
by a single hand ; nor even then, unless his 
absolute power extends over Religion, which 
may prompt men to discord by the fear of an 
evil greater than death. The perfect state 
of a community, according to him, is where 
Law prescribes the religion and morality of 
the people, and where the will of an abso- 
lute sovereign is the sole fountain of law. 
Hooker had inculcated the simple truth, that 
"to live by one man's will is the cause of 
many men's misery:" — Hobbes embraced 
the daring paradox, that to live by one man's 
will is the only means of all men's happi- 
ness. Having thus rendered Religion the 
slave of every human tyrant, it was an una- 
voidable consequence, that he should be 
disposed to lower her character, and lessen 
her power over men ; that he should regard 
atheism as the most effectual instrument of 
preventing rebellion, — at least that species 
of rebellion which prevailed in his time, and 
had excited his alarms. The formidable 
alliance of Religion with Liberty haunted 
his mind, and urged him to the bold attempt 
of rooting out both these mighty principles; 
which, when combined with interests and 
passions, when debased by impure support, 
and provoked by unjust resistance, have in- 
deed the power of fearfully agitating society; 
but which are, nevertheless, in their own 
nature, and as far as they are unmixed and 
undisturbed, the parents of Justice, of Order, 
of Peace, as well as the sources of those 
hopes, and of those glorious aspirations after 
higher excellence, which encourage and ex- 
alt the Soul in its passage through misery 
and depravity. A Hobbist is the only con- 
sistent persecutor; for he alone considers 
himself as bound, by whatever conscience 
he has remaining, to conform to the religion 
of the sovereign. He claims from others no 
more than he is himself ready to yield to any 
master;! while the religionist who perse- 



cutes a member of another communion, ex- 
acts the sacrifice of conscience and sincerity, 
though professing that rather than make it 
himself, he is prepared to die. 

REMARKS. 

The fundamental errors on which the ethi- 
cal system of Hobbes is built are not peculiar 
to him ; though he has stated them with a 
bolder precision, and placed them in a more 
conspicuous station in the van of his main 
force, than any other of those who have 
either frankly avowed, or tacitly assumed, 
them, from the beginning of speculation to 
the present moment. They may be shortly 
stated as follows : 

1. The first and most inveterate of these 
errors is, that he does not distinguish thought 
from feelings or rather that he in express 
words confounds them. The mere -perception 
of an object, according to him, differs from 
the pleasure or pain which that perception 
may occasion, no otherwise than as they 
affect different organs of the bodily frame. 
The action of the mind in perceiving or con- 
ceiving an object is precisely the same with 
that of feeling the agreeable ordisagreeable.* 
The necessary result of this original confu- 
sion is, to extend the laws of the intellectual 
part of our nature over that other part of it, 
(hitherto without any adequate name,) which 
feels, and desires, and loves, and hopes, and 
wills. In consequence of this long confu- 
sion, or want of distinction, it has happened 
that, while the simplest act of the merely 
intellectual part has many names (such as 
'•sensation," "perception," ''impression," 
&c), the correspondent act of the other not 
less important portion of , man is not denoted 
by a technical term in philosophical systems ; 
nor by a convenient word in common lan- 
guage. " Sensation" has another more com- 



* The conference between the ministers from 
Athens and the Melean chiefs, in the 5th book, 
and the speech of Euphemus in the 6th book of 
that historian, exhibit an undisguised Hobbism, 
which was very dramatically put into the mouth 
of Athenian statesmen at a time when, as we 
karn from Plato and Aristophanes, it was preach- 
ed by the Sophists. 

t Spinoza adopted precisely the same first prin- 
ciple with Hobbes, that all men have a natural 
right to all things. — Tract. Theol. Pol. cap. ii. § 3. 
He even avows the absurd and detestable maxim, 
that states are not bound to observe their treaties 
longer than the interest or danger which first 
formed the trenties continues. But on the inter- 
nal constitution of states he embraces opposite 
opinions. Servitutia enim, non pads, interest 



orrniem potestatem ad unurp transfcrre. — (Ibid. cap. 
vi. § 4.) Limited monarchy he considers as the 
only tolerable example of that species of govern- 
ment. An aristocracy nearly approaching to the 
Dutch system during the suspension of the Stadt- 
holdership, he seems to prefer. He speaks favour- 
ably of democracy, but the chapter on that sub- 
ject is left unfinished. " Nulla plane templa urbi- 
um sumptibus aedificanda, nee jura de opinionibus 
statuenda." He was the first republican atheist of 
modern times, and probably the earliest irreligious 
opponent of an ecclesiastical establishment. 

* This doctrine is explained in his tract on Hu- 
man Nature, c. vii. "Conception is a motion in 
some internal substance of the head, which pro- 
ceeding to the heart, where it helpeth the motion 
there, is called pledsur'e ; when it weakeneth or 
hindereth the motion, it is called pain. ,y The 
same matter is handled more cursorily, agreeably 
to the practical purpose of the work, in Leviathan, 
part i. chap. vi. These passages are here referred 
to as proofs of the statement in the text. With 
the materialism of it we have here no concern. 
If the multiplied suppositions were granted, we 
should not advance one step towards understand- 
ing what they profess to explain. The first four 
words are as unmeaning as if one were to say 
that greenness is very loud. It is obvious that 
many motions which promote the motion of the 
heart are extremely painful. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



IV& 



mon sense; -''Emotion" is too warm for a 
generic term; "Feeling" has some degree 
of the same fault, besides its liability to con- 
fusion with the sense of touch ; "Pleasure" 
and "Pain" represent only two properties 
of this act, which render its repetition the 
object of desire or aversion ; — which last 
states of mind presuppose the act. Of these 
words, "Emotion" seems to be the least 
objectionable, since it has no absolute double 
meaning, and does not require so much vigi- 
lance in the choice of the accompanying- 
words as would be necessary if we were to 
prefer " Feeling;" which, however, being a 
more familiar word, may, with due caution, 
be also sometimes employed. Every man 
who attends to the state of his own mind 
will acknowledge, that these words, " Emo- 
tion" and "Feeling," thus used, are per- 
fectly simple, and as incapable of further 
explanation by words as sight and hearing ; 
which may, indeed, be rendered into syno- 
nymous words, but never can be defined by 
any more simple or more clear. Reflection 
will in like manner teach that perception, 
reasoning, and judgment may be conceived 
to exist without being followed by emotion. 
Some men hear music without gratification : 
one may distinguish a taste without being 
pleased or displeased by it ; or at least the 
relish or disrelish is often so slight, without 
lessening the distinctness of the sapid quali- 
ties, that the distinction of it from the per- 
ception cannot be doubted. 

The multiplicity of errors which have flow- 
ed into moral science from this original con- 
fusion is very great. They have spread over 
many schools of philosophy ; and many of 
them are prevalent to this day. Hence the 
laws of the Understanding have been ap- 
plied to the Affections ; virtuous feelings 
have been considered as just reasonings ; 
evil passions have been represented as mis- 
taken judgments; and it has been laid down 
as a principle, that the Will always follows 
the last decision of the Practical Intellect.* 

2. By this great error, Hobbes was led to 
represent all the variety of the desires of 
men, as being only so many instances of 
objects deliberately and solely pursued ; be- 
cause they were the means, and at the time 
perceived to be so, of directly or indirectly 
procuring organic gratification to the indi- 
vidual. t The human passions are described 
as if they reasoned accurately, deliberated 
coolly, and calculated exactly. It is assumed 
that, in performing these operations, there is 
and can be no act of life in which a man does 
not bring distinctly before his eyes the plea- 
sure which is to accrue to himself from the 
act. From this single and simple principle, 
all human conduct may, according to him, 
be explained and even foretold. The true 
laws of this part of our nature (so totally 
different from those of the percipient part) 

* " Voluntas semper sequiturultimum judicium 
i:itellec»qa praetici.'' — [See Spinozae Cog. Met. 
pars, ii cap. 12. Ed.] 

t See the passages before quoted. 



were, by this grand mistake, entirely with- 
drawn from notice. Simple as the observa- 
tion is, it seems to have escaped not only 
Hobbes, but many, perhaps most, philoso- 
phers, p that our desires seek a great diversity 
of objects ; that the attainment of these ob- 
jects is indeed followed by, or rather called 
" Pleasure ;" but that it could not be so, if 
the objects had not been previously desired. 
Many besides him have really represented 
self as the ultimate object of every action ; but 
none ever so hardily thrust forward the selfish 
system in its harshest and coarsest shape. 
The mastery which he shows over other 
metaphysical subjects, forsakes him on this. 
He does not scruple, for the sake of this 
system, to distort facts of which all men are 
conscious, and to do violence to the language 
in which the result of their uniform expe- 
rience is conveyed. " Acknowledgment of 
power is called Honour.''* His explana- 
tions are frequently sufficient confutations of 
the doctrine which required them. "Pity 
is the imagination of future calamity to our- 
selves, proceeding from the sense (observa- 
tion) of another man's calamity." " Laugh- 
ter is occasioned by sudden glory in our 
eminence, or in comparison with the infirmity 
of others." Every man who ever wept or 
laughed, may determine whether this be a 
true account of the state of his mind on either 
occasion. "Love is a conception of his 
need of the one person desired ;" — a defini- 
tion of Love, which, as it excludes kindness, 
might perfectly well comprehend the hun- 
ger of a cannibal, provided that it were not 
too ravenous to exclude choice. "Good- 
will, or charity, which containeth the natu- 
ral affection of parents to their children, con- 
sists in a man's conception that he is able 
not only to accomplish his own desires, but 
to assist other men in theirs:" from which 
it follows, as the pride of power is felt in 
destroying as well as in saving men, that 
cruelty and kindness are the same passion.! 
Such were the expedients to which a man 
of the highest class of understanding was 
driven, in order to evade the admission of 
the simple and evident truth, that there are 
in our nature perfectly disinterested pas- 
sions, which seek the well-being of others 
as their object and end, without looking be- 
yond it to self, or pleasure, or happiness. A 
proposition, from which such a man could 
attempt to escape only by such means, may 
be strongly presumed to be true. 

3. Hobbes having thus struck the affec- 
tions out of his map of human nature, and 
having totally misunderstood (as will appear 



* Human Nature, chap. viii. The ridiculous 
explanation of the admiration of personal beauty, 
" as a sign of power generative," shows the diffi- 
culties to which this extraordinary man was re- 
duced by a false system. 

t Ibid. chap. ix. I forbear to quote the passage 
on Platonic love, which immediately follows : but, 
considering Hobbes' blameless and honourable 
character, that passage is perhaps the most re- 
markable instance of the shifts to which his self- 
ish system reduced him. 



316 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



in a succeeding part of this Dissertation) the 
nature even of the appetites, it is no wonder 
that we should find in it not a trace of the 
moral sentiments. Moral Good* he consi- 
ders merely as consisting in the signs of a 
power to produce pleasure ; and repentance 
is no more than regret at having missed the 
way: so that, according to this system, a 
disinterested approbation of, and reverence 
for Virtue, are no more possible than disin- 
terested affections towards our fellow-crea- 
tures. There is no sense of duty, no com- 
punction for our own offences, no indignation 
against the crimes of others, — unless they 
affect our own safety ;— no secret cheerful- 
ness shed over the heart by the practice of 
well-doing. From his philosophical writings 
it would be impossible to conclude that there 
are in man a set of emotions, desires, and 
aversions, of which the sole and final objects 
are the voluntary actions and habitual dispo- 
sitions of himself and of all other voluntary 
agents; which are properly called "moral 
sentiments:" and which, though they vary 
more in degree, and depend more on culti- 
vation, than some other parts of human na- 
ture, are as seldom as most of them found 
to be entirely wanting. 

4. A theory of Man which comprehends 
in its explanations neither the social affec- 
tions, nor the moral sentiments, must be 
owned to be sufficiently defective. It is a 
consequence, or rather a modification of it, 
that Hobbes should constantly represent the 
deliberate regard to personal advantage, as 
the only possible motive of human action ; 
and that ke should altogether disdain to avail 
himself of those refinements of the selfish 
scheme which allow the pleasures of bene- 
volence and of morality, themselves, to be a 
most important part of that interest which 
reasonable beings pursue. 

5. Lastly, though Hobbes does in effect 
acknowledge the necessity of Morals to so- 
ciety, and the general coincidence of indivi- 
dual with public interest — truths so palpable 
that they have never been excluded from 
any ethical system, he betrays his utter want 
of moral sensibility by the coarse and odious 
form in which he has presented the first of 
these great principles ; and his view of both 
leads him most strongly to support that com- 
mon and pernicious error of moral reasoners, 
that a perception of the tendency of good 
actions to preserve the being and promote 
the well-being of the community, and a sense 
of the dependence of our own happiness 
upon the general security, either are essen- 
tial constituents of our moral feelings, or are 
ordinarily mingled with the most effectual 
motives to right conduct. 

The court of Charles II. were equally 

E leased with Hobbes' poignant brevity, and 
is low estimate of human motives. His 
ethical epigrams became the current coin of 



* Which he calls the " pulchrum," for want, as 
he says, of an English word to express it. — Levia- 
than, part. i. c. vi. 



profligate wits. Sheffield, Duke of Buck- 
inghamshire, who represented the class still 
more perfectly in his morals than in his fa- 
culties, has expressed their opinion in verses, 
of which one line is good enough to be 
quoted : 

" Fame bears no fruit tiil the vain planter dies." 

Dryden speaks of the "philosopher and poet 
(for such is the condescending term employ- 
ed) of Malmesbury," as resembling Lucre- 
tius in haughtiness. But Lucretius, though 
he held many of the opinions of Hobbes, 
had the sensibility as well as genius of a 
poet. His dogmatism is full of enthusiasm ; 
and his philosophical theory of society dis- 
covers occasionally as much tenderness as 
can be shown without reference to indivi- 
duals. He was a Hobbist in only half his 
nature. 

The moral and political system of Hobbes 
was a palace of ice, transparent, exactly 
proportioned, majestic, admired by the un- 
wary as a delightful dwelling; but gradually 
undermined by the central warmth of human 
feeling, before it was thawed into muddy 
water by the sunshine of true Philosophy. 

When Leibnitz, in the beginning of the 
eighteenth century, reviewed the moral wri- 
ters of modern times, his penetrating eye 
saw only two who were capable of reducing 
Morals and Jurisprudence to a science. "So 
great an enterprise," says he, "might have 
been executed by the deep-searching genius 
of Hobbes, if he had not set out from evil 
principles; or by the judgment and learning 
of the incomparable Grotius, if his powers 
had not been scattered over many subjects, 
and his mind distracted by the cares of an 
agitated life."* Perhaps in this estimate, 
admiration of the various and excellent quali- 
ties of Grotius may have overrated his purely 
philosophical powers, great as they unques- 
tionably were. Certainly the failure of 
Hobbes was owing to no inferiority in strength 
of intellect. Probably his fundamental er- 
rors maybe imputed, in part, to the faintness 
of his moral sensibilities, insufficient to make 
him familiar with those sentiments and affec- 
tions which can be known only by being 
felt; — a faintness perfectly compatible with 
his irreproachable life, but which obstructed, 
and at last obliterated, the only channel 
through which the most important materials 
of ethical science enter into the mind. 

Against Hobbes, says Warburton, the 
whole Church militant took up arms. The 
answers to the Leviathan would form a 
library. But the far greater part would have 
followed the fate of all controversal pamph- 
lets. Sir Robert Filmer was jealous of any 
rival theory of servitude : Harrington defend- 
ed Liberty, and Clarendon the Church, against 



* " Et tale aliquid potnisspt, vel ab incompara- 
bilis Grotii jurlicio et doctrina, vel a profundo 
Hobbii injjenio praestari ; nisi ilium muba distrax- 
issent ; hie vero prava constiluisset principia," 
Leib. Op. iv. pars. iii. 276. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



117 



a common enemy. His philosophical antago- 
nists were, Cumberland, Cudworth, Shaftes- 
bury, Clarke, Butler, and Hutcheson. Though 
the last four writers cannot be considered as 
properly polemics, their labours were excited, 
and their doctrines modified, by the stroke 
from a vigorous arm which seemed to shake 
Ethics to its foundation. They lead us far 
into the eighteenth century ; and their works, 
occasioned by the doctrines of Hobbes, 
sowed the seed of the ethical writings of 
Hume, Smith, Price. Kant, and Stewart ; in 
a less degree, also, of those of Tucker and 
Paley : — not to mention Mandeville, the buf- 
foon and sophister of the alehouse, or Hel- 
vetius, an ingenious but flimsy writer, the 
low and loose Moralist of the vain, the sel- 
fish, and the sensual. 



SECTION V. 

CONTROVERSIES CONCERNING THE MORAL FA- 
CULTIES AND THE SOCIAL AFFECTIONS. 

CUMBERLAND — CUDWORTH — CLARKE — SHAFTES- 
BURY BOSSUET FENELOU — LEIBNITZ MALE- 

BRANCHE — EDWARDS — BUFFIER. 

Dr. Richard Cumberland,* raised to the 
See of Peterborough after the Revolution of 
1688, was the only professed answerer of 
Hobbes. His work On the Laws of Nature 
still retains a place on the shelf, though not 
often on the desk. The philosophical epi- 
grams of Hobbes form a contrast to the ver- 
bose, prolix, and languid diction of his an- 
swerer. The forms of scholastic argument 
serve more to encumber his style, than to 
insure his exactness. But he has substantial 
merits. He justly observes, that all men 
can only be said to have had originally a right 
to all things, in a sense in which " right ; ' has 
the same meaning with " power." He shows 
that Hobbes is at variance with himself, inas- 
much as the dictates of Right Reason, which, 
by his own statement, teach men for their 
own safety to forego the exercise of that 
right, and which he calls "laws of Nature," 
are coeval with it : and that mankind per- 
ceive the moral limits of their power as clear- 
ly and as soon as they are conscious of its 
existence. He enlarges the intimations of 
Grotius on the social feelings, which prompt 
men to the pleasures of pacific intercourse, as 
certainly as the apprehension of danger and 
of destruction urges them to avoid hostility. 
The fundamental principle of his system of 
Ethics is, that < : the greatest benevolence of 
every rational agent to all others is the hap- 
piest state of each individual, as well as of 
the whole. "f The happiness accruing to 
each man from the observance and cultiva- 
tion of benevolence, he considers as appended 
to it by the Supreme Ruler; through which 



* Born, 1632; died, 1718. 

t De Leg. Nat. chap. i. § 12, first published in 
London, 1672, and then so popular as to be re- 
printed at Lubeck in 1683. 



He sanctions it as His law, and reveals it 
to the mind of every reasonable creature. 
From this principle he deduces the rules of 
Morality, which he calls the " laws of Na- 
ture." The surest, or rather the only mark 
that they are the commandments of God, is, 
that their observance promotes the happiness 
of man : for that reason alone could they be 
imposed by that Being whose essence is 
Love. As our moral faculties must to us be 
the measure of all moral excellence, he in- 
fers that the moral attributes of the Divinity 
must in their nature be only a transcendent 
degree of those qualities which we most ap- 
prove, love, and revere, in those moral agents 
with whom we are familiar.* He had a mo- 
mentary glimpse of the possibility that some 
human actions might be performed with a 
view to the happiness of others, without any 
consideration of the pleasure reflected back 
on ourselves. f But it is too faint and tran- 
sient to be worthy of observation, otherwise 
than as a new proof how often great truths 
must flit before the Understanding, before 
they can be firmly and finally held inits grasp. 
His only attempt to explain the nature of the 
Moral Faculty, is the substitution of Practi- 
cal Reason (a phrase of the Schoolmen, since 
become celebrated from its renewal by Kant) 
for Right Reason ;i and his definition of the 
first, as that which points out the ends and 
means of action. Throughout his whole 
reasoning, he adheres to the accustomed 
confusion of the equality which renders ac- 
tions virtuous, with the sentiments excited 
in us by the contemplation of them. His 
language on the identity of general and indi- 
vidual interest is extremely vague ; though 
it be, as he says, the foundation-stone of the 
Temple of Concord among men. 

It is little wonderful that Cumberland 
should not have disembroiled this ancient 
and established confusion, since Leibnitz 
himself, in a passage where he reviews the 
theories of Morals which had gone before 
him, has done his utmost to perpetuate it. 
•'It is a question." says the latter, " whether 
the preservation of human society be the first 
principle of the law of Nature. This our 
author denies, in opposition to Grotius, who 
laid down sociability to be so j — to Hobbes, 
who ascribed that character to mutual fear; 
and to Cumberland, who held that it was 
mutual benevolence ; which are all three 
only different names for the safety and wel- 



* Ibid. cap. v. § 19. t Ibid. cap. ii. $ 20. 

t " Whoever determines his Judgment and his 
Will by Right Reason, must agree with all others 
who judge according to Right Reason in the same 
matter." — Ibid. cap. ii. § 8. This is in one sense 
only a particular instance of the identical propo- 
sition, that two things which agree with a third 
thing must agree with each other in that, in which 
they agree with the third. But the difficulty en- 
tirely consists in the particular third thing here in 
troduced, namely, "Right Reason," the nature 
of which not one step is made to explain. T\ie 
position is curious, as coinciding with " the uni- 
versal categorical imperative," adopted as a first 
principle by Kant. 



its 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



fare of society."* Here the great philoso- 
pher considered benevolence or fear, two 
feelings of the human mind, to be the first 
principles of the law of Nature, in the same 
sense in which the tendency of certain ac- 
tions to the well-being of the community 
may be so regarded. The confusion, how- 
■ever, was then common to him with many, 
as it even now is with most. The compre- 
hensive view was his own. He perceived 
ihe close resemblance of these various, and 
even conflicting opinions, in that important 
point of view in which they relate to the 
effects of moral and immoral actions on the 
general interest. The tendency of Virtue to 
preserve amicable intercourse was enforced 
'by Grotius; its tendency to prevent injury 
was dwelt on by Hobbes ; its tendency to 
promote an interchange of benefits was in- 
culcated by Cumberland. 

CUDWORTH.t 

Cudworth, one of the eminent men educa- 
ted or promoted in the English Universities 
during the Puritan rule, was one of the most 
distinguished of the Latitudinarian, or Ar- 
minian, party who came forth at the Resto- 
ration, with a love of Liberty imbibed from 
their Calvinistic masters, as well as from the 
writings of antiquity, yet tempered by the 
■experience of their own agitated age; and 
with a spirit of religious toleration more im- 
partial and mature, though less systematic 
and professedly comprehensive, than that of 
the Independents, the first sect who preached 
that doctrine. Taught by the errors of their 
time, they considered Religion as consisting, 
5iot in vain efforts to explain unsearchable 
mysteries, but in purity of heart exalted by 
pious feelings, manifested by virtuous con- 
duct, t The government of the Church was 
placed in their hands by the Revolution, and 
.their influence was long felt among its rulers 
and luminaries. The first generation of their 
•scholars turned their attention too much from 
the cultivation of the heart to the mere go- 
vernment of outward action : and in succeed- 
ing times the tolerant spirit, not natural to an 

* Leib. Op. pars. iii. 271. The unnamed work 
■which occasioned these remarks (perhaps one of 
Thomasius) appeared in 1699. How long after 
this Leibniiz's Dissertation was written, does not 
appear. 

tBorn 1617; died, 1688. 

t See the the beautiful account of them I15' Bur- 
tnet, (Hist, of His own Time, i. 321. Oxford, 1823) 
•who was himself one of the most distinguished of 
ihis excellent body ; with whom may be classed, 
■notwithstanding some shades of doctrinal differ- 
ence, his early master, Leighton, Bishop of Dun- 
blane, a beautiful writer, and one of the best of 
men. The earliest account of them is in a curious 
contemporary pamphlet, entitled, " An Account 
of the new Sect of Latitude-men at Cambridge," 
republished in the collection of tracts, entitled 
" Phcenix Britannicus." Jeremy Taylor deserves 
ihe highest, and perhaps the earliest place among 
them: but Cudworth's excellent sermon before 
the House of Commons (31st March 1647) in the 
year of the publication of Taylor's Liberty of Pro- 
phesying, may be compared even to Taylor in 
<eharicy. piety, and the most liberal toleration. 



establishment, was with difficulty kept up 
by a government whose existence depended 
on discouraging intolerant pretensions. No 
sooner had the first sketch of the Hobbian 
philosophy* been privately circulated at 
Paris, than Cudworth seized the earliest 
opportunity of sounding the alarm against 
the most justly odious of the modesof think- 
ing which it cultivates, or forms of expression 
which it would introduce:! — the prelude to 
a war which occupied the remaining forty 
years of his life. The Intellectual System, 
his great production, is directed against the 
atheistical opinions of Hobbes : it touches 
ethical questions but occasionally and inci- 
dentally. It is a work of stupendous erudi- 
tion, of much more acuteness than at first 
appears, of frequent mastery over diction 
and illustration on subjects where it is most 
rare ; and it is distinguished, perhaps beyond 
any other volume of controversy, by that 
best proof of the deepest conviction of the 
truth of a man's principles, a fearless state- 
ment of the most formidable objections to 
them ; — a fairness rarely practised but by 
him who is conscious of his power to answer 
them. In all his writings, it must be own- 
ed, that his learning obscures his reasonings, 
and seems even to repress his powerful in- 
tellect. It is an unfortunate effect of the 
redundant fulness of his mind, that it over- 
flows in endless digressions, which break 
the chain of argument, and turn aside the 
thoughts of the reader from the main object. 
He was educated before usage had limited 
the naturalization of new r words from the 
learned languages : before the failure of those 
great men, from Bacon to Milton, who labour- 
ed to follow a Latin order in their sentences, 
and the success of those men of inferior 
powers, from Cowley to Addison, who were 
content with the order, as well as the words, 
of pure and elegant conversation, had, as it 
were, by a double series of experiments, 
ascertained that the involutions and inver- 
sions of the ancient languages are seldom 
reconcilable with the genius of ours; and 
that they are, unless skilfully, as well as 
sparingly introduced, at variance with the 
natural beauties of our prose composition. 
His mind was more that of an ancient than 
of a modern philosopher. He often indulged 
in that sort of amalgamation of fancy with 
speculation, the delight of the Alexandrian 
doctors, with whom he was most familiarly 
conversant ; and the Intellectual System, 
both in thought and expression, has an old 
and foreign air, not unlike a translation from 
the work of a later Platonist. Large ethical 
works of this eminent writer are extant in 
manuscript in the British Museum.! One 

* De Cive, 1642. 

t " Dantur boni et mali rationes asternae et in- 
dispensabiles." Thesis for the degree of B. D. at 
Cambridge in 1664. — Birch's Life of Cudworth, 
prefixed to his edition of the Intellectual System, 
(Lond. 1743.) i. 7. 

t A curious account of the history of these MSS. 
by Dr. Kippis, is to be found in the Biographia 
Britannica, iv. 549. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



119 



posthumous volume on Morals was published 
by Dr. Chandler, Bishop of Durham, entitled 
"A Treatise concerning Eternal and Immut- 
able Morality."* But there is the more rea- 
son to regret (as far as relates to the history 
of Opinion) that the larger treatises are still 
unpublished, because the above volume is 
not so much an ethical treatise as an intro- 
duction to one. Protagoras of old, and Hob- 
bes then alive, having concluded that Right 
and Wrong were unreal, because they were 
not perceived by the senses, and because all 
human knowledge consists only in such per- 
ception, Cudworth endeavours to refute them, 
by disproving that part of their premises 
which forms the last-staled proposition. The 
mind has many conceptions (iw^ara) which 
are not cognizable by the senses ; and though 
they are occasioned by sensible objects, yet 
they cannot be formed but by a faculty su- 
perior to sense. The conceptions of Justice 
and Duty he places among them. The dis- 
tinction of Right from Wrong is discerned by 
Reason; and as soon as these words are de- 
fined, it becomes evident that it would be a 
contradiction in terms to affirm that any 
power, human or Divine, could change their 
nature ; or, in other words, make the same 
act to be just and unjust at the same time. 
They have existed eternally in the only mode 
in which truths can be said to be eternal, in 
the Eternal Mind ; and they are indestructi- 
ble and unchangeable like that Supreme In- 
telligence.! Whatever judgment may be 
formed of this reasoning, it is manifest that 
it relates merely to the philosophy of the 
Understanding, and does not attempt any 
explanation of What constitutes the very 
essence of Morality, — its relation to the Will. 
That we perceive a distinction between 
Right and Wrong, as much as between a tri- 
angle and a square, is indeed true : and may 
possiblylead to an explanation of the reason 
why men should adhere to the one and avoid 
the other. But it is not that reason. A 
command or a precept is not a proposition : 
it cannot be said that either is true or false. 
Cudworth, as well as many who succeeded 
him, confounded the mere apprehension by 
the Understanding that Right is different 
from Wrong, with the practical authority of 
these important conceptions, exercised over 
voluntary actions, in a totally distinct pro- 
vince of the human soul. 

* 8vo. Loud. 1731. 

t " There are many objects of our mind which 
we can neither see, hear, feel, smell, nor taste, 
and which did never enter into it by any sense ; 
and therefore we can have no sensible pictures or 
ideas of them, drawn by the pencil of that inward 
limner, or painter, which borrows all his colours 
from sense, which we call ' Fancy :' and if we 
reflect on our own cogitations of these things, we 
shall sensibly perceive that they are not phantasti- 
cal, but noematical: as, for example, justice, equi- 
ty, duty and obligation, cogitation, opinion, intel- 
lection, volition, memory, verity, falsity, cause, 
effect, genus, species, nullity, contingency, pos- 
sibility, impossibility, and innumerable others." 
' — Ibid. 140. We have here an anticipation of 
Kant. 



Though his life was devoted to the asser- 
tion of Divine Providence, and though his 
philosophy was imbued with the religious 
spirit of Platonism,* yet he had placed Chris- 
tianity too purely in the love of God and 
Man to be considered as having much regard 
for those controversies about rights and opi- 
nions with which zealots disturb the world. 
They represented him as having fallen into 
the same heresy with Milton and with 
Clarke ;t and some of them even charged 
him with atheism, for no other reason than 
that he was not afraid to state the atheistic 
difficulties in their fullest force. As blind 
anger heaps inconsistent accusations on each 
other, they called him at least "an Arian, a 
Socinian, or a Deist. "t The courtiers of 
Charles II., who were delighted with every 
part of Hobbes but his integrity, did their 
utmost to decry his antagonist. They turned 
the railing of the bigots into a sarcasm 
against Religion ; as we learn from him who 
represented them with unfortunate fidelity. 
" He has raised," says Dryden, " such strong 
objections against the being of God, that 
many think he has not answered them ;" — 
" the common fate," as Lord Shaftesbury tells 
us, " of those who dare to appear fair au- 
thors. "4 He had, indeed, earned the hatred 
of some theologians, better than they could 
know from the writings published during his 
life : for in his posthumous work he classes 
with the ancient atheists those of his con- 
temporaries, (whom he forbears to name,) 
who held "that God may command what is 
contrary to moral rules ; that He has no in- 
clination to the good of His creatures ; that 
He may justly doom an innocent being to 
eternal torments ; and that whatever God 
does will, for that reason is just, because He 
wills it."il 

It is an interesting incident in the life of a 
philosopher, that Cudworth's daughter, Lady 
Masham, had the honour to nurse the in- 
firmities and to watch the last breath of Mr. 
Locke, who was Opposed to her father in 
speculative philosophy, but who heartily 



* Eu^sCt!, w tsxv&v, o ytto eu<ri£a>v afcf o>? Xp/o"T/a.vj- 
&i. — (Motto affixed to the sermon above mention- 
ed.) 

t The following doctrine is ascribed to Cud- 
wonh by Nelson, a man of good understanding 
and great wonh : " Dr. Cudworth maintained that 
the Father, absolutely speaking, is the only Su- 
preme God ; the Son and Spirit being God only 
by his concurrence with them, and their subordi 
nation and subjection to him." — Life of Bull, 339. 

X Turner's discourse on the Messiah, 335. 

% Moralists, part ii. § 3. 

II Etem. and Immut. Mor. 11. He quotes Ock- 
ham as having formerly maintained the same mon- 
strous positions. To many, if not to most of these 
opinions or expressions, ancient and modern, re- 
servations are adjoined, which render them literally 
reconcilable with practical Morals. But the dan- 
gerous abuse to which the incautious language of 
ethical theories is liable, is well illustrated by the 
anecdote related in Plutarch's Life of Alexander, 
of the sycophant Anaxavchas consoling that mon- 
arch for the murder of Glitus, by assuring him that 
every act of a ruler must be just, riav to wv>*£- 
6sv im> tou x-pxTovvTcc fiKAiov. — Op. i. 639. 



120 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



agreed with him in the love of Truth, Li- 
berty, and Virtue. 

CLARKE.* 

Connected with Cudworth by principle, 
though separated by some interval of time, 
was Dr. Samuel Clarke, a man eminent at 
once as a divine, a mathematician, a meta- 
physical philosopher, and a philologer; who, 
as the interpreter of Homer and Cassar, the 
scholar of Newton, and the antagonist of 
Leibnitz, approved himself not unworthy of 
correspondence with the highest order of 
human Spirits. Roused by the prevalence 
of the doctrines of Spinoza and Hobbes, he 
endeavoured to demonstrate the Being and 
Attributes of God, from a few axioms and 
definitions, in the manner of Geometry. In 
this attempt, with all his powers of argu- 
ment, it must be owned that he is compelled 
sometimes tacitly to assume what the laws 
of reasoning required him to prove ; and that, 
on the whole, his failure may be regarded as 
a proof that such a mode of argument is be- 
yond the faculties of man.t Justly consider- 
ing the Moral Attributes of the Deity as 
what alone render him the object of Reli- 
gion, and to us constitutes the difference be- 
tween Theism and atheism, he laboured 
with the utmost zeal to place the distinc- 
tions of Right and Wrong on a more solid 
foundation, and to explain the conformity of 
Morality to Reason, in a manner calculated 
to give a precise and scientific signification 
to that phraseology which all philosophers 
had. for so many ages, been content to em- 
ploy, without thinking themselves obliged to 
define. 

It is one of the most rarely successful ef- 
forts of the human mind, to place the under- 
standing at the point from which a philoso- 
pher takes the views that compose his sys- 
tem, to recollect constantly his purposes, to 
adopt for a moment his previous opinions and 
prepossessions, to think in his words and to 
see with his eyes; — especially when the wri- 
ter widely dissents from the system which 
ae attempts to describe, and after a general 
change in the modes of thinking and in the 
use of terms. Every part of the present Dis- 
sertation requires such an excuse; but per- 
haps it may be more necessary in a case like 
that of Clarke, where the alterations in both 
respects have been so insensible, and in 
some respects appear so limited, that they 
may escape attention, than after those total 



* Born, 1675; died, 1729. 

t This admirable person had so much candour 
as in effect to own his failure, and to recur to 
those other arguments in support of this great 
truth, which have in all ages satisfied the most 
elevated minds. In Proposition viii. (Being and 
Attributes of God, 47 ) which affirms that the first 
cause must be " intelligent" (wherein, as he truly 
states, " lies the main question between us and 
the atheists"), he owns, that the proposition can- 
not be demonstrated strictly and properly a priori. 
-See Note M. 



revolutions in doctrine, where the necessity 
of not measuring other times by our own 
standard must be apparent to the most un- 
distinguishing. 

The sum of his moral doctrine may be 
stated as follows. Man can conceive nothing 
without at the same time conceiving its re- 
lations to other things. He must ascribe the 
same law of perception to every being to 
whom he ascribes thought. He cannot there- 
fore doubt that all the relations of all things 
to all must have always been present to the 
Eternal Mind. The relations in this sense 
are eternal, however recent the things may 
be between whom they subsist. The whole 
of these relations constitute Truth : the 
knowledge of them is Omniscience. These 
eternal different relations of things involve a 
consequent eternal fitness or unfitness in the 
application of things, one to another; with a 
regard to which, the will of God always 
chooses, and which ought likewise to deter- 
mine the wills of all subordinate rational 
beings. These eternal differences make it 
fit and reasonable for the creatures so to act; 
they cause it to be their duty, or lay an obli- 
gation on them so to do, separate from the 
will of God,* and antecedent to any pros- 
pect of advantage or reward.! Nay, wilful 
wickedness is the same absurdity and inso- 
lence in Morals, as it would be in natural 
things to pretend to alter the relations of 
numbers, or to take away the properties of 
mathematical figures. J " Morality," says 
one of his most ingenious scholars, u is the 
practice of reason. "§ 

Clarke, like Cudworth, considered such a 
scheme as the only security against Hobb- 
ism. and probably also against the Calvinistic 
theology, from which they were almost as 
averse. Not content, with Cumberland, to 
attack Hobbes on ground which was in part 
his own, they thought it necessary to build on 
entirely new foundations. Clarke more espe- 
cially, instead of substituting social and ge- 
nerous feeling for the selfish appetites, en- 
deavoured to bestow on Morality the highest 
dignity, by thus deriving it from Reason. He 
made it more than disinterested ; for he 
placed its seat in a region where interest 
never enters, and passion never disturbs. 
By ranking her principles with the first 
truths of Science, he seemed to render them 
pure and' impartial, infallible and unchange- 
able. It might be excusable to regret the 
failure of so noble an attempt, if the indul- 
gence of such regrets did not betray an un- 
worthy apprehension that the same excellent 
ends could only be attained by such frail 

* " Those who found all moral obligation on 
the will of God must recur to the same thing, 
only they do not explain how the nature and will 
of God is good and just." — Being and Attributes' 
of God, Proposition xii. 

t Evidence of Natural and Revealed Religion, 
p. 4. Lond. 1724. 

4 Ibid. p. 42. 

§ Lowman on the Unity and Perfections of 
God, p. 29. Lond. 1737. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



121 



means; and that the dictates of the most 
severe reason would not finally prove recon- 
cilable with the majesty of Virtue. 

REMARKS. 

The adoption of mathematical forms and 
terms was, in England, a prevalent fashion 
among writers on moral subjects during a 
large part of the eighteenth century. The 
ambition of mathematical certainty, on mat- 
ters concerning which it is not given to man 
to reach it, is a frailty from which the dis- 
ciple of Newton ought in reason to have 
been withheld, but to which he was natu- 
rally tempted by the example of his master. 
Nothing but the extreme difficulty of de- 
taching assent from forms of expression to 
which it has been long wedded, can ex- 
plain the fact, that the incautious expressions 
above cited, into which Clarke was hurried 
by his moral sensibility, did not awaken 
him to a sense of the error into which he 
had fallen. As soon as he had said that "a 
wicked act was as absurd as an attempt to 
take away the properties of a figure," he 
ought to have seen that principles which led 
logically to such a conclusion were untrue. 
As it is an impossibility to make three and 
three cease to be six, it ought, on his princi- 
ples, to be impossible to do a wicked act. To 
act without regard to the relations of things, — 
as if a man were to choose fire for cpoling, or 
ice for heating, — would be the part either 
of a lunatic or an idiot. The murderer who 
poisons by arsenic, acts agreeably to his 
knowledge of the power of that substance to 
kill, which is a relation between two things; 
as much as the physician who employs an 
emetic after the poison, acts upon his belief 
of the tendency of that remedy to preserve 
life, which is another relation between two 
things. All men who seek a good or bad 
end by good or bad means, must alike con- 
form their conduct to some relation between 
their actions as means and their object as an 
end. All the relations of inanimate things to 
each other are undoubtedly observed as much 
by the criminal as by the man of virtue. 

It is therefore singular that Dr. Clarke suf- 
fered himself to be misled into the repre- 
sentation, that Virtue is a conformity with 
the relations of things universally, Vice a 
universal disregard of them, by the certain, 
but here insufficient truth, that the former 
necessarily implied a regard to certain par- 
ticular relations, which were always disre- 
garded by those who chose the latter. The 
distinction between Right and Wrong can, 
therefore, no longer depend on relations as 
such, but on a particular class of relations. 
And it seems evident that no relations are to 
be considered, except those in which a liv- 
ing, intelligent, and voluntary agent is one 
of the beings related. His acts may relate 
to a law, as either observing or infringing it ; 
they may relate to his own moral sentiments 
and those of his fellows, as they are the ob- 
jects of approbation or disapprobation ; they 
16 



may relate to his own welfare, by increasing 
or abating it ; they may relate to the well- 
being of other sentient beings, by contribu- 
ting to promote or obstruct it : but in all 
these, and in all supposable cases, the in- 
quiry of the moral philosopher must be, not 
whether there be a relation, but what the 
relation is ; whether it be that of obedience 
to law, or agreeableness to moral feeling, or 
suitableness to prudence, or coincidence with 
benevolence. The term "relation" itself, on 
which Dr. Clarke's system rests, being com- 
mon to Right and Wrong, must be struck out 
of the reasoning. He himself incidentally 
drops intimations which are at variance with 
his system. " The Deity," he tells us, u acts 
according to the eternal relations of things, 
in order to the welfare of the whole Uni- 
verse;" and subordinate moral agents ought 
to be governed by the same rules, " for the 
good of the public."* No one can fail to ob- 
serve that anew element is here introduced, 
— the well-being of communities of men, and 
the general happiness of the world, — which 
supersedes the consideration of abstract re- 
lations and fitnesses. 

There are other views of this system, 
however, of a more general nature, and of 
much more importance, because they ex- 
tend in a considerable degree to all systems 
which found moral distinctions or sentiments, 
solely or ultimately, upon Reason. A little 
reflection will discover an extraordinary 
vacuity in this system. Supposing it were al- 
lowed that it satisfactorily accounts for mo- 
ral judgments, there is still an important part 
of our moral sentiments which it passes by 
without an attempt to explain them. Whence, 
on this scheme, the pleasure or pain with 
which we review our own actions or survey 
those of others 1 What is the nature of re- 
morse ? Why do we feel shame 1 Whence 
is indignation against injustice ? These are 
surely ^io exercise of Reason. Nor is the 
assent of Reason to any other class of propo- 
sitions followed or accompanied by emotions 
of this nature, by any approaching them, or 
indeed necessarily by any emotion at all. 
It is a fatal objection to a moral theory that 
it contains no means of explaining the most 
conspicuous, if not the most essential, parts 
of moral approbation and disapprobation. 

But to rise to a more general considera- 
tion : Perception and Emotion are states of 
mind perfectly distinct, and an emotion of 
pleasure or pain differs much more from a 
mere perception, than the perceptions of one 
sense do from those of another. The per- 
ceptions of all the senses have some quali- 
ties in common. But an emotion has not 
necessarily anything in common with a per- 
ception, but that they are both states of 
mind. We perceive exactly the same quali- 
ties in the taste of coffee when we may dis- 
like it, as afterwards when we come to like 
it. In other words, the perception remains 
the same when the sensation of pain is 

* Evid. of Nat. and Rev. Rel. p. 4. 

Li 



122 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



changed into the opposite sensation of plea- 
sure. The like change may occur in every 
case where pleasure or pain (in such in- 
stances called "sensations"), enter the mind 
with perceptions through the eye or the ear. 
The prospect or the sound which was dis- 
agreeable may become agreeable, without 
au\ alteration in our idea of the objects. 
We can easily imagine a percipient and 
thinking being without a capacity of receiv- 
ing pleasure or pain. Such a being might 
perceive what we do; if we could conceive 
him to reason, he might reason justly; and 
if he were to judge at all, there seems no 
reason why he should not judge truly. But 
what could induce such a being to will or to 
act? It seems evident that his existence 
could only be a state of passive contempla- 
tion. Reason, as Reason, can never be a 
motive to action. It is only when we super- 
add to such a being sensibility, or the ca- 
pacity of emotion or sentiment, or (what in 
corporeal cases is called sensation) of desire 
and aversion, that we introduce him into the 
world of action. We then clearly discern 
that, when the conclusion of a process of 
reasoning presents to his mind an object of 
desire, or the means of obtaining it, a motive 
of action begins to operate, and Reason may- 
then, but not till then, have a powerful 
though indirect influence on conduct. Let 
any argument to dissuade a man from im- 
morality be employed, and the issue of it 
will always appear to be an appeal to a feel- 
ing. You prove that drunkenness will pro- 
bably ruin health: no position founded on 
experience is more certain ; most persons 
with whom you reason must be as much 
convinced of it as you are. But your hope 
of success depends on the drunkard's fear 
of ill health; and he may always silence 
your argument by telling you that he loves 
wine more than he dreads sickness. You 
speak in vain of the infamy of an act to one 
who disregards the opinion of others, or of its 
imprudence to a man of little feeling for his 
own future condition. You may truly, but 
vainly tell of the pleasures of friendship to 
one who has little affection. If you display 
the delights of liberality to a miser, he may 
always shut your mouth by answering, -'The 
spendthrift may prefer such pleasures; I 
love money more." If you even appeal to 
a man's conscience, he may answer you that 
you have clearly proved the immorality of 
the act, and that he himself knew it before; 
but that now when you had renewed and 
freshened his conviction, he was obliged to 
own that his love of Virtue, even aided by 
the fear of dishonour, remorse, and punish- 
ment, was not so powerful as the desire 
which hurried him into vice. 

Nor is it. otherwise, however confusion of 
ideas may cause it to be so deemed, with 
that calm regard to the welfare of the agent, 
to which philosophers have so grossly mis- 
applied the hardly intelligible appellation of 
V self-love." The general tendency of right 
conduct to permanent well-being is indeed 



one of the most evident of all truths. But 
the success of persuasives or dissuasives ad- 
dressed to it, must always be directly pro- 
portioned, not to the clearness with which 
the truth is discerned, but to the strength of 
the principle addressed, in the mind of the 
individual, and to the degree in which he is 
accustomed to keep an eye on its dictates. 
A strange prejudice prevails, which ascribes 
to what is called " self-love" an invariable 
superiority over all the other motives of hu- 
man action. If it were to be called by a 
more fit name, such as '''foresight," "pru- 
dence," or, what seems most exactly to de- 
scribe its nature, "a sympathy with the 
future feelings of the agent," it would ap- 
pear to every observer to be one very often 
too languid and inactive, always of late ap- 
pearance, and sometimes so faint as to be 
scarcely perceptible. Almost every human 
passion in its turn prevails over self-love. 

It is thus apparent that the influence of 
Reason on the Will is indirect, and arises 
only from its being one of the channels by 
which the objects of desire or aversion are 
brought near to these springs of voluntary 
action. It is only one of these channels. 
There are many other modes of presenting 
to the mind the proper objects of the emo- 
tions which it is intended to excite, whether 
of a calmer or of a more active nature ; so that 
they may influence conduct more powerfully 
than when they reach the Will through the 
channel of conviction. The distinction be- 
tween conviction and persuasion would in- 
deed be otherwise without a meaning; to 
teach the mind would be the same thing as 
to move it; and eloquence would be nothing 
but logic, although the greater part of the 
power of the former is displayed in the di- 
rect excitement of feeling; — on condition, 
indeed (for reasons foreign to our present 
purpose), that the orator shall never appear 
to give counsel inconsistent with the duty or 
the lasting welfare of those whom he would 
persuade. In like manner it is to be ob- 
served, that though reasoning be one of the 
instruments of education, yet education is 
not a process of reasoning, but a wise dis- 
posal of all the circumstances which influ- 
ence character, and of the means of produ- 
cing those habitual dispositions which insure 
well-doing, of which reasoning is but one. 
Very similar observations are applicable to 
the great arts of legislation and government; 
which are here only alluded to as forming a 
strong illustration of the present argument. 

The abused extension of the term " Reason" 
to the moral faculties, one of the predomi- 
nant errors of ancient and modern times, has 
arisen from causes which it is not difficult 
to discover. Reason does in truth perform 
a great part in eveiy case of moral sentiment. 
To Reason often belong the preliminaries of 
the acf ; to Reason altogether belongs the 
choice of the means of execution. The ope- 
rations of Reason, in both cases, are compara- 
tively slow and lasting; they are capable of 
being distinctly recalled by memory. The 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



123 



emotion which intervenes between the pre- 
vious and the succeeding exertions of Reason 
is often faint, generally transient, and scarcely 
ever capable of being reproduced by an effort 
of the mind. Hence the name of Reason is 
applied to this mixed state of mind; more 
especially when the feeling, being of a cold 
and general nature, and scarcely ruffling the 
surface of the soul, — such as that of prudence 
and of ordinary kindness and propriety, — al- 
most passes unnoticed, and is irretrievably 
forgotten. Hence the mind is, in such con- 
ditions, said by moralists to act from reason, 
in contradistinction to its more excited and 
disturbed state, when it is said to act from 
passion. The calmness of Reason gives to 
the whole compound the appearance of un- 
mixed reason. The illusion is further pro- 
moted by a mode of expression used in most 
languages. A man is said to act reasonably, 
when his conduct is such as may be reason- 
ably expected. Amidst the disorders of a 
vicious mind, it is difficult to form a reason- 
able conjecture concerning future conduct; 
but the quiet and well-ordered state of Virtue 
renders the probable acts of her fortunate vo- 
taries the object of very rational expectation. 
As far as it is not presumptuous to attempt 
a distinction between modes of thinking for- 
eign to the mind which makes the attempt, 
and modes of expression scarcely translat- 
able into the only technical language in 
which that mind is wont to think, it seems 
that the systems of Cud worth and Clarke, 
though they appear very similar, are in 
reality different in some important points of 
view. The former, a Platonist. sets out from 
those "Ideas" (a word, in this acceptation 
of it, which has no corresponding term in 
English), the eternal models of created things, 
which, as the Athenian master taught, pre- 
existed in the Everlasting Intellect, and. of 
right, rule the will of every inferior mind. 
The illustrious scholar of Newton, with a 
manner of thinking more natural to his age 
and school, considered primarily the very 
relations of things themselves; — conceived 
indeed by the Eternal Mind, but which, if 
such inadequate language may be pardoned, 
are the law of Its will, as well as the model 
of Its works.* 

EARL OF SHAFTESBURY. t 

Lord Shaftesbury, the author of the Cha- 
racteristics, was the grandson of Sir Antony 

* Mr. Wollaston's system, that morality con- 
sisted in acting according to truth, seems to coin- 
cide with that of Dr. Clarke. The murder of 
Cicero by Popilius Lenas, was, according to him, 
a practical falsehood ; for Cicero had been his 
benefactor, and Popilius acted as if that were un- 
true. If the truth spoken of be that gratitude is 
due for benefits, the reasoning is evidently a circle. 
If any truth be meant, indifferently, it isplain that 
the assassin acted in perfect conformity to several 
certain truths ; — such as the malignity of Antony, 
the ingratitude and venality of Popilius, and the 
probable impunity of his crime, when law was 
suspended, and good men without power. 

■T Born, 1671 ; died, 1713. 



Ashley Cooper, created Earl of Shaftesbury, 
one of the master spirits of the English na- 
tion, whose vices, the bitter fruits of the in- 
security of a troublous time succeeded by 
the corrupting habits of an inconstant, venal, 
and profligate court, have led an ungrateful 
posterity to overlook his wisdom and disin- 
terested perseverance, in obtaining for his 
country the unspeakable benefits of the 
Habeas Corpus act. The fortune of the 
Characteristics has been singular. For a 
time the work was admired more undis- 
tinguishingly than its literary character war- 
rants. In the succeeding period it was justly 
criticised, but too severely condemned. Of 
late, more unjustly than in either of the for- 
mer cases, it has been generally neglected. 
It seemed to have the power of changing the 
temper of its critics. It provoked the ami- 
able Berkeley to a harshness equally un- 
wonted and unwarranted ;* while it softened 
the rugged Warburton so far as to dispose 
the fierce, yet not altogether ungenerous, 
polemic to praise an enemy in the very heat 
of conflict.! 

Leibnitz, the most celebrated of Continental 
philosophers, warmly applauded the Charac- 
teristics, and, (what was a more certain proof, 
of admiration) though at an advanced age, 
criticised that work minutely. t Le Clerc, who 
had assisted the studies of the author, contri- 
buted to spread its reputation by his Journal, 
then the most popular in Europe. Locke is 
said to have aided in his education, probably 
rather by counsel than by tuition. The au- 
thor had indeed been driven from the regu- 
lar studies of his country by the insults with 
which he was loaded at Winchester school, 
when he was only twelve years old, imme- 
diately after the death of his grandfather ;§ — 



* See Minute Philosopher, Dialogue iii. ; but 
especially his Theory of Vision Vindicated, Lond. 
1733 (not republished in the quarto edition of his 
works), where this most excellent man sinks for 
a moment to the level of a railing polemic. 

t It is remarkable that the most impure passages 
of Warburton's composition are those in which 
he lets loose his controversial zeal, and that he is 
a fine writer principally where he writes from ge- 
nerous feeling. " Of all the virtues which were 
so much in this noble writer's heart, and in his 
writings, there was not one he more revered than 
the love of public liberty .... The noble author of 
the Characteristics had many excellent qualities, 
both as a man and a writer : he was temperate, 
chaste, honest, and a lover of his country. In 
his writings he has shown how much he has im- 
bibed the deep sense, and how naturally he could 
copy the gracious manner of Plato. — (Dedication 
to the Freethinkers, prefixed to the Divine Lega- 
tion.) He, however, soon relapses, but not with- 
out excuse ; for he thought himself vindicating the 
memory of Locke. 

t Op. iii. 39—56. 

§ [With regard to this story, authorised as it is, 
the Editor cannot help, on behalf of his own 
" nursing mother," throwing out some suspicion 
that the Chancellor's politics must have been, 
made use of somewhat as a scapegoat ; else the 
nature of boys was at that time more excitable 
touching their schoolmates' grandfathers than it 
is now. There is a rule traditionally observed in 
College, " that no boy has a right to think till he 



124 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



a choice of time which seemed not so much 
to indicate anger against the faults of a 
great man, as triumph over the principles 
of liberty, which seemed at that time to have 
fallen for ever. He gave a genuine proof of 
respect for freedom of thought, by prevent- 
ing the expulsion, from Holland, of Bayle, 
(from whom he differs in every moral, poli- 
tical, and, it may be truly added, religious 
opinion) when, it must be owned, the right 
of" asylum was, in strict justice, forfeited by 
the secret services which the philosopher 
had rendered to the enemy of Holland and 
of Europe. In the small part of his short 
life which premature infirmities allowed 
him to apply to public affairs, he co-operated 
zealously with the friends of freedom ; but, 
as became a moral philosopher, he supported, 
even against them, a law to allow those who 
were accused of treason to make their de- 
fence by counsel, although the parties first 
to benefit from this act of imperfect justice 
were persons conspired together to assassi- 
nate King William, and to re-enslave their 
country. On that occasion it is well known 
with what admirable quickness he took ad- 
vantage of the embarrassment which seized 
him, when he rose to address the House of 
Commons. " If I," said he," who rise only to 
give my opinion on this bill, am so confounded 
that I cannot say what I intended, what must 
the condition of that man be, who, without 
assistance is pleading for his own life!"' 
Lord Shaftesbury was the friend of Lord 
Somers ; and the tribute paid to his personal 
character by Warburton, who knew many of 
his contemporaries and some of his friends, 
may be considered as evidence of its excel- 
lence. 

His fine genius and generous spirit shine 
through his writings; but their lustre is often 
dimmed by peculiarities, and, it must be said, 
by affectations, which, originating in local, 
temporary, or even personal circumstances, 
are particularly fatal to the permanence of 
fame. There is often a charm in the ego- 
tism of an artless writer, or of an actor in 
great scenes : but other laws are imposed on 
the literary artist. Lord Shaftsbury, instead 
of hiding himself behind his work, stands 
forward with too frequent marks of self- 
complacency, as a nobleman of polished 
manners, with a mind adorned by the fine 
arts, and instructed by ancient philosophy ; 
shrinking with a somewhat effeminate fasti- 
diousness from the clamour and prejudices 
of the multitude, whom he neither deigns to 
conciliate, nor puts forth his strength to sub- 
due. The enmity of the majority of church- 
men to the government established at the 
Revolution, was calculated to fill his mind 
with angry feelings; which overflowed too 
often, if not upon Christianity itself, yet upon 
representations of it, closely intertwined with 
those religious feelings to which, in other 
forms, his own philosophy ascribes surpass- 

has forty juniors ;'' upon which rock the cock- 
boat of the embryo metaphysician might have 
foundered.] 



ing worth. His small, and occasional wri- 
tings, of which the main fault is the want of 
an object or a plan, have many passages re- 
markable for the utmost beauty and harmo- 
ny of language. Had he imbibed the sim- 
plicity, as well as copied the expression and 
cadence, of the greater ancients, he would 
have done more justice to his genius; and 
his works, like theirs, would have been pre- 
served by that first-mentioned quality, with- 
out which but a very few writings, of what- 
ever mental power, have long survived their 
writers. Grace belongs only to natural 
movements; and Lord Shaftesbury, notwith- 
standing the frequent beauty of his thoughts 
and language, has rarely attained it. He is 
unfortunately prone to pleasantry, which is 
obstinately averse from constraint, and which 
he had no interest in raising to be the test 
of truth. His affectation of liveliness as a 
man of the world, tempts him sometimes to 
overstep the indistinct boundaries which 
separate familiarity from Vulgarity. Of his 
two more considerable writings, The Moral- 
ists, on which he evidently most valued him- 
self, and which is spoken of by Leibnitz with 
enthusiasm, is by no means the happiest. — 
Yet perhaps there is scarcely any composi- 
tion in our language more lofty in its moral 
and religious sentiments, and more exqui- 
sitely elegant and musical in its diction r 
than the Platonic representation of the scale 
of beauty and love, in the speech to Pale- 
mon, near the close of the first part.* Many 
passages might be quoted, which in some 
measure justify the enthusiasm of the sep- 
tuagenarian geometer. Yet it is not to be 
concealed that, as a whole, it is heavy and 
languid. It is a modern antique. The dia- 
logues of Plato are often very lively repre- 
sentations of conversations which might take 
place daily at a great university, full, like 
Athens, of rival professors and eager disci- 
ples, between men of various character, and 
great fame as well as ability. Socrates runs 
through them all. His great abilities, his 
still more venerable virtues, his cruel fate, 
especially when joined to his very character- 
istic peculiarities, — to his grave humour, to 
his homely sense, to his assumed humility, 
to the honest slyness with which he ensnar- 
ed the Sophists, and to the intrepidity with 
which he dragged them to justice, gave unity 
and dramatic interest to these dialogues as a 
whole. But Lord Shaftesbury's dialogue is 
between fictitious personages, and in a tone 
at utter variance with English conversation. 
He had great power of thought and command 
over words; but he had no talent for invent- 
ing character and bestowing life on it. 

The inquiry concerning Virtue! is nearly 
exempt from the faulty peculiarities of the 
author; the method is perfect, the reasoning 
just, the style precise and clear. The writer 
ha3 no purpose but that of honestly proving 
his principles; he himself altogether disap- 
pears; and he is intent only on earnestly en- 



$3. 



t Characteristics, treatise iv. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



125 



forcing what he truly, conscientiously, and 
reasonably believes. Hence the charm of 
simplicity is revived in this production, which 
is unquestionably entitled to a place in the 
first rank of English tracts on moral philoso- 
sophy. The point in which it becomes es- 
pecially pertinent to the subject of this Dis- 
sertation is, that it contains more intimations 
of an original and important nature on the 
theory of Ethics than perhaps any preced- 
ing work of modern times.* It is true that 
they are often but intimations, cursory, and 
appearing almost to be casual ; so that many 
of them have escaped the notice of most rea- 
ders, and even writers on these subjects. — 
That the consequences of some of them are 
even yet not unfolded, must be owned to be 
a proof that they are inadequately stated; 
and may be regarded as a presumption that 
the author did not closely examine the bear- 
ings, of his own positions. Among the most 
important of these suggestions is, the exist- 
ence of dispositions in man, by which he 
takes pleasure in the well-being of others, 
without any further view ; — a doctrine, how- 
ever, to all the consequences of which he 
has not been faithful in his other writings.! 
Another is, that goodness consists in the pre- 
valence of love for the system of which we 
are a part, over the passions pointing to our 
individual welfare, — a proposition which 
somewhat confounds the motives of right 
acts with their tendency, and seems to fa- 
vour the melting of all particular affections 
into general benevolence, because the ten- 
dency of these affections is to general good. 
The next, and certainly the most original, as 
well as important, is, that there are certain 
affections of the mind which, being contem- 
plated by the mind itself through what he 
calls u a reflex sense/' become the objects 
of love, or the contrary, according to their 
nature. So approved and loved, they con- 
stitute virtue or merit, as distinguished from 
mere goodness, of which there are traces in 
animals who do not appear to reflect on the 
state of their own minds, and who seem, 
therefore, destitute of what he elsewhere 
calls "a moral sense." These statements 
are, it is true, far too short and vague. He 
nowhere inquires into the origin of the reflex 
sense: what is a much more material defect, 
he makes no attempt to ascertain in what 
state of mind it consists. We discover only 



* I am not without suspicion that I have over- 
looked the claims of Dr. Henry More, who, not- 
withstanding some uncouthness of language, 
seems to have given the first intimations of a dis- 
tinct moral faculty, which he calls " the Boniform 
Faculty :'' a phrase against which an outcry would 
now be raised as German. Happiness, according 
to bim. consists in a constant satisfaction, sv to> 
dyxSoiiSu i-Jtc 4"^- — Enchiridion Ethicum, lib. i. 
cap. ii. 

+ " It is the height of wisdom no doubt to be 
rightly selfish." — Charact. i. 121. The observa- 
tion seems to be taken from what Aristotle says of 
4>/xauT(5t : Tov /uiv ayaBov S'u tixzwroi tiva;. — Ethics, 
lib. ix. c. viii. The chapter is admirable, and the 
assertion of Aristotle is very capable of a good 
sense. 



by implication, and by the use of the term 
" sense," that he searches for the fountain of 
moral sentiments, not in mere reason, where 
Cudworth and Clarke had vainly sought 
for it. but in the heart, whence the main 
branch of them assuredly flows. It should 
never be forgotten, that we owe to these 
hints the reception, into ethical theory, of 
a moral sense; which, whatever may be 
thought of its origin, or in whatever words 
it may be described, must always retain its 
place in such theory as a main principle of 
our moral nature. 

His demonstration of the utility of Virtue 
to the individual, far surpasses all other at- 
tempts of the same nature ; being founded, 
not on a calculation of outward advantages 
or inconveniences, alike uncertain, precari- 
ous, and degrading, but on the unshaken 
foundation of the delight, which is of the 
very essence of social affection and virtuous 
sentiment ; on the dreadful agony inflicted 
by all malevolent passions upon every soul 
that harbours the hellish inmates; on the 
all-important truth, that to love is to be hap- 
py, and to hate is to be miserable, — that af- 
fection is its own reward, and ill-will its own 
punishment ; or, as it has been more simply 
and more affectingly, as well as with more 
sacred authority, taught, that " to give is 
more blessed than to receive," and that to 
love one another is the sum of all human 
virtue. 

The relation of Religion to Morality, as 
far as it can be discovered by human reason, 
was never more justly or more beautifully 
stated. If he represents the mere hope of 
reward and dread of punishment as selfish, 
and therefore inferior motives to virtue and 
piety, he distinctly owns their efficacy in re- 
claiming from vice, in rousing from lethargy, 
and in guarding a feeble penitence ; in all 
which he coincides with illustrious and zea- 
lous Christian writers. " If by the hope of 
reward be understood the love and desire of 
virtuous enjoyment, or of the very practice 
and exercise of virtue in another life ; an 
expectation or hope of this kind is so far 
from being derogatory from virtue, that it is 
an evidence of our loving it the more sin- 
cerely and for its own sake." 1 " 1 * 

* Inquiry, book i. part iii. § 3. So Jeremy 
Taylor; " He that is grown in grace pursues vir- 
tue purely and simply for its own interest. When 
persons come to that height of grace, and love 
God for himself, that is but heaven in another 
sense." — (Sermon on Growth in Grace.) So be- 
fore him the once celebrated Mr. John Smith of 
Cambridge: "The happiness which good men 
shall partake i9 not distinct from their godlike na- 
ture. Happiness and holiness are but two several 
notions of one thing. Hell is rather a nature than 
a place, and heaven cannot be so well defined by 
any thing without us, as by something within us." 
— (Select Discourses, 2d edit. Cambridge, 1673.) 
In accordance with these old authorities is the 
recent language of a most ingenious as well as be- 
nevolent and pious writer. " The holiness of hea- 
ven is still more attractive to the Christian than 
its happiness. The desire of doing that which is 
rigfit for its own sake is a part of his desire aftei 
l2 



126 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



FENELON.*— BOSSUET.t 

As the last question, though strictly speak- 
ing theological, is yet in truth dependent on 
the more general question, which relates to 
the reality of disinterested affections in hu- 
man nature, it seems not foreign from the 
present purpose to give a short account of a 
dispute on the subject in France, between 
two' of the mast eminent persons of their 
time; namely, the controversy between Fe- 
nelon and Bossuet, concerning the possibi- 
lity of men being influenced by the pure and 
disinterested love of God. Never were two 
great men more unlike. Fenelon in his 
writings exhibits more of the qualities which 
predispose to religious feelings, than any 
other equally conspicuous person: a mind 
so pure as steadily to contemplate supreme 
excellence ; a heart capable of being touch- 
ed and affected by the contemplation ; a 
gentle and modest spirit, not elated by the 
privilege, but seeing clearer its own want of 
worth as it came nearer to such brightness, 
and disposed to treat with compassionate 
forbearance those errors in others, of which 
it felt a humbling consciousness. Bossuet 
was rather a great minister in the ecclesias- 
tical commonwealth; employing knowledge, 
eloquence, argument, the energy of his cha- 
racter, the influence, and even the authority 
of his station, to vanquish opponents, to ex- 
tirpate revolters, and sometimes with a pa- 
trician firmness, to withstand the dictatorial 
encroachment of the Roman Pontiff on the 
spiritual aristocracy of France. Fenelon had 
been appointed tutor to the Duke of Bur- 
gundy. He had all the qualities which fit a 
man to be the preceptor of a prince, and 
which most disable him to gel or to keep 
the office. Even birth, and urbanity, and 
accomplishment, and vivacity, were an in- 
sufficient atonement for his genius and vir- 
tue. Louis XIV. distrusted so fine a spirit, 
and appears to have early suspected, that a 
fancy moved by such benevolence might 
imagine examples for his grandson which the 
world would consider as a satire on his own 
reign. Madame de Maintenon, indeed, fa- 
voured him ; but he was generally believed 
to have forfeited her good graces by dis- 

heaven." — (Unconditional Freeness of the Gospel, 
by T. Erskine, Esq. Edinb. 1828, p. 32, 33.) 
See also the Appendix to Ward's Life of Henry 
More, Lond. 1710, pp. 247—271. This account 
of that ingenious and amiable philosopher contains 
an interesting view of his opinions, and many 
beautiful passages of his writings, but unfortu- 
nately very few particulars of the man. His let- 
ters on Disinterested Piety (see the Appendix to 
Mr Ward's work), his boundless charity, his 
zeal for the utmost toleration, and his hope of 
general improvement from "a pacific and perspi- 
cacious posterity," place him high in the small 
number of true philosophers who, in their esti- 
mate of men, value dispositions more than opin- 
ions, and in their search for good, more often look 
forward than backward. 

* Born, 1651 ; died, 1715. 

t Born, 1627 ; died, 1704. 



cou raging her projects for at least a nearer 
approach to a seat on the throne. He offend- 
ed her too by obeying her commands, in 
laying before her an account of her faults, 
and some of those of her royal husband, 
which was probably the more painfully felt 
for its mildness, justice, and refined obser- 
vation.* An opportunity lor driving such an 
intruder from a court presented itself some- 
what strangely, in the form of a subtile con- 
troversy on one of the most abstruse ques- 
tions of metaphysical theology. Molinos, a 
Spanish priest, reviving and perhaps exag- 
gerating the maxims of the ancient Mystics, 
had recently taught, that Christian perfection 
consisted in the pure love of God, without 
hope of reward or fear of punishment. This 
offence he expiated by seven years' impri- 
sonment in the dungeons of the Roman In- 
quisition. His opinions were embraced by 
Madame Guyon, a pious French lady of 
strong feeling and active imagination, who 
appears to have expressed them in a hyper- 
bolical language, not infrequent in devotional 
exercises, especially in those of otherwise 
amiable persons of her sex and character. 
In the fervour of her zeal, she disregarded 
the usages of the world and the decorum 
imposed on females. She left her family, 
took a part in public conferences, and as- 
sumed an independence scarcely reconcila- 
ble with the more ordinary and more pleas- 
ing virtues of women. Her pious effusions 
were examined with the rigour which might 
be excusable if exercised on theological pro- 
positions. She was falsely charged by Har- 
lay, the dissolute Archbishop of Paris, with 
personal licentiousness. For these crimes 
she was dragged from convent to convent, 
imprisoned for years in the Bastile, and, as 
an act of mercy, confined during the latter 
years of her life to a provincial town, as a 
prison at large. A piety thus pure and dis- 
interested could not fail to please Fenelon. 
He published a work in justification of Ma- 
dame Guyon's character, and in explanation 
of the degree in which he agreed with her. 
Bossuet, the oracle and champion of the 
Church, took up arms against him. It would 
be painful to suppose that a man of such 
great powers was actuated by mean jea- 
lousy; and it is needless. The union of zeal 
for opinion with the pride of authority, is 
apt to give sternness to the administration 
of controversial bishops; to say nothing of 
the haughty and inflexible character of Bos- 
suet himself. He could not brook the in- 
dependence of him who was hitherto so do- 
cile a scholar and so gentle a friend. He was 
jealous of novelties, and dreaded a fervour 
of piety likely to be ungovernable, and pro- 
ductive of movements of which no man 
could foresee the issue. It must be allowed 
that he had reason to be displeased with the 
indiscretion and turbulence of the innova- 
tors, and might apprehend that, in preaching 
motives to "virtue and religion which he 



* Bausset, Histoire de Fenelon, i. 252. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



127 



thought unattainable, the coarser but surer 
foundations of common morality might be 
loosened. A controversy ensued, in which 
he employed the utmost violence of polemi- 
cal or factious contest. Fenelon replied with 
brilliant success, and submitted his book to 
the judgment of Rome. After a long exami- 
nation, the commission 6f ten Cardinals ap- 
pointed to examine it were equally divided, 
and he seemed in consequence about to be 
acquitted. But Bossuet had in the mean 
time easily gained Louis XIV. Madame de 
Maintenon betrayed Fenelon's contidential 
correspondence ; and he was banished to his 
diocese, and deprived of his pensions and 
official apartments in the palace. Louis 
XIV. regarded the slightest differences from 
the authorities of the French church as re- 
bellion against himself. Though endowed 
with much natural good sense, he was too 
grossly ignorant to be made to comprehend 
one of the terms of the question in dispute. 
He did not, however, scruple to urge the 
Pope to the condemnation of Fenelon. In- 
nocent XII. (Pignatelli,) an aged and pacific 
Pontiff, was desirous of avoiding such harsh 
measures. He said that "the archbishop of 
Cambray might have erred from excess in 
the love of God, but the bishop of Meaux 
had sinned by a defect of the love of his 
neighbour."* But he was compelled to con- 
demn a series of propositions, of which the 
first was, " There is an habitual state of love 
to God, which is pure from every motive of 
personal interest, and in which neither the 
fear of punishment nor the hope of reward 
has any part."f Fenelon read the bull which 
condemned him in his own cathedral, and 
professed as humble a submission as the 
lowest of his flock. In some of the writings 
of his advanced years, which have been re- 
cently published, we observe with regret 
that, when wearied out by his exile, ambi- 
tious to regain a place at court through the 
Jesuits, or prejudiced against the Calvinising 
doctrines of the Jansenists, the strongest 
anti-papal party among Catholics, or some- 
what detached from a cause of which his 
great antagonist had been the victorious 
leader, he made concessions to the absolute 
monarchy of Rome, which did not become a 
luminary of the Gallican church.* 

Bossuet, in his writings on this occasion, be- 
sides tradition and authorities, relied mainly 
on the supposed principle of philosophy, that 
man must desire his own happiness, and 
cannot desire anything else, otherwise than 
as a means towards it ; which renders the 
controversy an incident in the history of 
Ethics. It is immediately connected with 
the preceding part of this Dissertation, by 
the almost literal coincidence between Bos- 
suet's foremost objection to the disinterested 
piety contended for by Fenelon, and the fun- 
damental position of a very ingenious and 
once noted divine of the English church, in 



* Bausset, Histoire de Fenelon, ii. 220, note. 
t (Euvres de Bossuet, viii. 308.— (Liege, 1767 ) 
X De Summi Poniificis Auctoritate Dissertatio. 



his attack on the disinterested affections, be- 
lieved by Shaftesbury to be a part of human 
nature.* 

LETBNITZ.t 

There is a singular contrast between the 
form of Leibnitz's writings and the charac- 
ter of his mind. The latter was systemati- 
cal, even to excess. It was the vice of his 
prodigious intellect, on every subject of sci- 
ence where it was not bound by geometrical 
chains, to confine his view to those most 
general principles, so well called by Bacon 
"merely notional," which render it, indeed, 
easy to build a s)stem, but only because 
they may be alike adapted to every state of 
appearances, and become thereby really in j 
applicable to any. Though his genius was 
thus naturally turned to system, his writings 
were, generally, occasional and miscellane- 
ous. The fragments of his doctrines are 
scattered in reviews: or over a voluminous 
literary correspondence ; or in the prefaces 
and introductions to those compilations to 
which this great philosopher was obliged by 
his situation to descend. This defective and 
disorderly mode of publication arose partly 
from the conflicts between business and 
study, inevitable in his course of life; but 
probably yet more from the nature of his 
system, which while it widely deviates from 
the most general principles of former philoso- 
phers, is ready to embrace their particular 
doctrines under its own generalities, and 
thus to reconcile them to each othej, as well 
as to accommodate itself to popular or esta- 
blished opinions, and compromise with them, 
according to his favourite and oft-repeated 
maxim, " that most received doctrines are 
capable of a good sense ;"J by which last 
words our philosopher meant a sense recon- 
cilable with his own principles. ' Partial and 
occasional exhibitions of these principles 

* "Haec est natura voluntatis humanas, ut et 
beatitudinem, et ea quorum necessaria connexio 
cum beatitudine clare intelligitur, necessario ap- 
petat. . , Nullus est actus ad quern revera non irrr- 
pellimur moiivo beatiiudinis, explieite vel impli- 
cite;" meaning by the latter that it may be con- 
cealed from ourselves, as he says, for a short time, 
by a nearer object. — (Euvres de Bossuet, viii. 80. 
" The only motive by which individuals can be 
induced to the practice of virtue, must be the feel- 
ing or the prospect of private happiness. "-Brown's 
Essays on the Characteristics, p. 159. Lond. 
1752. It must, however, be owned, that the sel- 
fishness of the VVarbtirtonian is more rigid ; making 
no provision for the object of one's own happiness 
slipping out of view for a moment. It is due to 
the very ingenious author of this forgotten book 
to add, that it is full of praise of his adversary, 
which, though just, was in the answerer generous ; 
and that it contains an assertion of the unbounded 
risht of public discussion, unusual even at the 
tolerant period of its appearance. y 

tBorn, 1646; died, 1716. 

X " Nouveaux Essais sur I'Entendement Hu- 
man!," liv. i. chap. ii. These Essays, which 
form the greater part of the publicaiion entitled 
" (Envies Philosophiques," edited by Raspe, 
Amst. et l-eipz 1765, are not included in Dutens' 
edition of Leibnitz's works. 



128 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



suited better that constant negotiation with 
opinions, establishments, and prejudices, to 
which extreme generalities are well adapted, 
than would have a full and methodical state- 
ment of the whole at once. It is the lot of 
every philosopher who attempts to make his 
principles extremely flexible, that they be- 
come like those tools which bend so easily 
as to penetrate nothing. Yet his manner of 
publication perhaps led him to those wide 
intuitions, as comprehensive as those of Ba- 
con, of which he expressed the result as 
briefly and pithily as Hobbes. The frag- 
ment which contains his ethical principles 
is the preface to a collection of documents 
illustrative of international law. published at 
Hanover in 1693* to which he often referred 
as his standard afterwards, especially when 
he speaks of Lord Shaftesbury, or of the 
controversy between the two great theologi- 
ans of France. "Right," says he, "is mo- 
ral power 5 obligation, moral necessity. By 
" moral" I understand \vha*t with a good man 
prevails as much as if it were physical. A 
good man is he who loves all men as far as 
reason allows. Justice is the benevolence 
•of a wise man. To love is to be pleased 
with the happiness of another; or, in other 
words, to convert the happiness of another 
into a part of one's own. Hence is explained 
the possibility of a disinterested love. When 
we are pleased, with the happiness of any 
being, his happiness becomes one of our en- 
joyments. Wisdom is the science of hap- 
piness. "t 

REMARKS. 

It is apparent from the above passage, that 
Leibnitz had touched the truth on the sub- 
ject of disinterested affection ; and that he 
was more near clinging to it than any modern 
philosopher, except Lord Shaftesbury. It is 
evident, however, from the latter part of it, 
that, like Shaftesbury, he shrunk from his 
own just conception ; under the influence of 
that most ancient and far-spread prejudice 
of the schools, which assumed that such an 
abstraction as "Happiness" could be the 
object of love, and that the desire of so faint, 
distant, and refined an object, was the first 
principle of all moral nature, and that of it 
every other desire was only a modification 
or a fruit. Both he and Shaftesbury, how- 
ever, when they relapsed into the selfish 
system, embraced it in its most refined form ; 
considering the benevolent affections as valu- 
able parts of our own happiness, not in con- 
sequence of any of their effects or extrinsic 
advantages, but of that intrinsic delightful- 
ness which was inherent in their very es- 
sence. But Leibnitz considered this refined 
pleasure as the object in the view of the be- 
nevolent man ; an absurdity, or rather a con- 
tradiction, which, at least in the Inquiry 



* Codex Juris Gentium Diplomaticus.— Hanov. 
1695. 
t See Note N 



concerning Virtue, Shaftesbury avoids. It 
will be seen from Leibnitz's limitation, taken 
together with his definition of Wisdom, that 
he regarded the distinction of the moral sen- 
timents from the social affections, and the 
just subordination -of the latter, as entirely 
founded on the tendency of general happi- 
ness to increase that of the agent, not merely 
as being real, but as being present to the 
agent's mind when he acts. In a subsequent 
passage he lowers his tone not a little. "As 
for the sacrifice of life, or the endurance of 
the greatest pain for others, these things are 
rather generously e-njoined than solidly de- 
monstrated by philosophers. For honour, 
glory, and self-congratulation, to which they 
appeal under the name of Virtue, are indeed 
mental pleasures, and of a high degree, but 
not to all, nor outweighing every bitterness 
of suffering; since all cannot imagine them 
with equal vivacity, and that power is little 
possessed by those whom neither education, 
nor situation, nor the doctrines of Religion 
or Philosophy, have taught to value mental 
gratifications."* He concludes very truly, 
that Morality is completed by a belief of 
moral government. But the Inquiry concern- 
ing Virtue, had reached that conclusion by a 
better road. It entirely escaped his sagacity, 
as it has that of nearly all other moralists, 
that the coincidence of Morality with well- 
understood interest in our outward actions, 
is very far from being the most important 
part of the question ; for these actions flow 
from habitual dispositions, from affections 
and sensibilities, which determine their na- 
ture. There may be, and there are many 
immoral acts, which, in the sense in which 
words are commonly used, are advantageous 
to the actor. But the whole sagacity and 
ingenuity of the world may be safely chal- 
lenged to point out a case in which virtuous 
dispositions, habits, and feelings, are not 
conducive in the highest degree to the hap- 
piness of the individual; or to maintain that 
he is not the happiest, whose moral senti- 
ments and affections are such as to prevent 
the possibility of any unlawful advantage 
being presented to his mind. It would in- 
deed have been impossible to prove to Regu- 
lus that it was his interest to return to a 
death of torture in Africa. But what, if the 
proof had been easy ? The most thorough 
conviction on such a point would not have 
enabled him to set this example, if he had 
not been supported by his own integrity and 
generosity, by love of his country, and rever- 
ence for his pledged faith. What could the 
conviction add to that greatness of soul, and 
to these glorious attributes? With such vir- 
tues he could not act otherwise than he did. 
Would a father affectionately interested in a 
son's happiness, of very lukewarm feelings 
of morality, but of good sense enough to 
weigh gratifications and sufferings exactly, 
be really desirous that his son should have 
these virtues in a less degree than Regulus, 



* See Note N 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



129 



merely because they might expose him to 
the fate which Regulus chose 1 On the cold- 
est calculation he would surely perceive, 
that the high and glowing feelings of such a 
mind during life altogether throw into shade 
a few hours of agony in leaving it. And, if 
he himself were so unfortunate that no more 
generous sentiment arose in his mind to si- 
lence such calculations, would it not be a 
reproach to his understanding not to discover, 
that, though in one case out of millions such 
a character might lead a Regulus to torture, 
yet, in the common course of nature, it is the 
source not only of happiness in life, but of 
quiet and honour in death? A case so ex- 
treme as that of Regulus will not perplex us, 
if we bear in mind, that though we cannot 
prove the act of heroic virtue to be conducive 
to the interest of the hero, yet we may per- 
ceive at once, that nothing is so conducive 
to his interest as to have a mind so formed 
that it could not shrink from it, but must 
rather embrace it with gladness and tri- 
umph. Men of vigorous health are said 
sometimes to suffer most in a pestilence. 
No man was ever so absurd as for that rea- 
son to wish that he were more infirm. The 
distemper might return once in a century: 
if he were then alive, he might escape it ; 
and even if he fell, the balance of advantage 
would be in most cases greatly on the side 
of robust health. In estimating beforehand 
the value of a strong bodily frame, a man of 
sense would throw the small chance of a rare 
and short evil entirely out of the account. So 
must the coldest and most selfish moral cal- 
culator, who, if he be sagacious and exact, 
must pronounce, that the inconveniences to 
which a man may be sometimes exposed by 
a pure and sound mind, are no reasons for 
regretting that we do not escape them by 
possessing minds more enfeebled and dis- 
tempered. Other occasions will call our at- 
tention, in the sequel, to this important part 
of the subject ; but the great name of Leib- 
nitz seemed to require that his degrading 
statement should not be cited without warn- 
ing the reader against its egregious fallacy. 

MALEBRANCHE.* 

This ingenious philosopher and beautiful 
writer is the only celebrated Cartesian who 
has professedly handled the theory of Mo- 
rals.! His theory has in some points of view 
a conformity to the doctrine of Clarke ; while 
in others it has given occasion to his English 
follower NorrisJ to say, that if the Quakers 
understood their own opinion of the illumi- 
nation of all men, they would explain it on 
the principles of Malebranche. " There is," 
says he, "one parent virtue, the universal 
virtue, the virtue which renders us just and 

* Born, 1638; died, 1715. 

t Traiie de Morale. Rotterdam, 1684. 

X Author of the Theory of the Ideal World, 
who well eopied, though he did not equal, the 
clearness and choice of expression which belonged 
to his master. 

17 



perfect, the virtue which will one day render 
us happy. It is the only virtue. It is the 
love of the universal order, as it eternally 
existed in the Divine Reason, where every 
created reason contemplates it. This order 
is composed of practical as well as specula- 
tive trulh. Reason perceives the moral supe- 
riority of one being over another, as immedi- 
afely as the equality of the radii of the same 
circle. The relative perfection of beings is 
that part of the immovable order to which 
men must conform their minds and their 
conduct. The love of order is the whole 
of virtue, and conformity to order constitutes 
the morality of actions/' It is not difficult 
to discover, that in spite of the singular skill 
employed in weaving this web, it answers 
no other purpose than that of hiding the 
whole difficulty. The love of universal order, 
says Malebranche, requires that we should 
value an animal more than a stone, because 
it is more valuable ; and love God infinitely 
more than man, because he is infinitely 
better. But without presupposing the reality 
of moral distinctions, and the power of moral 
feelings. — the two points to be proved, how 
can either of these propositions be evident, 
or even intelligible'? To say that a love of 
the Eternal Order will produce the love and 
practice of every virtue, is an assertion un- 
tenable, unless we take Morality for granted, 
and useless, if we do. In his work on Mo- 
rals, all the incidental and secondary remarks 
are equally well considered and well ex- 
pressed. The manner in which he applied 
his principle to the particulars of human 
duty is excellent. He is perhaps the first 
philosopher who has precisely laid down and 
rigidly adhered to the great principle, that 
Virtue consists in pure intentions and disposi- 
tions of mind, without which, actions, how- 
ever conformable to rules, are not truly 
moral ; — a truth of the highest importance, 
which, in the theological form, may be said 
to have been the main principle of the first 
Protestant Reformers. The ground of piety, 
according to him, is the conformity of the 
attributes of God to those moral qualities 
which we irresistibly Jove and revere.* 
"Sovereign princes," says he, "have no 
right to use their authority without reason. 
Even God has no such miserable right. "t 
His distinction between a religious society 
and an established church, and his assertion 
of the right of the temporal power alone to 
employ coercion, are worthy of notice, as 
instances in which a Catholic, at once philo- 
sophical and orthodox, could thus speak, not 
only of the nature of God, but of the rights 
of the Church. 



* '• II faut aimer l'Etre infiniment parfait, et non 
pas un faiitome epouvantable, tin Dieu it juste, ab- 
solu, puissant, mnis sans borne et sans sagesse. 
S'il y avoit un tel Dieu. le vrai Dieu nous defen- 
droit de l'adorer ei de Tanner. II y a peiit-etre 
plus de danger d'offenser Dieu Iorsqu'on lui don- 
ne une forme si horrible, que de mepriser son fan- 
tome." — Traite de Morale, chap. viii. 

t Ibid. chap. xxii. 



130 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



JONATHAN EDWARDS.* 

This remarkable man, the metaphysician 
of America, was formed among the Calvi- 
nistsof New England, when theirstern doc- 
trine retained its rigorous authority. t His 
power of subtile argument, perhaps unmatch- 
ed, certainly unsurpassed among men. was 
joined, as in some of the ancient Mystics, 
with a character which raised his piety to 
fervour. He embraced their doctrine, pro- 
bably without knowing it to be theirs. ■• True 
religion," says he, "in a great measure con- 
sists in holy affections. A love of divine 
things, for the beauty and sweetness of their 
moral excellency, is the spring of all holy 
affections. "t Had he suffered this noble 
principle to take the right road to all its fair 
consequences, he would have entirely con- 
curred with Plato, with Shaftesbury, and 
Malebranche, in devotion to " the first good, 
first perfect, and first fair." But he thought 
it necessary afterwards to limit his doctrine 
to his own persuasion, by denying that such 
moral excellence could be discovered in 
divine things by those Christians who did 
not take the same view as he did of their 
religion. All others, and some who hold his 
doctrines with a more enlarged spirit, may 
adopt his principle without any limitation. 
His ethical theory is contained in his Disser- 
tation on the Nature of True Virtue ; and in 
another,' On God's chief End in the Creation, 
published in London thirty years after his 
death. True virtue, according to him, con- 
sists in benevolence, or love to "being in 
general," which he afterwards limits to "in- 
telligent being," though "sentient" would 
have involved a more reasonable limitation. 
This good-will is felt towards a particular 
being, first in proportion to his degree of ex- 
istence, (for, says he, " that which is great 
has more existence, and is farther from no- 
thing, than that which is little-") and second- 
ly, in proportion to the degree in which that 
particular being feels benevolence to others. 
Thus God, having infinitely more existence 
and benevolence than man, ought to be in- 
finitely more loved ; and for the same reason, 
God must love himself infinitely more than 
he does all other beings. § He can act only 
from regard to Himself, and His end in crea- 
tion can only be to manifest His whole na- 
ture, which is called acting for His own glory. 

As far as Edwards confines himself to 
created beings, and while his theory is per- 
fectly intelligible, it coincides with that of 
universal benevolence, hereafter to be con- 

* Born in 1703, at Windsor in Connecticut; 
died in 1758, at Princeton in New Jersey. 

T See Note O. 

t On Religious Affections, pp. 4, 187. 

§ The coincidence of Malebranche wilh this part 
of Edwards, is remarkable. Speaking of the 
Supreme Being, he says, "II s'aime invinciblc- 
meni." He adds another more startling expres- 
sion, " Certainement Dieu ne pent agir que pour 
lui-meme: il n'a point d'autre motif que son amour 
propre." — Traiie de Morale, chap. xvii. 



sidered. The term "being" is a mere en- 
cumbrance, which serves indeed to give it a 
mysterious outside, but brings with it from 
the schools nothing except their obscurity. 
He was betrayed into it, by the cloak which 
it threw over his really unmeaning assertion 
or assumption, that there are degrees of ex- 
istence : without which that part of his sys- 
tem which relates to the Deity would have 
appeared to be as baseless as it really is. 
When we try such a phrase by applying it 
to matters within the sphere of our experi- 
ence, we see that it means nothing but de- 
grees of certain faculties and powers. But 
the very application of the term "being" to 
all things, shows that the least perfect has 
as much being as the most perfect ; or rather 
that there can be no difference, so far as that 
word is concerned, between two things to 
which it is alike applicable. The justness 
of the compound proportion on which human 
virtue is made to depend, is capable of being- 
tried by an easy test. If we suppose the 
greatest of evil spirits to have a hundred 
times the bad passions of Marcus Aurelius, 
and at the same time a hundred times his 
faculties, or, in Edwards' language, a hundred 
times his quantity of " being," it follows from 
this moral theory, that we ought to esteem 
and love the devil exactly in the same de- 
gree as we esteem and love Marcus Aurelius. 
The chief circumstance which justifies so 
much being said on the last two writers, is 
their concurrence in a point towards which 
ethical philosophy had been slowly approach- 
ing from the time pf the controversies raised 
up by Hobbes. They both indicate the in- 
crease of this tendency, by introducing an 
element into their theory, foreign from those 
cold systems of ethical abstraction, with 
which they continued in other respects to 
have much in common. Malebranche makes 
virtue consist in the love of "order." Ed- 
wards in the love of "being." In this lan- 
guage we perceive a step beyond ihe repre- 
sentation of Clarke, which made it a con- 
formity to the relations of things; but a 
step which cannot be made without passing 
into a new province ; — without confessing, by 
the use of the word "'love," that not only- 
perception and reason, but emotion and sen- 
timent, are among the fundamental princi- 
ples of Morals. They still, however, were 
so wedded to scholastic prejudice, as to 
choose two of the most aerial abstractions 
which can be introduced into argument, — 
"being" and "order." — to be the objects of 
those strong active feelings which were to 
govern the human mind. 

BUFFIER.* 

The same strange disposition to fix on ab- 
stractions as the objects of our primitive 
feelings, and the end sought by our warmest 
desires, manifests itself in the ingenious 
writer with whom this part of the Disserta- 



Born, 1661 ; died, 1737. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 131 



tioa closes, under a form of less dignity than 
that which it assumes in the hands of Male- 
branche and Clarke. Burlier, the only Jesuit 
whose name has a place in the history of 
abstract, philosophy, has no peculiar opinions 
which would have required any mention of 
him as a moralist, were it not for the just 
reputation of his Treatise on First Truths, 
with which Dr. Reid so remarkably, though 
unaware of its existence, coincides, even in 
the misapplication of so practical a term as 
■'common sense ; ' to denote the faculty which 
recogu ses the truth of first principles. His 
philosophical writings* are remarkable for 
that perfect clearness of expression, which, 
since the great examples of Descartes and 
Pascal, has been so generally diffused, as to 
have become one of the enviable peculiari- 
ties of French philosophical style, and almost 
of the French language. His ethical doctrine 
is that most commonly received among phi- 
losophers, from Aristotle to Paley and Beu- 
tham : :< I desire to be happy; but as I live 
with other men, I cannot be happy without 
consulting their happiness:" a proposition 
perfectly true indeed, but far too narrow ; as 
inferring, that in the most benevolent acts a 
man must pursue only his own interest, from 
the fact that the practice of benevolence 
does increase his happiness, and that because 
a virtuous mind is likely to be the happiest, 
our observation of that property of Virtue is 
the cause of our love and reverence for it. 



SECTION VI. 

FOUNDATIONS OF A MORE JUST THEORY OF 
ETHICS. 

BUTLER — HUTCHESON — BERKELEY — HUME — SMITH 
— PRICE — HARTLEY — TUCKER — PALEY — BEN- 
THAM — STEWART — BROWN. 

From the beginning of ethical controversy 
to the eighteenth century, it thus appears, 
that the care of the individual for himself, 
and his regard for the things which regard 
self, were thought to form the first, and, in 
the opinion of most, the earliest of all prin- 
ciples which prompt men and other animals 
to activity ; that nearly all philosophers re- 
garded the appetites and desires, which look 
only to self-gratification, as modifications of 
this primary principle of self-love ; and that 
a very numerous body considered even the 
social affections themselves as nothing more 
than the produce of a more latent and sub- 
tile operation of the desire of interest, and 
the pursuit of pleasure. It is true that they 
often spoke otherwise; but it was rather 
from the looseness and fluctuation of their 
language, than from distrust in their doctrine. 
It is true, also, that perhaps all represent- 
ed the gratifications of Virtue as more un- 
mingled. more secure, more frequent, and 
more lasting, than other pleasures; without 
which they could neither have retained a 

* Coursde Sciences. Paris, 1732. 



hold on the assent of mankind, nor recon- 
ciled the principles of their systems with the 
testimony of their hearts. We have seen 
how some began to be roused from a lazy 
acquiescence in this ancient hypothesis, by 
the monstrous consequences which Hobbes 
had legitimately deduced from it. A few, 
of pure minds and great intellect, laboured 
to render Morality disinterested, by tracing 
it to Reason as its source; without consider- 
ing that Reason, elevated indeed far above 
interest, is also separated by an impassable 
gulf, from feeling, affection, and passion. 
At length it was perceived by more than 
one, that through whatever length of reason- 
ing the mind may pass in its advances to- 
wards action, there is placed at the end of 
any avenue through which it can advance, 
some principle wholly unlike mere Reason, 
— some emotion or sentiment which must be 
touched, before the springs of Will and Action 
can be set in motion. Had Lord Shaftesbury 
steadily adhered to his own principles, — had 
Leibnitz not recoiled from his statement, the 
truth might have been regarded as pro- 
mulged, though not unfolded. The writings 
of both prove, at least to us, enlightened as 
we are by what followed, that they were 
skilful in sounding, and that their lead had 
touched the bottom. But it was reserved 
for another moral philosopher to determine 
this hitherto unfathomed depth.* 

BUTLER. t 

Butler, who was the son of a Presbyterian 
trader, early gave such promise, as to induce 
his father to fit him, by a proper education, 
for being a minister of that persuasion. He 
was educated at one of their seminaries un- 
der Mr. Jones of Gloucester, where Seeker, 
afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury was his 
fellow-student. Though many of the dis- 
senters had then begun to relinquish Calvin- 
ism, the uniforn§ effect of that doctrine, in 
disposing its adherents to metaphysical spe- 
culation, long survived the opinions which 
caused it, and cannot be doubted to have in- 
fluenced the mind of Butler. When a stu- 
dent at the academy at Gloucester, he wrote 

* The doctrine of the Stoics is thus put by Ci- 
cero into the mouth of Cato : "Placet his, inquit, 
quorum ratio mihi probatur, simul atque natum 
sit animal (hinc enim est ordiendum), ipsum sibi 
conciliari et commendari ad se conservandum, et 
ad suum siatum, et ad ea, quae conservantia sunt 
ejus status, diligenda ; alienari autem ab interim, 
iisque rebus quae internum videanlur afferre. Id 
ita esse sic probant, quod, antequam voluptas aut 
dolor attigerit, salutaria appetant parvi, aspernen- 
turque contraria : quod non fieret, nisi staium su- 
um diligerent, internum timerent : fieri autem 
non posset, ut appeterent aliquid, nisi sensum ha- 
berent sui, eoque se et sua diligerent. Ex quo 
intelligi debet, prineipium ductum esse a se dili- 
gendi sui." — De Fin. lib. iii. cap. v. We are told 
that diligendo is the reading of an ancient IMS. 
Perhaps ihe omission of " a " would be the easiest 
and most reasonable emendation. The ahove pas- 
sage is perhaps ihe fullest and plainest siaiement 
of the doctrines prevalent till the time of Butler. 

t Born, 1692 ; died, 1752. 



132 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



private letters to Dr. Clarke on his celebrated 
Demonstration, suggesting objections which 
were really-insuperable, and which are mark- 
ed by an acnteness which neither himself 
nor any other ever surpassed. Clarke, whose 
heart was as well schooled as his head, pub- 
lished the letters, with his own answers, in 
the next edition of his work, and, by his 
good offices with his friend and follower, Sir 
Joseph Jekyll, obtained for the young phi- 
losopher an early opportunity of making his 
abilities and opinions known, by the appoint- 
ment of preacher at the Chapel of the Master 
of the Rolls. He was afterwards raised to 
one of the highest seats on the episcopal 
bench, through the philosophical .taste of 
Queen Caroline, and her influence over the 
mind of her husband, which continued long 
after her death. '-'He was wafted," says 
Horace Walpole, "to the See of Durham, on 
a cloud of Metaphysics."* Even in the 
fourteenth year of his widowhood, George II. 
was desirous of inserting the name of the 
Queen's metaphysical favourite in the Re- 
gency Bill of 1751. 

His great work on the Analogy of Religion 
to the Course of Nature, though only a com- 
mentary on the singularly original and preg- 
nent passage of Origen,t which is so honestly 
prefixed to it as a motto, is, notwithstanding, 
the most original and profound work extant 
in any language on the philosophy of religion. 
It is entirely beyond our present scope. His 
ethical discussions are contained in those 
deep and sometimes dark dissertations which 
he preached at the Chapel of the Rolls, and 
afterwards published under the name of 
"Sermons," while he was yet fresh from the 
schools, and full of that courage with which 
youth often delights to exercise its strength 
in abstract reasoning - , and to push its facul- 
ties into the recesses of abstruse speculation. 
But his youth was that of a sober and ma- 
ture mind, early (aught by Nature to discern 
the boundaries of Knowledge, and to abstain 
from fruitless efforts to reach inaccessible 
ground. In these Sermons,i he has taught 
truths more capable of being exactly {dis- 
tinguished from the doctrines of his prede- 
cessors, more satisfactorily established, more 
comprehensively applied to particulars, more 
rationally connected with each other, and 
therefore more worthy of the name of " dis- 
covery," than any with which we are ac- 
quainted ; — if we ought not, with some hesi- 
tation, to' except the first steps of the Grecian 
philosophers towards a theory of Morals. It 
is a peculiar hardship, that the extreme am- 
biguity of language, an obstacle which it is 
one of the chief merits of an ethical philoso- 

* Memoirs of Geo. II., i. 129. 

t " Ejus (analogia) vis est ; Ut id quod dubium 
est ad aliquid simile de quo non quaeritur, referat; 
ut inrerta certis probet." 

X See Sermons i. ii. iii. On Human Nature ; v. 
On Compassion ; viii. On Resentment ; ix. On 
Forgiveness; xi. and xii. On the Love of Our 
Neighbour; and xiii. On the Love of God; to- 
gether with the excellent Preface. 



pher to vanquish, is one of the circumstances 
which prevent men from seeing the justice 
of applying to him so ambitious a term as 
"discoverer." He owed more to Lord Shaftes- 
bury than to all other writers besides. He 
is just and generous towards that philoso- 
pher; yet, whoever carefully compares their 
writings, will without difficulty distinguish 
the two builders, and the larger as well as 
more regular and laboured part of the edifice, 
which is the work of Butler. 

Mankind have various principles of action , 
some leading directly to the good of the in- 
dividual, some immediately to the good of 
the community. But the former are not in- 
stances of self-love, or of any form of it ; for 
self-love is the desire of a man ; s own hap- 
piness, whereas the object of an appetite or 
passion is some outward thing. Self-love 
seeks things as means of happiness; the pri- 
vate appetites seek things, not as means, but 
as ends. A man eats from hunger, and 
drinks from thirst; and though he knows 
that these acts are necessary to life, that 
knowledge is not the motive of his conduct. 
No gratification can indeed be imagined 
without a previous desire. If all the par- 
ticular desires did not exist independent^, 
self-love would have no object to employ 
itself about ; for there would in that case be 
no happiness, which, by the very supposi- 
tion of the opponents, is made up of the 
gratifications of various desires. No pur- 
suit could be selfish or interested, if there 
were not satisfactions to be gained by appe- 
tites which seek their own outward objects 
without regard to self. These satisfactions 
in the mass compose what is called a man's 
interest. 

In contending, therefore, that the benevo- 
lent affections are disinterested, no more is 
claimed for them than must be granted to 
mere animal appetites and to malevolent 
passions. Each of these principles alike 
seeks its own object, for the sake simply of 
obtaining it. Pleasure is the result of the 
attainment, but no separate part of the aim 
of the agent. The desire that another per- 
son may be gratified, seeks that outward ob- 
ject alone, according to the general course 
of human desire. Resentment is as disinte- 
rested as gratitude or pity, but not more sq. 
Hunger or thirst may be, as much as the 
purest benevolence, at variance with self- 
love. A regard to our own general happi- 
ness is not a vice, but in itself an excellent 
quality. It were well if it prevailed more 
generally over craving and short-sighted ap- 
petites. The weakness of the social affec- 
tions, and the strength of the private desires, 
properly constitute selfishness; a vice utterly 
at variance with the happiness of him who 
harbours it, and as such, condemned by self- 
love. There are as few who attain the great- 
est satisfaction to themselves, as who do the 
greatest good to others. It is absurd to say 
with some, that the pleasure of benevolence 
is selfish because it is felt by self. Under- 
standing and reasoning are acts of self, lor 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



133 



no man can think by proxy ; but no one ever 
called them selfish. Why '?• Evidently be- 
cause they do not regard self. Precisely 
the same reason applies to benevolence. 
Such fen argument is a gross confusion of 
" self," as it is a subject of feeling or thought, 
with " self" considered as the object of 
either. It is no more just to refer the pri- 
vate appetites to self-love because they com- 
monly promote happiness, than it would be 
to refer them to self-hatred in those frequent 
cases where their gratification obstructs it. 

But, besides the private or public desires, 
and besides the calm regard to our own gene- 
ral welfare, there is a principle in man, in 
its nature supreme over all others. This 
natural supremacy belongs to the faculty 
which surveys, approves, or disapproves the 
several affections of our minds and actions 
of our lives. As self-love is superior to the 
private passions, so Conscience is superior to 
the whole of man. Passion implies nothing 
but an inclination to follow an object, and in 
that respect passions differ only in force : but 
no notion can be formed of the principle of 
reflection, or Conscience, which does not 
comprehend judgment, direction, superin- 
tendency ; authority over all other princi- 
ples of action is a constituent part of the 
idea of it, and cannot be separated from it. 
Had it strength as it has right, it would govern 
the world. The passions would have their 
power, but according to their nature, which 
is to be subject to Conscience. Hence we 
may understand the purpose at which the 
ancients, perhaps confusedly, aimed when 
they laid it down " that Virtue consisted in 
following Nature." It is neither easy, nor, 
for the main object of the moralist, import- 
ant, to render the doctrines of the ancients 
by modern language. If Butler returns to 
this phrase too often, it was rather from the 
remains of ^distinguishing reverence for 
antiquity, than because he could deem its 
employment important to his own opinions. 

The tie which holds together Religion and 
Morality is, in the system of Butler, some- 
what different from the common representa- 
tions of it, but not less close. Conscience, 
or the faculty of approving or disapproving, 
necessarily constitutes the bond of union. 
Setting out from the belief of Theism, and 
combining its as he had entitled himself to 
do. with the reality of Conscience, he could 
not avoid discovering that the being who 
possessed the highest moral qualities, is the 
object of the highest moral affections. He 
contemplates the Deity through the moral 
nature of man. In the case of a being who 
is to be perfectly loved, "goodness must be 
the simple actuating principle within him, 
this being the moral quality which is the 
immediate object of love." " The highest, 
the adequate object of this affection, is per- 
fect goodness, which, therefore, we are to 
love with all our heart, with all our soul, and 
with all our strength." " We should refer 
ourselves implicitly to him. and cast our- 
selves entirely upon him. The whole at- 



tention of life should be to obey his com- 
mands."* Moral distinctions are thus pre- 
supposed before a step can be made towards 
Religion : Virtue leads to piety ; God is to be 
loved, because goodness is the object of love; 
and it is only after the mind rises through 
human morality to divine perfection, that all 
the virtues and duties are seen to hang from 
the throne of God.f 

REMARKS. 

There do not appear to be any errors in 
the ethical principles of Butler : the follow- 
ing remarks are intended to point out some 
defects in his scheme. And even that at- 
tempt is made with the unfeigned humility 
of one who rejoices in an opportunity of 
doing justice to that part of the writings of a 
great philosopher which has not been so 
clearly understood nor so justly estimated 
by the generality as his other works. 

1. It is a considerable defect, though per- 
haps unavoidable in a sermon, that he omits 
all inquiry into the nature and origin of the 
private appetites, which first appear in hu- 
man nature. It is implied, but it is not ex- 
pressed in his reasonings, that there is a 
time before the child can be called selfish, 
any more than social, when these appetites 
seem as it were separately to pursue their 
distinct objects, and that this is long antece- 
dent to that state of mind in which their 
gratification is regarded as forming the mass 
called "happiness." It is hence that they 
are likened to instincts distinct as these lat- 
ter subsequently become.! 

2. Butler shows admirably well, that un- 
less there were principles of action inde- 
pendent of self, there could be no pleasures 
and no happiness for self-love to watch over. 
A step farther would have led him to per- 
ceive that self-love is altogether a secondary 
formation, the result of the joint operation of 
Reason and habit upon the primary princi- 
ples. It could not have existed without pre- 
supposing original appetites and organic 
gratifications. Had he considered this part 
of the subject, he would have strengthened 
his case by showing that self-love is as truly 
a derived principle, not only as any of the 
social affections, but as any of the most con- 
fessedly acquired passions. It would appear 
clear, that as self-love is not divested of its 
self-regarding character by considering it as 
acquired, so the social affections do not lose 
any part of their disinterested character, if 
they be considered as formed from simpler 
elements. Nothing would more tend to root 
out the old prejudice which treats a regard 



* Sermon xiii. — " On the Love of God." 
t " The part in which I think I have done most 
service is (hat in which I have endeavoured to slip 
in a foundation under Butler's doctrine of the su- 
premacy of Conscience, which he left baseless." — ' 
Sir James Mackintosh to Professor Napier. — Ed- 
t The very able work ascribed to Mr. Hazlitt, 
entitled " Essay ori'the Principles of Human Ac- 
tion," Lond. 1805, contains original views on this 
subject. 

M 



134 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



to self as analogous to a self-evident princi- 
ple, than the proof that self-love is itself 
formed from certain original elements, and 
that a living being long subsists before its 
appearance.* 

3. It must be owned that those parts of 
Butler's discourses which relate to the so- 
cial affections are more satisfactory than 
those which handle the question concerning 
the moral sentiments. It is not that the real 
existence of the latter is not as well made 
out as that of the former. In both cases he 
occupies the unassailable ground of an ap- 
peal to consciousness. All foien (even the 
worst), feel- that they have a conscience and 
disinterested affections. But he betrays a 
sense of the greater vagueness of his notions 
on this subject : he falters as he approaches 
it. He makes no attempt to determine in 
what state of mind the action of Conscience 
consists. He does not venture steadily to 
denote it by a name ; he fluctuates between 
different appellations, and multiplies the 
metaphors of authority and command, with- 
out a simple exposition of that mental opera- 
tion which these metaphors should only have 
illustrated. It commands other principles: 
but the question recurs, Why. or How? 

Some of his own hints and some fainter 
intimations of Shaftesbury, might have led 
him to what appears to be the true solution, 
which, perhaps from its extreme simplicity, 
has escaped him and his successors. The 
truth seems to be, that the moral sentiments 
in the'ir mature state, are a class of feelings 
which have no other object but the mental dis- 
positions leading to voluntary action, and the 
voluntary actions which flow from these dis- 
positions. We are pleased with some dis- 
positions and actions, and displeased with 
others, in ourselves and our fellows. We 
desire to cultivate the dispositions and to 
perform the actions, which we contemplate 
with satisfaction. These objects, like all 
those of human appetite or desire, are sought 
for their own sake. The peculiarity of these 
desires is, that their "ratification requires the 
use of no means; nothing (unless it be a vo- 
lition) is interposed between the desire and 
the voluntary act. It is impossible, there- 
fore, that these passions should undergo any 
change by transfer from being the end to 
being the means, as is the case with other 
practical principles. On the other hand, as 
soon as they are fixed on these ends, they 
cannot regard any further object. When 
another passion prevails over them, the end 
of the moral faculty is converted into a 
means of gratification. But volitions and 
actions are not themselves the end or last 
object in view, of any other desire or aver- 
sion. Nothing stands between the moral 
sentiments and their object ; they are, as it 
were, in contact with the Will. It is this 
sort of mental position, if the expression may 

_* Compare this statement with the Stoical doc- 
trine explained by Cicero in the book De Finibus, 
quoted above, of which it is the direct opposite. 



be pardoned, that explains or seems to ex- 
plain those characteristic properties which 
true philosophers ascribe to them, and which 
all reflecting men feel to belong to them. 
Being the only desires, aversions, sentiments, 
or emotions which regard dispositions and 
actions, they necessarily extend to the whole 
character and conduct. Among motives to 
action, they alone are justly considered as 
universal. They may and do stand between 
any other practical principle and its object, 
while jt is absolutely impossible that another 
shall intercept their connexion with the Will. 
Be it observed, that though many passions 
prevail over them, no other can act beyond 
its own appointed and limited sphere; and 
that such prevalence itself, leaving the natu- 
ral order disturbed in no other part of the 
mind, is perceived to be a disorder, when- 
ever seen in another, and felt to be so by 
the very mind disordered, when the disor- 
der subsides. Conscience may forbid the 
Will to contribute to the gratification of a 
desire : no desire ever forbids the Will to 
obey Conscience. 

This result of the peculiar relation of Con- 
science to the Will, justifies those metapho- 
rical expressions which ascribe to it " au- 
thority" and the right of "universal com- 
mand." It is immutable ; for, by the law 
which regulates all feelings, it must rest on 
action, which is its object, and beyond which 
it cannot look ; and as it employs no means, 
it never can be transferred to nearer objects, 
in the way in wdiich he who first desires an 
object as a means of gratification, may come 
to seek it as his end. Another remarkable 
peculiarity is bestowed on the moral feel- 
ings by the nature of their object. As the 
objects of all other desires are outward, the 
satisfaction of them may be frustrated by 
outward causes : the moral sentiments may 
always be gratified, because voluntary ac- 
tions and moral dispositions spring from 
within. No external circumstance affects 
them ; — hence their independence. As the 
moral sentiment needs no means, and the 
desire is instantaneously followed by the 
volition, it seems to be either that which 
first suggests the relation between command 
and obedience, or at least that which affords the 
simplest instance of it. It is therefore with 
the most rigorous precision that authority 
and universality are ascribed to them. Their 
only unfortunate property is their too fre- 
quent weakpess; but it is apparent that it is 
from that circumstance alone that their fail- 
ure arises. Thus considered, the language 
of Butler concerning Conscience, that, "had 
it strength, as it has right, it would govern 
the world," which may seem to be only an 
effusion of generous feeling, proves to be a 
just statement of the nature and action of 
the highest of human faculties. The union 
of universality, immutability, and independ- 
ence, with direct action on the Will, which 
distinguishes the Moral Sense from every 
other part of our practical nature, renders it 
scarcely metaphorical language to ascribe to 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



135 



it unbounded sovereignty and awful author- 
ity over the whole of the world within ; — 
shows that attributes, well denoted by terms 
significant of command and control. are. in 
fact, inseparable from it, or rather constitute 
its very essence; and justifies those ancient 
moralists who represent it as alone securing, 
if not forming the moral liberty of man. 
When afterwards the religious principle is 
evolved, Conscience is clothed with the su- 
blime character of representing the divine 
purity and majesty in the human soul. Its 
title is not impaired by any number of 
defeats; for every defeat necessarily dis- 
poses the disinterested and dispassionate 
by-stander to wish that its force were 
strengthened : and though it may be doubt- 
ed whether, consistently with the present 
constitution of human nature, it could be so 
invigorated as to be the only motive to ac- 
tion, yet every such by-stander rejoices at 
all accessions to its force; and would own, 
that man becomes happier, more excellent, 
more estimable, more venerable, in propor- 
tion as it acquires a power of banishing 
malevolent passions, of strongly curbing all 
the private appetites, and of influencing 
and guiding the benevolent affections them- 
selves. 

Let it be carefully considered whether the 
same observations could be made with truth, 
or with plausibility, on any other part or ele- 
ment of the nature of man. They are en- 
tirely independent of the question, whether 
Conscience be an inherent, or an acquired 
principle. If it be inherent, that circum- 
stance is, according to the common modes 
of thinking^ a sufficient proof of its title to 
veneration. But if provision be made in the 
constitution and circumstances of all men, 
for uniformly producing it, by processes simi- 
lar to those which produce other acquired 
sentiments, may not our reverence be aug- 
mented by admiration of that Supreme Wis- 
dom which, in such mental contrivances, yet 
more brightly than in the lower world of mat- 
ter, accomplishes mighty purposes by instru- 
ments so simple '?■ Should these speculations 
be thought to have any solidity by those who 
are accustomed to such subjects, it would be 
easy to unfold and apply them so fully, that 
they may be thoroughly apprehended by 
every intelligent person. 

4. The most palpable defect of Butler's 
scheme is, that it affords no answer to the 
question, "What is the distinguishing quality 
common to all right actions?' 1 If it were 
. answered, " Their criterion is, that they are 
approved and commanded by Conscience." 
the answerer would find that he was involved 
' in a vicious circle: for Conscience itself 
could be no otherwise defined than as the 
faculty which approves and commands right 
actions. 

There are few circumstances more re- 
markable than the small number of Butler's 
followers in Ethics; and it is perhaps still 
more observable, that his opinions were not 
so much rejected as overlooked. It is an in- 



stance of the importance of style. No thinker 
so great was ever so bad a writer. Indeed, 
the ingenious apologies which have been 
lately attempted for this detect, amount to 
no more than that his power of thought was 
too much for his skill in language. How 
general must the reception have been of 
truths so certain and momentous as those 
contained in Butler's discourses, — -with how- 
much more clearness must they have ap- 
peared to his own great understanding, if he 
had possessed the strength and distinctness 
with which Hobbes enforces odious false- 
hood, or the unspeakable' charm of that trans- 
parent diction which clothed the unfruitful 
paradoxes of Berkeley ! 

HUTCHESON.* 

This ingenious writer began to try his own 
strength by private letters, written in his 
early youth to Dr. Clarke, the metaphysical 
patriarch of his time ; on whom young phi- 
losophers seem to have considered them- 
selves as possessing a claim, which he had 
too much goodness to reject. His corres- 
pondence with Hutcheson is lost; but we 
may judge of its spirit by his answers to 
Butler, and by one to Mr. Henry Home,f 
afterwards Lord Karnes, then a young ad- 
venturer in the prevalent speculations. Near- 
ly at the same period with Butler's first pub- 
lication.!: the writing's of Hutcheson began to 
show coincidences with him, indicative of 
the tendency of moral theory to assume a 
new form, by virtue of an impulse received 
from Shaftesbury, and quickened to greater 
activity by the adverse system of Clarke. 
Lord Molesworth, the friend of Shaftesbury, 
patronised Hutcheson, and even criticised his 
manuscript; and though a Presbyterian, he 
was befriended by King, Archbishop of Dub- 
lin, himself a metaphysician ; and aided by 
Mr. Synge, afterwards also a bishop, to whom 
speculations somewhat similar to his own 
had occurred. 

Butler and Hutcheson coincided in the two 
important positions, that disinterested affec- 
tions, and a distinct moral faculty, are essen- 
tial parts of human nature. Hutcheson is a 
chaste and simple writer, who imbibed the 
opinions, without the literary faults of his 
master, Shaftesbury. He has a clearness of 
expression, and fulness of illustration, which 
are wanting in Butler. But he is inferior to 
both these writers in the appearance at least 
of originality, and to Butler especially in that 

* Born in Ireland, 1694 ; died at Glasgow, 1747. 

t Woodhouselee's Lite of Lord Karnes, vol. i. 
Append. No. 3. 

t The first edition of Butler's Sermons was 
published in 1726, in which year also appeared the 
second edition of Hutcheson's Inquiry into Beauty 
and Virtue. The Sermons had been preached 
some years before, though there is no likelihood 
that the contents could have reached a young 
teacher at Dublin. The place of Hutcheson's 
birth is not mentioned in any account known to 
me. Ireland may be truly said to be " incuriosa 
suorum." 



136 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



philosophical courage which, when it disco- 
vers the fountains of truth and falsehood, 
leaves others to follow the streams. He 
states as strongly as Butler, that "the same 
cause which determines us to pursue hap- 
piness for ourselves, determines us both to 
esteem and benevolence on their proper oc- 
casions — even the very frame of our na- 
ture."* It is in vain, as he justly observes, 
for the patrons of a refined selfishness to pre- 
tend that we pursue the happiness of others 
for the sake of the pleasure which we derive 
from it ; since it is apparent that there could 
be no such pleasure if there had been no 
previous affection. "Had we no affection 
distinct from self-love, nothing could raise a 
desire of the happiness of others, but when 
viewed as a mean of our own."f He seems 
to have been the first who entertained just 
notions of the formation of the secondary 
desires, which had been overlooked by But- 
ler. " There must arise, in consequence of 
our original desires, secondary desires of 
every thing useful to gratify the primary de- 
sire. Thus, as soon as we apprehend the 
use of wealth, or power, to gratify our origi- 
nal desires, we also desire them. From their 
universality as means arises the general pre- 
valence of these desires of wealth and 
power. "t Proceeding farther in his zeal 
against the selfish system than Lord Shaftes- 
bury, who seems ultimately to rest the rea- 
sonableness of benevolence on its subser- 
viency to the happiness of the individual, he 
represents the moral faculty to be. as well 
as self-love and benevolence, a calm general 
impulse, which may and does impel a good 
man to sacrifice not only happiness, but even 
life itself, to Virtue. 

As Mr. Locke had spoken of " an internal 
sensation ;" Lord Shaftesbury once or twice 
of "a reflex sense," and once of "a moral 
sense;" Hutcheson, who had a steadier, if 
not a clearer view of the nature of Con- 
science than Butler, calls it " a moral sense ;" 
a name which quickly became popular, and 
continues to be a part of philosophical lan- 
guage. By (; sense" he understood a capa- 
city of receiving ideas, together with plea- 
sures and pains, from a class of objects: the 
term " moral" was used to describe the par- 
ticular class in question. It implied only 
that Conscience was a separate element in 
our nature, and that it was not a state or act 
of the Understanding. According to him, it 
also implied that it was an original and im- 
planted principle ; but every other part of 
his theory might be embraced by those who 
hold it to be derivative. 

The object of moral approbation, accord- 
ing to him, is general benevolence ; and he 
carries this generous error so far as to deny 
that prudence, as lonir as it regards ourselves, 
can be morally approved; — an assertion con- 
tradicted by every man's feelings, and to 
which we owe the Dissertation on the Na- 



* Inquiry, p. 152. 

t Essay on the Passions, p. 17. 



t Ibid. p. 8. 



ture of Virtue, which Butler annexed to his 
Analogy. By proving that all virtuous ac- 
tions produce general good, he fancied that 
he had proved the necessity of regarding the 
general good in every act of virtue ; — an in- 
stance of that confusion of the theory of 
moral sentiment^ with the criterion of moral 
actions, against which the reader was warned 
at the opening of this Dissertation, as fatal 
to ethical philosophy. He is chargeable, like 
Butler, with a vicious circle, in describing 
virtuous acts as those which are approved 
by the moral sense, while he at the same 
time describes the moral sense as the faculty 
which perceives and feels the morality of 
actions. * 

Hutcheson was the father of the modern 
school of speculative philosophy in Scotland j 
for though in the beginning of the sixteenth 
century the Scotch are said to have been 
known throughout Europe by their unmea- 
sured passion for dialectical subtilties,* and 
though this metaphysical taste was nourish- 
ed by the controversies which followed the 
Reformation, yet it languished, with every 
other intellectual taste and talent, from the 
Restoration, — first silenced by civil disorders, 
and afterwards repressed by an exemplary, 
but unlettered clergy, — :till the philosophy 
of Shaftesbury was brought by Hutcheson 
from Ireland. We are told by the writer of 
his Life (a fine piece of philosophical biogra- 
phy) that " he had a remarkable degree of 
rational enthusiasm for learning, liberty, Re- 
ligion, Virtue, and human happiness;"! that 
he taught in public with persuasive elo- 
quence ; that his instructive conversation 
was at once lively and modest ; and that he 
united pure manners with a kind disposition. 
What wonder that such a man should have 
spread the love of Knowledge and Virtue 
around him, and should have rekindled in 
his adopted country a relish for the sciences 
which he cultivated ! To him may also be 
ascribed that proneness to multiply ultimate 
and original principles in human nature, 
which characterized the Scottish school till 
the second extinction of a passion for meta- 

* The character given of the Scotch by the fa- 
mous and unfortunate Servetus (edition of Ptole- 
my. 1533,) is in many respects curious: " Gallis 
amicissimi, Anglorumque regi maxime infesti.*** 
Subita ingenia, et in ultionem prona, ferociaque.*** 
In bello fortes; inediae, vigiliae, algoris patientissi- 
mi ; decenti forma sed culiu negligentiori ; invidi 
natura, et caeterorum morialium contemptores; 
ostentant plusnimionobililalemsuam, et in summd 
etiam egestate suum genus ad regiam slirpem re- 
ferunt ; nee non dialecticis argutiis sibi blundi- 
U7itur." " Subita ingenia" is an expression equi- 
valent to the " Praefervidum Scotorum ingenium" 
of Buchanan. Churchill almost agrees in words 
with Servetus : 

" Whose lineage springs I 

From great and glorious, though forgotten kings." 
The strong antipathy of the laie King George III. 
to what he called "Scotch Metaphysics, " proves 
the permanency of the last part of the national 
character. 

t Life by Dr. Leechman, prefixed to the Sys- 
tem of Moral Philosophy. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



137 



physical speculation in Scotland. A careful 
perusal of the writings of this now little stu- 
died philosopher will satisfy the well-quali- 
fied reader, that Dr. Adam Smith's ethical 
speculations are not so unsuggesled as they 
are beautiful. 

BERKELEY.* 

This great metaphysician was so little a 
moralist, that it requires the attraction of his 
name to excuse its introduction here. His 
Theory of Vision contains a great discovery 
in mental philosophy. His immaterialism 
is chiefly valuable as a touchstone of meta- 
physical sagacity; showing those to be alto- 
gether without it, who, like Johnson and 
Beattie, believed that his speculations were 
sceptical, that they implied any distrust in 
the senses, or that they had the smallest 
tendency to disturb reasoning or alter con- 
duct. Ancient learning, exact science, po- 
lished society, modern literature, and the 
fine arts, contributed to adorn and enrich the 
mind of this accomplished man. All his 
contemporaries agreed with the satirist in 
ascribing 

" To Berkeley every virtue under heaven. "t 
Adverse factions and hostile wits concurred 
only in loving, admiring, and contributing to 
advance him. The severe sense of Swift 
endured his visions; the modest Addison en- 
deavoured to reconcile Clarke to his ambi- 
tious speculations. His character converted 
the satire of Pope into fervid praise ; even 
the discerning, fastidious, and turbulent At- 
terbury said, after an interview with him, 
"So much understanding, so much know- 
ledge, so much innocence, and such humili- 
ty, I did not think had been the portion of 
any but angels, till I saw this gentleman. "J 
Lord Bathurst told me, that the members 
of the Scriblerus Club being met at his house 
at dinner, they agreed to rally Berkeley, 
who was also his guest, on his scheme at 
Bermudas. Berkeley, having listened to 
the many lively things they had to say, beg- 
ged to be heard in his turn, and displayed 
his plan with such an astonishing and ani- 
mating force of eloquence and enthusiasm, 
that they were struck dumb, and after some 
pause, rose all up together, with earnestness 
exclaiming, 'Let us set out with him imme- 
diately.' "§ It was when thus beloved and 
celebrated that he conceived, at the age of 
forty-five, the design of devoting his life to 
reclaim and convert the natives of North 
America ; and he employed a? much influ- 
ence and solicitation as common men do for 
their most prized objects, in obtaining leave 
to resign his dignities and revenues, to quit 
his accomplished and affectionate friends, 
and to bury himself in what must have 
seemed an intellectual desert. After four 



* Born near Thomastown, in Ireland, 1684 ; 
died at Oxford, 1753. 

t Epilogue to Pope's Satires, dialogue 2. 
t Duncombe's Letters, pp. 106, 107. 
i Wharton on Pope, i. 199. 
18 



years' residence at Newport, in Rhode Is- 
land, he was compelled, by the refusal of go- 
vernment to furnish him with funds for his 
College, to forego his work of heroic, or rather 
godlike benevolence; though not without 
some consoling forethought of the fortune of 
the country where he had sojourned. 

Westward the course of empire takes its way, 

The first four acts already past, 
A fifth shall close the drama with the day, 

Time's noblest offspring is its last. 

Thus disappointed in his ambition of keep- 
ing a school for savage children, at a salary 
of a hundred pounds by the year, he was re- 
ceived, on his return, with open arms by the 
philosophical queen, at whose metaphysical 
parties he made one with Sherlock, who, as 
well as Smalridge, was his supporter, and 
withHoadley, who, following Clarke, was his 
antagonist. By her influence, he was made 
bishop of Cloyne. It is one of his highest 
boasts, that though of English extraction, he 
was a true Irishman, and the first eminent 
Protestant, after the unhappy contest at the 
Revolution, who avowed his love for all his 
countrymen. He asked, "Whether their 
habitations and furniture were not more sor- 
did than those of the savage Americans?"* 
"Whether a scheme for the welfare of this 
nation should not take in the whole inhabit- 
ants ?" and "Whether it was a vain attempt, 
to project the flourishing of our Protestant 
gentry, exclusive of the bulk of the natives ?"f 
He proceeds to promote the reformation sug- 
gested in this pregnant question by a series 
of Queries, intimating with the utmost skill 
and address, every reason that proves the 
necessity, and the safety, and the wisest 
mode of adopting his suggestion. He con- 
tributed, by a truly Christian address to the 
Roman Catholics of his diocese, to their 
perfect quiet during the rebellion of 1745 ; 
and soon after published a letter to the 
clergy of that persuasion, beseeching them 
to inculcate industry among their flocks, 
for which he received their thanks. He 
tells them that it was a saying among the 
negro slaves, " if negro were not negro, 
Irishman would be negro." It is difficult 
to read these proofs of benevolence and 
foresight without emotion, at the moment 
when, after a lapse of near a century, hi& 
suggestions have been at length, at the close 
of a straggle of twenty-five years, adopted, 
by the admission of the whole Irish nation 
to the privileges of the British constitution.!: 
The patriotism of Berkeley was not, like 
that of Swift, tainted by disappointed ambi- 
tion, nor was it, like Swift's, confined to a 
colony of English Protestants. Perhaps the 
Querist contains more hints, then original, 
and still unapplied in legislation and political 
economy, than are to be found in any other 
equal space. From the writings of his ad- 
vanced years, when he chose a medical 
tract§ to be the vehicle of his philosophical 

* See his Querist, 358; published in 1735. 
t Thid.,255. t April. 1829. 

$ Siris, or Reflections on Tar Water. 
M 2 



138 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



reflections, though it cannot be said that he 
relinquished his early opinions, it is at least 
apparent that his mind had received a new 
bent, and was habitually turned from reason- 
ing towards contemplation. His immaterial- 
ism indeed modestly appears, but only to 
purify and elevate our thoughts, and to fix 
them on Mind, the paramount and primeval 
principle of all things. -Perhaps," says he, 
"the truth about innate ideas may be, that 
there are properly no ideas, or passive objects, 
in the mind but what are derived from sense, 
but that there are also, besides these, her 
own acts and operations. — such are notions;" 
a statement which seems once more to admit 
general conceptions, and which might have 
served, as well as the parallel passage of 
Leibnitz, as the basis of the modern philoso- 
phy of Germany. From these compositions 
of his old age, he appears then to have recur- 
red with fondness to Plato and the later Plato- 
nists ; writers from whose mere reasonings 
an intellect so acute could hardly hope for 
an argumentative satisfaction of all its diffi- 
culties, and whom he probably rather studied 
as a means of inuring his mind to objects 
beyond the "visible diurnal sphere," and of 
attaching it, through frequent meditation, to 
that perfect and transcendent goodness to 
which his moral feelings always pointed, 
and which they incessantly strove to grasp. 
His mind, enlarging as it rose, at length re- 
ceives every theist, however imperfect his 
belief, to a communion in its philosophic 
piety. "Truth," he beautifully concludes, 
"is the cry of all, but the game of a few. 
Certainly, where it is the chief passion, it 
does not give way to vulgar cares, nor is it 
contented with a little ardour in the early 
time of life; active perhaps to pursue, but 
not so fit to weigh and revise. He that would 
make a real progress in knowledge, must 
dedicate his age as well as youth, the later 
growth as well as first fruits, at the altar 
of Truth." So did Berkeley, and such were 
almost his latest words. 

His genera] principles of Ethics may be 
shortly stated in his own words: — "As God 
is a being of infinite goodness, His end is 
the good of His creatures. The general well- 
being of all men of all nations, of all ages 
of the world, is that which He designs should 
be procured by the concurring actions of 
each individual." Having slated that this 
end can be pursued only in one of two ways, 
— either by computing the consequences of 
each action, or by obeying rules which gene- 
rally tend to happiness, — and having shown 
the first to be impossible, he rightly infers, 
" that the end to which God requires the con- 
currence of human actions, must be carried 
on by the observation of certain determinate 
and universal rules, or moral precepts, which 
in their own nature have a necessary ten- 
dency to promote the well-being of man- 
kind, taking in all nations and ages, from the 
beginning to the end of the world."* A 



* Sermon in Trinity CoHege chapel, on Passive 
•Obedience, 1712. 



romance, of which a journey to an Utopia, 
in the centre of Africa, forms the chief part, 
called "The Adventures of SignorGaudentio 
di Lucca." has been commonly ascribed to 
him ; probably on no other ground than its 
union of pleasing invention with benevolence 
and elegance.* Of the exquisite grace and 
beauty of his diction, no man accustomed to 
English composition can need to be informed. 
His works are, beyond dispute, the finest 
models of philosophical style since Cicero. 
Perhaps they surpass those of the orator, in 
the wonderful art by which the fullest light 
is thrown on the most minute and evanes- 
cent parts of the most subtile of human 
conceptions. Perhaps, also, he surpassed 
Cicero in the charm of simplicity, a quality 
eminently found in Irish writers before the 
end of the eighteenth century ;. — conspicuous 
in the masculine severity of Swift, in the 
Platonic fancy of Berkeley, in the native 
tenderness and elegance of Goldsmith, and 
not withholding its attractions from Hutche- 
son and Leland, writers of classical taste, 
though of inferior power. The two Irish 
philosophers of the eighteenth century may 
be said to have co-operated in calling forth 
the metaphysical genius of Scotland; for, 
though Hutcheson spread the taste for, and 
furnished the principles of such specula- 
tions, yet Berkeley undoubtedly produced the 
scepticism of Hume, which stimulated the 
instinctive school to activity, and was thought 
incapable of confutation, otherwise than by 
their doctrines. 



DAVID HUME.t 

The life of Mr. Hume, written by himself, 
is remarkable above most, if not all writings 
of that sort, for hitting the degree of inte- 
rest between coldness and egotism which 
becomes a modest man in speaking of his 
private history. Few writers, whose opin- 
ions were so obnoxious, have more perfectly 
escaped every personal imputation. Very 
few men of so calm a character have been 
so warmly beloved. That he approached to 
the character of a perfectly good and wise 
man, is an affectionate exaggeration, for 
which his friend Dr. Smith, in the first mo- 
ments of his sorrow, may well be excused, t 
But such a praise can never be earned with- 
out passing through either of the extremes 
of fortune, — without standing the test of 
temptations, dangers, and sacrifices. It may 
be said with truth, that the private character 
of Mr. 'Hume exhibited all the virtues which 
a man of reputable station, under a mild 
government, in the quiet times of a civilized 
country, has often the opportunity to practise. 
He showed no want of the qualities which 
fit men for more severe trials. Though 
others had warmer affections, no man was a 

* See Gentleman's Magazine for January, 1777. 
t Born at Edinburgh, 1711 ; died there, 1776. 
t Dr. Smith's Letter to Mr. Strahan, annexed 
to the Life of Hume. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



139 



kinder relation, a move unwearied friend, or 
more free from meanness and malice. His 
character was so simple, that he did not 
even affect modesty; but neither his friend- 
ships nor his deportment were changed by a 
fame which filled all Europe. His good na- 
ture, his plain manners, and his active kind- 
ness, procured him in Paris the enviable 
name of " the (rood David,'' 7 from a society 
not so alive to goodness, as without reason 
to place it at the head of the qualities of a 
celebrated man.* His whole character is 
faithfully and touchingly represented in the 
story of La Roche, t where Mr. Mackenzie, 
without concealing Mr. Hume's opinions, 
brings him into contact with scenes of tender 
piety, and yet preserves the interest inspired 
by genuine and unalloyed, though moderated, 
feelings and affections. The amiable and 
venerable patriarch of Scottish literature, — 
opposed, as he was to the opinions of the 
philosopher on whom he has composed his 
best panegyric, — tells us that he read his 
manuscript to Dr. Smith, " who declared that 
he did not find a syllable to object to, but ad- 
ded, with his characteristic absence of mind, 
that he was surprised he had never heard 
of the anecdote before."} So lively was 
the delineation, thus sanctioned by the most 
natural of all testimonies. Mr. Macken- 
zie indulges his own religious feelings by 
modestly intimating, that Dr. Smith's answer 
seemed to justify the last words of the tale, 
" that there were moments when the philo- 
sopher recalled to his mind the venerable 
figure of the good La Roche, and wished 
that he had never doubted." To those who 
are strangers to the seductions of paradox, 
to the intoxication of fame, and to the be- 
witchment of prohibited opinions, it must be 
unaccountable, that he who revered bene- 
volence should, without apparent regret, 
cease to see it on the throne of the Universe. 
It is a matter of wonder that his habitual 
esteem for every fragment and shadow of 
moral excellence should not lead him to 
envy those who contemplated its perfection 
in that living and paternal character which 
gives it a power over the human heart. 

On the other hand, if we had no experi- 
ence of the power of opposite opinions in pro- 
ducing irreconcilable animosities, we might 
have hoped that those who retained such 
high privileges, would have looked with 
more compassion than dislike on a virtuous 
man who had lost them. In such cases it is 
too little remembered, that repugnance to 
hypocrisy and impatience of long conceal- 
ment, are the qualities of the best formed 
minds, and that, if the publication of some 
doctrines proves often painful and mischiev- 
ous, the habitual suppression of opinion is 
injurious to Reason, and very dangerous to 
sincerity. Practical questions thusTarise, so 
difficult and perplexing that their determi- 
nation generally depends on the boldness or 

* See Note P. t Mirror, Nos. 42, 43, 44. 
t Mackenzie's Life of John Home, p. 21. 



timidity of the individual, — on his tender- 
ness for the feelings of the good, or his 
greater reverence for the free exercise of 
reason. The time is not yet come when the 
noble maxim of Plato, "that every soul is 
unwillingly deprived of truth," will be prac- 
tically and heartily applied by men to the 
honest opponents who differ from them most 
widely. 

It was in his twenty-seventh year that 
Mr. Hume published at London the Treatise 
of Human Nature, the first systematic attack 
on all the principles of knowledge and be- 
lief, and the most formidable, if universal 
scepticism could ever be more than a mere 
exercise of ingenuity.* This memorable 
work was reviewed in a Journal of that 
time,f in a criticism not distinguished by 
ability, which affects to represent the style 
of a very clear writer as unintelligible, — 
sometimes from a purpose to insult, but 
oftener from sheer dulness, — which is unac- 
countably silent respecting the consequences 
of a sceptical system, but which concludes 
with the following prophecy so much at va- 
riance with the general tone of the article, 
that it would seem to be added by a differ- 
ent hand. "It bears incontestable marks 
of a great capacity, of a soaring genius, but 
young, and not yet thoroughly practised. 
Time and use may ripen these qualities in the 
author, and we shall probably have reason 
to consider this, compared with his later 
productions, in the same light as we view 
the Juvenile works of Milton or the first 
manner of Raphael." 

The great speculator did not in this work 
amuse himself, like Bayle, with dialectical 
exercises, which only inspire a disposition 
towards doubt, by showing in detail the un- 
certainty of most opinions. He aimed at 
proving, not that nothing was known, but 
that nothing could be known, — from the 
structure of the Understanding to demon- 
strate that we are doomed for ever to dwell 
in absolute and universal ignorance. It is 
true that such a system of universal scepti- 
cism never can be more than an intellectual 
amusement, an exercise of subtilty, of which 
the only use is to check dogmatism, but 
which perhaps oftener provokes and pro- 
duces that much more common evil. As 
those dictates of experience which regulate 



* Sextus, a physician of the empirical, i. e. anti- 
theoretical school, who lived at Alexandria in the 
reign of Antoninus Pius, has preserved the rea- 
sonings of the ancient Sceptics as they were to be 
(bund in their most improved state, in the writings 
of iEnesidemus, a Cretan, who was a professor 
in the same city, soon after the reduction of Egypt 
into a Roman province. The greater part of the 
grounds of doubt are very shallow and popular: 
there are, among them, intimations of the argu- 
ment against a necessary connection of causes 
with effects, afterwards better presented by Glan- 
ville in his Scepsis Scientifici. — See Note Q. 

t The Works of the Learned for Nov. and 
Dec. 1739, pp. 353—404. This review is attribu- 
ted by some (Chalmer's Biogr. Diet., voce Hume'' 
to Warburton, but certainly without foundation 



140 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



conduct must be the objects of belief, all 
objections which attack them in common 
with the principles of reasoning, must be 
utterly ineffectual. Whatever attacks every 
principle of belief can destroy none. As 
long as the foundations of Knowledge are 
allowed to remain on the same level (be it 
called of certainty or uncertainty), with the 
maxims of life, the whole system of hu- 
man conviction must continue undisturbed. 
When the sceptic boasts of having involved 
the results of experience and the elements 
of Geometry in the same ruin with the doc- 
trines of Religion and the principles of Phi- 
losophy, he may be answered, that no dog- 
matist ever claimed more than the same 
degree of certainty for these various convic- 
tions and opinions, and that his scepticism, 
therefore, leaves them in the relative condi- 
tion in which it found them. No man knew 
better or owned more frankly than Mr. 
Hume, that to this answer there is no seri- 
ous reply. Universal scepticism involves a 
contradiction in terms: it is a belief that there 
can be no belief. It is an attempt of the mind 
to act without its structure, and by other 
laws than those to which its nature has sub- 
jected its operations. To reason without 
assenting to the principles on which reason- 
ing is founded, is not unlike an effort to feel 
without nerves, or to move without muscles. 
No man can be allowed to be an opponent 
in reasoning, who does not set out with ad- 
mitting all the principles, without the admis- 
sion of which it is impossible to reason.* 
It is indeed a puerile, nay, in the eye of 
Wisdom, a childish play, to attempt either 
to establish or to confute principles by argu- 
ment, which every step of that argument 
must presuppose. The only difference be- 
tween the two cases is, that he who tries to 
prove them can do so only by first taking 
them for granted, and that he who attempts 
to impugn them falls at the very first step 
into a contradiction from which he never 
can rise. 

It must, however, be allowed, that uni- 
versal scepticism has practical consequences 
of a very mischievous nature. This is be- 
cause its universality is not steadily kept in 
view, and constantly borne in mind. If it 
were, the above short and plain remark 
would be an effectual antidote to the poison 
But in practice, it is an armoury from which 
weapons are taken to be employed against 

* This maxim, which contains a sufficient an- 
swer to all universal scepticism, or, in other 
words, to all scepticism properly so called, is sig- 
nificantly conveyed in the quaint title of an old 
and rare book, entitled, " Scivi ; sive Sceptices et 
Scepticorum a Jure Disputationis Exclusio," by 
Thomas White, the metaphysician of the English 
Catholics in modern times. " Fortunately," says 
the illustrious sceptic himself, "since Reason is 
incapable of dispelling these clouds, Nature her- 
self suffices for that purpose, and cures me of this 
philosophical delirium." — Treat, of Hum. Nat., 
l. 467 ; almost in the sublime and immortal words 
of Pascal: "La Raison confond les dogmatistes, 
et la Nature les sceptiques." 



some opinions, while it is hidden from notice 
that the same weapon would equally cut 
down every other conviction. It is thus that 
Mr. Hume's theory of causation is used as 
an answer to arguments for the existence of 
the Deity, without warning the reader that 
it would equally lead him not to expect that 
the sun will rise to-morrow. It must also 
be added, that those who are early accus- 
tomed to dispute first principles are never 
likely to acquire, in a sufficient degree, that 
earnestness and that sincerity, that strong 
love of Truth, and that conscientious solici- 
tude for the formation of just opinions, which 
are not the least virtues of men, but of which 
the cultivation is the more especial duty of 
all who call themselves philosophers.* 

It is not an uninteresting fact that Mr. 
Hume, having been introduced by Lord 
Karnes (then Mr. Henry Home) to Dr. Butler, 
sent a copy of his Treatise to that philoso- 
pher at the moment of his preferment to the 
bishopric of Durham ; and that the perusal of 
it did not deter the philosophic prelate from 
" everywhere recommending Mr. Hume's 
Moral and Political Essays,"t published two 
years afterwards; — essays which it would 
indeed have been unworthy of such a man 
not to have liberally commended ; for they, 
and those which followed them, whatever 
may be thought of the contents of some of 
them, must be ever regarded as the best 
models in any language, of the short but full, 
of the clear and agreeable, though deep dis- 
cussion of difficult questions. 

Mr. Hume considered his Inquiry concern- 
ing the Principles of Morals as the best of 
his writings. It is very creditable to his 
character, that he shotdd have looked back 
with most complacency on a tract the least 
distinguished by originality, and the least 
tainted by paradox, among his philosophical 
works; but deserving of all commendation 
for the elegant perspicuity of the style, and 
the novelty of illustration and inference with 
which he unfolded to general readers a doc- 
trine too simple, too certain, and too im- 
portant, to remain till his time undiscovered 
among philosophers. His diction has, indeed, 
neither the grace of Berkeley, nor the strength 
of Hobbes ; but it is without the verbosity of 
the former, or the rugged sternness of the 
latter. His manner is more lively, more easy, 
more ingratiating, and, if the word may be so 
applied, more amusing, than that of any other 
metaphysical writer.} He knew himself too 



* It would be an act of injustice to those readers 
who are not acquainted with that valuable volume 
entitled, " Essays on the Formation of Opinions," 
not to refer them to it as enforcing that neglected 
part of morality. To it may be added, a masterly 
article in the Westminster Review, vi. 1, occa- 
sioned by the Essays. 

t Woodhouselee's Life of Karnes, i. 86. 104. 

X These commendations are so far from being 
at variance with the remarks of the late most inge- 
nious Dr. Thomas Brown, on Mr. Hume's " mode 
of writing," (Inquiry into the Relation of Cause 
and Effect, 3d ed. p. 327,) that they may rather 
be regarded as descriptive of those excellencies of 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



141 



well to be, as Dr. Johnson asserted, an imi- 
tator of Voltaire ; who, as it were, embodied 
in his own person all the wit and quickness 
and versatile ingenuity of a people which 
surpasses other nations in these brilliant 
qualities. If he must be supposed to have 
had an eye on any French writer, it would 
be a more plausible guess, that he some- 
times copied, with a temperate hand, the 
unexpected thoughts and familiar expres- 
sions of Fontenelle. Though he carefully 
weeded his writings in their successive edi- 
tions, yet they still contain Scotticisms and 
Gallicisms enough to employ the successors 
of such critics as those who exulted over the 
Patavinity of the Roman historian. His own 
great and modest mind would have been 
satisfied with the praise which cannot be 
withheld from him, that there is no writer in 
our language who, through long works, is 
more agreeable ; and it is no derogation from 
him, that, as a Scotsman, he did not reach 
those native and secret beauties, character- 
istical of a language, which are never at- 
tained, in elaborate composition, but by a 
very small number of those who familiarly 
converse in it from infancy. The Inquiry af- 
fords perhaps the best specimen of his style. 
In substance, its chief merit is the proof, 
from an abundant enumeration of particulars, 
that all the qualities and actions of the mind 
which are generally approved by mankind 
agree in the circumstance of being useful to 
6ociety. In the proof (scarcely necessary), 
that benevolent affections and actions have 
that tendency, he asserts the real existence 
of these affections with unusual warmth; 
and he well abridges some of the most forci- 
ble arguments of Butler,* whom it is re- 
markable that he does not mention. To show 
the importance of his principle, he very un- 
necessarily distinguishes the comprehensive 
duty of justice from other parts of Morality, 
as an artificial virtue, for which our respect 
is solely derived from notions of utility. If 
all things were in such plenty that there 
could never be a want, or if men were so 
benevolent as to provide for the wants of 
others as much as for their own, there would, 
says he, in neither case be any justice, be- 
cause there would be no need for it. But it 
is evident that the same reasoning is applica- 
ble to every good affection and right action. 
None of them could exist if there were no 
scope for their exercise. If there were no suf- 
fering, there could be no pity and no relief; 
if there were no offences, there could be no 
placability : if there were no crimes, there 
could be no mercy. Temperance, prudence, 
patience, magnanimity, are qualtiesof which 
the value depends on the evils by which they 
are respectively exercised.! 

which the excess produced the faults of Mr. Hume, 
as a mere searcher and teacher, justly, though per- 
haps severely, animadverted on hy Dr. Brown. 

* Inquiry, § ii. part, i., especially the concluding 
paragraphs ; those which precede being more his 
own. 

t " Si nobis, cum ex hac vita migraverimus, in 



With regard to purity of manners, it must 
be owned that Mr. Hume, though he con- 
troverts no rule, yet treats vice with too much 
indulgence. It was his general disposition 
to distrust those virtues which are liable to 
exaggeration, and may be easily counter- 
feited. The ascetic pursuit of purity, and 
hypocritical pretences to patriotism, had too 
much withdrawn the respect of his equally 
calm and sincere nature from these excellent 
virtues; more especially as severity in both 
these respects was often at apparent variance 
with affection, which can neither be long 
assumed, nor ever overvalued. Yet it was 
singular that he who, in his essay on Poly- 
gamy and Divorce,* had so well shown the 
connection of domestic ties with the outward 
order of society, should not have perceived 
their deeper and closer relation to all the 
social feelings of human nature. It cannot 
be enough regretted, that, in an inquiry writ- 
ten with a very moral purpose, his habit of 
making truth attractive, by throwing over 
her the dress of paradox, should have given 
him for a moment the appearance of weigh- 
ing the mere amusements of society and 
conversation against domestic fidelity, which 
is the preserver of domestic affection, the 
source of parental fondness and filial regard, 
and, indirectly, of all the kindness which 
exists between human beings. That fami- 
lies are schools where the infant heart learns 
to love, and that pure manners are the cement 
which alone holds these schools together, are 
truths so certain, that it is wonderful he 
should not have betrayed a stronger sense 
of their importance. No one could so well 
have proved that all the virtues of that class, 
in their various orders and degrees, minister 
to the benevolent affections; and that every 
act which separates the senses from the 
affections tends, in some degree, to deprive 
kindness of its natural auxiliary, and to les- 
sen its prevalence in the world. It did not 
require his sagacity to discover that ihe 
gentlest and tenderest feelings flourish only 
under the stern guardianship of these se- 
vere virtues. Perhaps his philosophy was 



beatorum insulis, ut fabulae ferunt, immortale 
aevum degere liceret, quid opus esset eloqueniia, 
cum judicia nulla fierent ? aut ipsis eiiam virtutibus? 
Nee enim fortitudine indigeremus, nullo proposito 
aut labore aut periculo ; nee justitia, cum esset nihil 
quod appeleretur alieni ; nee temperantia, quae re- 
geret eas quae nullse essent libidines : ne prudentia 
quidem egeremus, nullo proposito delectu bono- 
rum et malorum. Una igitur essemus beati cog- 
nitione rerum et scientia." — Frag. Cic. Hortens. 
apud Augustine de Trinitate. Cicero is more ex- 
tensive, and therefore more consisient than Hume ; 
but his enumeration errs both by excess and de- 
fect. He supposes Knowledge to render beings 
happy in this imaginary stale, without stooping to 
inquire how. He omits a virtue which might well 
exist in it, though we cannot conceive its forma 
tion in such a state — the delight in each other's 
well-being ; and he omits a conceivable though 
unknown vice, that of unmixed ill-will, which 
would render such a state a hell to the wretch who 
harboured the malevolence. 
* Essays and Treatises, vol. i. 



142 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



loosened, though his life was uncorrupted, 
by that universal and uudistinguishing pro- 
fligacy which prevailed on the Continent, 
from the regency of the Duke of Orleans to 
the French Revolution; the most dissolute 
period of European history, at least since the 
Roman emperors.* At Rome, indeed, the 
connection of licentiousness with cruelty, 
which, though scarcely traceable in indi- 
viduals, is generally very observable in large 
masses, bore a fearful testimony to the value 
of austere purity. The alliance of these re- 
mote vices seemed to be broken in the time 
of Mr. Hume. Pleasure, in a more improved 
state of society, seemed to return to her more 
natural union with kindness and tenderness, 
as well as with refinement and politeness. 
Had he lived fourteen years longer, however, 
he would have seen, that the virtues which 
guard the natural seminaries of the affections 
are their only true and lasting friends. He 
would also then have seen (the demand of 
well-informed men for the improvement of 
civil institutions, — and that of all classes 
growing in intelligence, to be delivered from 
a degrading inferiority, and to be admitted 
to a share of political power proportioned to 
their new importance, having been feebly, 
yet violently resisted by those ruling castes 
who neither knew how to yield, nor how to 
withstand,) how speedily the sudden demoli- 
tion of the barriers (imperfect as they were) 
of law and government, led to popular ex- 
cesses, desolating wars, and a military dic- 
tatorship, which for a long time threatened 
to defeat the reformation, and to disappoint 
the hopes of mankind. This tremendous 
conflagration threw a fearful light on the 
ferocity which lies hid under the arts and 
pleasures of corrupted nations; as earth- 
quakes and volcanoes disclose the rocks 
which compose the deeper parts of our 
planet, beneath a fertile and flowery surface. 
A part of this dreadful result may be as- 
cribed, not improbably, to that relaxation of 
domestic ties, which is unhappily natural 
to the populace of all vast capitals, and was 
at that time countenanced and aggravated 
by the example of their superiors. Another 
part doubtless arose from the barbarising 
power of absolute government, or, in other 
words, of injustice in high places. A nar- 
ration of those events attests, as strongly as 
Roman history, though in a somewhat dif- 
ferent manner, the humanising efficacy of 
the family virtues, by the consequences of 
the want of them in the higher classes, whose 
profuse and ostentatious sensuality inspired 
thelabouringand suffering portion of mankind" 
with contempt, disgust, envy, and hatred. 

The Inquiry is disfigured by another speck 
of more frivolous paradox. It consists in the 
attempt to frive the name of Virtue to quali- 
ties of the Understanding ; and it would not 
have deserved the single remark about to be 
made on it, had it been the paradox of an 
inferior man. He has altogether omitted the 

* See Note R. 



circumstance on which depends the differ- 
ence of our sentiments regarding moral and 
intellectual qualities. We admire intellec- 
tual excellence, but we bestow no moral ap- 
probation on it. Such approbation has no 
tendency directly to increase it, because it 
is not voluntary. We cultivate our natural 
disposition to esteem and love benevolence 
and justice, because these moral sentiments, 
and the expression of them, directly and ma- 
terially dispose others, as well as ourselves, 
to cultivate these two virtues. We cultivate 
a natural anger against oppression, which 
guards ourselves against the practice of that 
vice, and because the manifestation of it de- 
ters others from its exercise. The first rude 
resentment of a child is against every instru- 
ment of hurt: we confine it to intentional 
hurt, when we are taught by experience that 
it prevents only that species of hurt ; and at 
last it is still further limited to wrong done 
to ourselves or others, and in that case be- 
comes a purely moral sentiment. We morally 
approve industry, desire of knowledge, love 
of Truth, and all the habits by which the Un- 
derstanding is strengthened and rectified, be- 
cause their formation is subject to the Will ;* 
but we do not feel moral anger against folly 
or ignorance, because they are involuntary. 
No one but the religious persecutor, — a mis- 
chievous and overgrown child, wreaks his 
vengeance on involuntary, inevitable, com- 
pulsory acts or states of the Understanding, 
which are no more affected by blame than 
the stone which the foolish child beats for 
hurting him. Reasonable men apply to every 
thing which they wish to move, the agent 
which is capable of moving it; — force to 
outward substances, arguments to the Un- 
derstanding, and blame, together with all 
other motives, whether moral or personal, to 
the Will alone. It is as absurd to entertain 
an abhorrence of intellectual inferiority or 
error, however extensive or mischievous, as 
it would be to cherish a warm indignation 
against earthquakes or hurricanes. It is 
singular that a philosopher who needed the 
most liberal toleration should, by represent- 
ing states of the Understanding as moral or 
immoral, have offered the most philosophical 
apology for persecution. 

That general utility constitutes a uniform 
ground of moral distinctions, is a part of Mr. 
Hume's ethical theory which never can be 
impugned, until some example can be pro- 
duced of a virtue generally pernicious, or of 
a vice generally beneficial. The religious 
philosopher who. with Butler, holds that be- 
nevolence must be the actuating principle of 
the Divine mind, will, with Berkeley, main- 
tain that pure benevolence can prescribe no 
rules of human conduct but such as are bene- 
ficial to men ; thus bestowing on the theory 
of moral distinctions the certainty of demon- 
stration in the eves of all who believe in God. 



* " In fine qncesiione prinias tenet Voluntas, 
qua, ill ail AngiiPtinua, percatur, et rerle vivitur." 
— Erasmus, Diatribe adversus Lutheruiu. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



143 



The other question of moral philosophy 
which relates to the theory of moral appro- 
bation, has been by no means so distinctly 
and satisfactorily handled by Mr. Hume. 
His general doctrine is. that an interest in the 
well-being of others, implanted by nature, 
which he calls "sympathy" in his Treatise 
of Human Nature, and much less happily 
"benevolence" in his subsequent Inquiry.* 
prompts us to be pleased with all generally 
beneficial actions. In this respect his doc- 
trine nearly resembles that of Hutcheson. 
He does not trace his principle through the 
variety of forms which our moral sentiments 
assume : there are very important parts of 
them, of which it affords no solution. For 
example, though he truly represents our ap- 
probation, in others, of qualities useful to 
the individual, as a proof of benevolence, he 
makes no attempt to explain our moral ap- 
probation of such virtues as temperance and 
fortitude in ourselves. He entirely overlooks 
that consciousness of the rightful supremacy 
of the Moral Faculty over every other princi- 
ple of human action, without an explanation 
of which, ethical theory is wanting in one of 
its vital organs. 

Notwithstanding these considerable de- 
fects, his proof from induction of the bene- 
ficial tendency of Virtue, his conclusive argu- 
ments for human disinterestedness, and his 
decisive observations on the respective pro- 
vinces of Reason and Sentiment in Morals, 
concur in ranking the Inquiry with the ethi- 
cal treatises of the highest merit in our lan- 
guage, — with Shaftesbury's Inquiry concern- 
ing Virtue, Butler's Sermons, and Smith's 
Theory of Moral Sentiments. 

ADAM SMITH. t 

The great name of Adam Smith rests upon 
the Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of 
the Wealth of Nations; perhaps the only book 
which produced an immediate, general, and 
irrevocable change in some of the most im- 
portant parts of the Legislation of all civilized 
states. The works of Grotius, of Locke, and 
of Montesquieu, which bear a resemblance 
to it in character, and had no inconsiderable 
analogy to it in the extent of their popular 
influence, were productive only of a general 
amendment, not so conspicuous in particular 
instances, as discoverable, after a time, in 
the improved condition of human affairs. 
The work of Smith, as it touched those mat- 
ters which may be numbered, and measured, 
and weighed, bore more visible and palpable 
fruit. In a few years it began to alter laws 
and treaties, and has made its way, through- 
out the convulsions of revolution and con- 
quest, to a due ascendant over the minds of 
men, with far less than the average of those 
obstructions of prejudice and clamour, which 
ordinarily choke the channels through which 
truth flows into practice.! The most emi- 



* Essays and Treatises, vol. ii. 

t Born, 1723 ; died, 1790. t See Note S. 



nent of those who have since cultivated and 
improved the science will be the foremost to 
address their immortal master, 



Tenebris tanlis lam clarum extollere lumen 

Qui primus potuisti, inlustrans commoda v i i ae , 
Te sequor !* 

In a science more difficult, because both 
ascending to more simple general principles, 
and running down through more minute ap- 
plications, though the success of Smith has 
been less complete, his genius is not less 
conspicuous. Perhaps there is no ethical 
work since Cicero's Offices, of which an 
abridgment enables the reader so inadequate- 
ly to estimate the merit, as the Theory of 
Moral Sentiments. This is not chiefly owing 
to the beauty of diction, as in the case of 
Cicero ; but io the variety of explanations of 
life and manners which embellish the book 
often more than they illuminate the theory. 
Yet, on the other hand, it must be owned 
that, for purely philosophical purposes, few 
books more need abridgment ; for the most 
careful reader frequently loses sight of prin- 
ciples buried under illustrations. The natu- 
rally copious and flowing style of the author 
is generally redundant ; and the repetition 
of certain formularies of the system is, in 
the later editions, so frequent as to be weari- 
some, and sometimes ludicrous. Perhaps 
Smith and Hobbes may be considered as 
forming the two extremes of good style in 
our philosophy; the first of graceful fulness 
falling into flaccidity ; while the masterly 
concision of the second is oftener carried 
forward into dictatorial dryness. Hume and 
Berkeley, though they are nearer the ex- 
treme of abundance,t are probably the least 
distant from perfection. 

That mankind are so constituted as to 
sympathize with each other's feelings, and 
to feel pleasure in the accordance of these 
feelings, are the only facts required by Dr. 
Smith; and they certainly must be granted 
to him. To adopt the feelings of another, 
is to approve them. When the sentiments 
of another are such as would be excited in 
us by the same objects, we approve them as 
morally proper. To obtain this accordance, 
it becomes necessary for him who enjoys, 
or suffers, to lower the expression of his 
feeling to the point to which the by-stander 
can raise his fellow-feelings; on this attempt 
are founded all the high virtues of self-de- 
nial and self-command : and it is equally 
necessary for the by-stander to raise his 
sympathy as near as he can to the level 
of the original feeling. In all unsocial pas- 
sions, such as anger, we have a divided 
sympathy between him who feels them, and 
those who are the objects of them. Hence 
the propriety of extremely moderating them. 
Pure malice is always to be concealed or 

* Lucrel. lib. iii. 

t This rpmnrli is chiefly applicable to Hume's 
Essays His Treaiise of Human Nature is more 
Hobbian in its general tenor, though it has Cice- 
ronian passages. 



144 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



disguised, because all sympathy is arrayed 
against it. In the private passions, where 
there is only a simple sympathy, — lhat with 
the original passion, — the expression has 
more liberty. The benevolent affections, 
where there is a double sympathy, — with 
those who feel them, arid those who are their 
objects, — are the most agreeable, and may 
be indulged with the least apprehension of 
finding no echo in other breasts. Sympathy 
with the gratitude of those who are benefited 
by good actions, prompts us to consider them 
as deserving of reward, and forms the sense 
of merit : as fellow-feeling with the resent- 
ment of those who are injured by crimes 
leads us to look on them as worthy of punish- 
ment, and constitutes the sense of demerit. 
These sentiments require not only beneficial 
actions, but benevolent motives; being com- 
pounded, in the case of merit, of a direct 
sympathy with the good disposition of the 
benefactor, and an indirect sympathy with 
the persons benefited ; in the opposite case, 
with precisely opposite sympathies. He who 
does an act of wrong to another to gratify 
his own passions, must not expect that the 
spectators, who have none of his undue par- 
tiality to his own interest, will enter into his 
feelings. In such a case, he knows that they 
will pity the person wronged, and be full of 
indignation against him. When he is cooled, 
he adopts the sentiments of others on his 
own crime, feels shame at the impropriety 
of his former passion, pity for those who 
have suffered by him, and a dread of punish- 
ment from general and just resentment. 
Such are the constituent parts of remorse. 

Our moral sentiments respecting ourselves 
arise from those which others feel concern- 
ing us. We feel a self-approbation whenever 
we believe that the general feeling of man- 
kind coincides with that state of mind in 
which we ourselves were at a given time. 
u We suppose ourselves the spectators of our 
own behaviour, and endeavour to imagine 
what effect it would in this light produce in 
us." We must view our own conduct with 
the eyes of others before we can judge it. 
The sense 6f duty arises from putting our- 
selves in the place of others, and adopting 
their sentiments respecting our own conduct. 
In utter solitude there could have been no 
self-approbation. The rules of Morality are 
a summary of those sentiments; and often 
beneficially stand in their stead when the 
self-delusions of passion would otherwise 
hide from us the non-conformity of our state 
of mind with that which, in the circum- 
stances, can be entered into and approved by 
impartial by-standers. It is hence that we 
learn to raise our mind above local or tem- 
porary clamour, and to fix our eyes on the 
surest indications of the general and lasting 
sentiments of human nature. "When we 
approve of any character or action, our sen- 
timents are derived from four sources: first, 
we sympathize with the motives of the 
agent ; secondly, we enter into the gratitude 
of those who nave been benefited by his 



actions; thirdly, we observe that his conduct 
has been agreeable to the general rules by 
which those two sympathies generally act ; 
and, last of all, when we consider such ac- 
tions as forming part of a system of beha- 
viour which tends to promote the happiness 
either of the individual or of society, they 
appear to derive a beauty from this utility, 
not unlike that which we ascribe to any 
well-contrived machine."* 



REMARKS. 

That Smith is the first who has drawn the 
attention of philosophers to one of the most 
curious and important parts of human na- 
ture, — who has looked closely and steadily 
into the workings of Sympathy, its sudden 
action and re-action, its instantaneous con- 
flicts and its emotions, its minute play and 
varied illusions, is sufficient to place him 
high among the cultivators of mental philo- 
sophy. He is very original in applications 
and explanations ; though, for his principle, 
he is somewhat indebted to Butler, more to 
Hutcheson, and most of all to Hume. These 
writers, except Hume in his original work, 
had derived sympathy, or a great part of it, 
from benevolence :t Smith, with deeper in- 
sight, inverted the order. The great part 
performed by various sympathies in moral 
approbation was first unfolded by him ; and 
besides its intrinsic importance, it strength- 
ened the proofs against those theories which 
ascribe that great function to Reason. — 
Another great merit of the theory of u sym- 
pathy" is, that it brings into the strongest 
light that most important characteristic of 
the moral sentiments which consist in their 
being the only principles leading to action, 
and dependent on emotion or sensibility, with 
respect to the objects of which, it is not only 
possible but natural for all mankind to agree. J 

The main defects of this theory seem to 
be the following. 

1. Though it is not to be condemned for 
declining inquiry into the origin of our fel- 
low-feeling, which, being one of the most 
certain of all facts, might well be assumed 
as ultimate in speculations of this nature, it 
is evident that the circumstances to which 
some speculators ascribe the formation of 
sympathy at least contribute to strengthen 
or impair, to contract or expand it. It will 
appear, more conveniently, in the next ar- 
ticle, that the theory of " sympathy" has 
suffered from the omission of these circum- 
stances. For the present, it is enough to ob- 
serve how much our compassion for various 

* Theory of Moral Sentiments, Edinb. 1801, ii. 
304. . 

t There is some confusion regarding this point 
in Butler's first sermon on Compassion. 

1 The feelings of beauty, grandeur, and what- 
ever else is comprehended under the name of 
Taste, form no exception, for they do not lead to 
action, but terminate in delightful contemplation ; 
which constitutes the essential distinction between 
them and the moral sentiments, to which, in some 
points of view, they may doubtless be likened. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



145 



sorts of animals, and our fellow-feeling with 
various races of men, are proportioned to the 
resemblance which they bear to ourselves, 
to the frequency of our intercourse with 
them, and to other causes which, in the opi- 
nion of some, afford evidence that sympathy 
itself is dependent on a more general law. 

2. Had Smith extended his view beyond 
the mere play of sympathy itself, and taken 
into account all its preliminaries, and ac- 
companiments, and consequences, it seems 
improbable that he would have fallen into 
the great error of representing the sympa- 
thies in their primitive state, without under- 
going any transformation, as continuing ex- 
clusively to constitute the moral sentiments. 
He is not content with teaching that they 
are the roots out of which these sentiments 
grow, the stocks on which they are grafted, 
the elements of which they are compounded ; 
— doctrines to which nothing could be ob- 
jected but their unlimited extent. He tacitly 
assumes, that if a sympathy in the begin- 
ning caused or formed a moral approbation, 
so it must ever continue to do. He proceeds 
like a geologist who should tell us that the 
body of this planet had always been in the 
same state, shutting his eyes to transition 
states, and secondary formations; or like a 
chemist who should inform us that no com- 
pound substance can possess new qualities 
entirely different from those which belong 
to its materials. His acquiescence in this 
old and still general error is the more re- 
markable, because Mr. Hume : s beautiful 
Dissertation on the Passions* had just before 
opened a striking view of some of the com- 
positions and decompositions which render 
the mind of a formed man as different from 
its .original state, as the organization of a 
complete animal is from the condition of the 
first dim speck of vitality. It is from this 
oversight (ill supplied by moral rules. — a 
loose stone in his building) that he has ex- 
posed himself to objections founded on ex- 
perience, to which it is impossible to attempt 
any answer. For it is certain that in many, 
nay in most cases of moral approbation, the 
adult man approves the action or disposition 
merely as right, and with a distinct con- 
sciousness that no process of sympathy in- 
tervenes between the approval and its ob- 
ject. It is certain that an unbiassed person 
would call it moral approbation, only as far 
as it excluded the interposition of any reflec- 
tion between the conscience and the mental 
state approved. Upon the supposition of an 
unchanged state of our active principles, it 
would follow that sympathy never had any 
share in the greater part of them. Had he 
Admitted the sympathies to be only elements 
entering into the formation of Conscience, 
their disappearance, or their appearance only 
as auxiliaries, after the mind is mature, 
would have been no more an objection to 
his system, than the conversion of a sub- 
stance from a transitional to a permanent 



Essays and Treatises, vol. ii. 
19 



state is a perplexity to the geologist. It 
would perfectly resemble the destruction of 
qualities, which is the ordinary effect of 
chemical composition. 

3. The same error has involved him in 
another difficulty perhaps still more fatal. 
The sympathies have nothing more of an 
imperative character than any other emo- 
tions. They attract or repel like other feel- 
ings, according to their intensity. It, then, 
the sympathies continue in mature minds to 
constitute the whole of Conscience, it be- 
comes utterly impossible to explain the cha- 
racter of command and supremacy, which is 
attested by the unanimous voice of mankind 
to belong to that faculty, and to form its es- 
sential distinction. Had he adopted the 
other representation, it would be possible to 
conceive, perhaps easy to explain, I hat Con- 
science should possess a quality which be- 
longed to none of its elements. 

4. It is to this representation that Smith's 
theory owes that unhappy appearance of 
rendering the rule of our conduct dependent 
on the notions and passions of those who 
surround us, of which the utmost efforts of 
the most refined ingenuity have not been 
able to divest it: This objection, or topic, is 
often ignorantly urged; the answers are fre- 
quently solid ; but to most men they must 
always appear to be an ingenious and intri- 
cate contrivance of cycles and epicycles, 
which perplex the mind too much to satisfy 
it, and seem devised to evade difficulties 
which cannot be solved. All theories which 
treat Conscience as built up by circumstances 
inevitably acting on all human minds, are, 
indeed, liable to somewhat of the same mis- 
conception ; unless they place in the strongest 
light (what Smith's theory excludes) the to- 
tal destruction of the scaffolding, which was 
necessary only to the erection of the build- 
ing, after the mind is adult and mature, and 
warn the hastiest reader, that it then rests 
on its own foundation alone. 

5. The constant reference of our own dis- 
positions and actions to the point of view 
from which they are estimated by others, 
seems to be rather an excellent expedient 
for preserving our impartiality, than a funda- 
mental principle of Ethics. But impartiality, 
which is no more than a removal of some 
hinderance to right judgment, supplies no 
materials for its exercise, and no rule, or 
even principle, for its guidance. It nearly 
coincides with the Christian precept of '-'do- 
ins unto others as we would they should do 
unto us ;" — an admirable practical maxim, 
but. as Leibnitz has said truly, intended only 
as a correction of self-partiality. 

6. Lastly, this ingenious system renders 
all morality relative, by referring it to the 
pleasure of an agreement of our feelings 
with those of others, — by confining itself 
entirely to the question of moral approba- 
tion, and by providing no place for the consi- 
deration of that quality which distinguishes 
all good from all bad actions ; — a defect 
which will appear in the sequel to be more 

N 



146 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



immediately fatal to a theorist of the senti- 
mental, than to one of the intellectual school. 
Smith shrinks from considering utility in 
that light, as soon as it presents itself, or 
very strangely ascribes its power over our 
moral feelings to admiration of the mere 
adaptation of means to ends, (which might 
surely he as well felt for the production of 
wide-spread misery, by a consistent system 
of wicked conduct.) — instead of ascribing it 
to benevolence, with Hutcheson and Hume, 
or to an extension of that very sympathy 
which is his own first principle. 

RICHARD PRICE.* 

About the same time with the celebrated 
work of Smith, but with a popular reception 
very different; Dr. Richard Price, an excel- 
lent and eminent non-conformist minister, 
published A Review of the Principal Ques- 
tions in Morals ;t — an attempt to revive the 
intellectual theory of moral obligation, which 
seemed to have fallen under the attacks of 
Butler, Hutcheson, and Hume, and before 
that of Smith. It attracted little observation 
at first j but being afterwards countenanced 
by the Scottish school, it may seem to de- 
serve some notice, at a moment when the 
kindred speculations of the German meta- 
physicians have effected an establishment 
in France, and are no longer unknown in 
England. 

The Understanding itself is, according to 
Price, an independent source of simple ideas. 
• ; The various kinds of agreement and dis- 
agreement between our ideas, spoken of by 
Locke, are so many new simple ideas." 
"This is true of our ideas of proportion, of 
our ideas of identity and diversity, existence, 
connection, cause and effect, power, possi- 
bility, and of our ideas of right and wrong." 
''The first relates to quantity, the last to 
actions, the rest to all things." "Like all 
other simple ideas, they are undefinable." 

It is needless to pursue this theory farther, 
till an answer be given to the observation 
made before, that as no perception or judg- 
ment, or other unmixed act of Understand- 
ing, merely as such, and without the agency 
of some intermediate emotion, can affect the 
Will, the account given by Dr. Price of per- 
ceptions or judgments respecting moral sub- 
jects, does not advance one step towards the 
explanation of the authority of Conscience 
over the Will, which is the matter to be ex- 
plained. Indeed, this respectable writer felt 
the difficulty so much as to allow, "that in 
contemplating the acts of moral agents, we 
have both a perception of the understanding 
and a feeling of the heart." He even ad- 
mits, that it would have been highly perni- 
cious to us if our reason had been left with- 
out such support. But he has not shown 
how, on such a supposition, we could have 
acted on a mere opinion; nor has he given 

* Born, 1723; died, 1791. 
t The third edition was published at London in 
1787. 



any proof that what he calls •'■'support" is 
not, in truth, the whole of what directly pro- 
duces the conformity of voluntary acts to Mo- 
rality. 4 

DAVID HARTLEY.! 

The work of Dr. Hartley, entitled "Obser- 
vations on Man."; is distinguished by an un- 
common union of originality with modesty, 
in unfolding a simple and fruitful principle 
of human nature. It is disfigured by the 
absurd affectation of mathematical forms 
th"n prevalent; and it is encumbered and 
deformed by a mass of physiological specu- 
lations. — groundless, or at best unceitain, 
and wholly foreign from its proper purpose, 
— which repel the inquirer into mental phi- 
losophy from its perusal, and lessen the re- 
spect of the physiologist for the author's 
judgment. It is an unfortunate example of 
the disposition predominent among undis- 
tinguishing theorists to class together all the 
appearances which are observed at the same 
time, and in the immediate neighbourhood 
of each other. At that period, chemical 
phenomena were referred to mechanical 
principles; vegetable and animal life were 
subjected to mechanical or chemical laws : 
and while some physiologists§ ascribed the 
vital functions of the Understanding, the 
greater part of metaphysicians were dispos- 
ed, with a grosser confusion, to derive the 
intellectual operations from bodily causes. 
The error in the latter case, though less im- 
mediately perceptible, is deeper and more 
fundamental than in the other; since it over- 
looks the primordial and perpetual distinc- 
tion between the being which thinks and the 
thing which is thought of, — not to be lost ' 
sight of, by the mind's eye, even for a twink- 
ling, without involving all nature in darkness 
and confusion. Haitley and Condillac.il who, 
much about the same time, but seemingly 
without any knowledge of each other's spe- 
culations, IT began in a very similar mode to 

* The following sentences will illustrate the 
text, and are in truth applicable to all moral iheo- 
ries on merely intelleciual principles: "Reason 
alone, did we possess it in a higher degree, would 
answer all the ends of the passions. Thus there 
would be no need of parental affection, were all 
parents sufficiently acquainted wiih ihe reasons 
for taking upon them the guidance and support of 
those whom Nature has placed under their care, 
and were they virtuous enough to he always deter- 
mined hy those reasons." — Review, p. 121. A 
very slighi consideraiion will show, ihat without 
I he last words the preceding part would be utterly 
false, and with them it is utterly insignificant. 

t Born, 1705; died, 1757. 

t London, 1749 

§ Among them was G. E. Stahl, born, 1660; 
died, 1734 ; — a German physician and chemist of 
deserved eminence. 

II Born. 1715; died, 1780. 

IT Trarc sur l'Origine des Connoissances Hu- 
maiues, 174(3 ; Traile des Sysfemes, 1749 ; Trniie 
des Sensations, 1754. Foreign books weie then 
little and slowly known in England. Finn ley's 
reading, except on theology, seems coi fined to ihe 
physical and mathematical sciences; and his whole 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



147 



simplify, but also to mutilate the system of 
Locke, stopped short of what is called ^ma- 
terialism," which consummates the con- 
fusion, but touched the threshold. Thither, 
it must be owned, their philosophy pointed, 
and thither their followers proceeded. Hart- 
ley and Bonnet.* still more than Condi! lac, 
suffered themselves, like most of their con- 
temporaries, to overlook the important truth, 
that all the changes in the organs which can 
be likened to other material phenomena, are 
nothing more than antecedents and prerequi- 
sites of perception, bearing not the faintest 
likeness to it, — as much outward in relation 
to the thinking principle, as if they occurred 
in any other part of matter; and that the 
entire comprehension of those changes, if it 
were attained, would not bring us a step 
nearer to the nature of thought. They who 
would have been the first to exclaim against 
the mistake of a sound for a colour, fell into 
the more unspeakable error of confounding 
the perception of objects, as outward, with 
the consciousness of our own mental opera- 
tions. Locke's doctrine, that "reflection" 
was a separate source of ideas, left room for 
this greatest of all distinctions; though with 
much unhappiness of expression, and with 
no little variance from the course of his own 
speculations. Hartley, Condillac. and Bon- 
net, in hewing away this seeming deformity 
from the system of their master, unwittingly 
struck off the part of the building which, 
however unsightly, gave it the power of 
yielding some shelter and guard to truths, of 
which the exclusion rendered it utterly un- 
tenable. 'They became consistent Nominal- 
ists ; in reference to whose controversy Locke 
expresses himself with confusion and contra- 
diction : but on this subject they added no- 
thing to what had been taught by Hobbes 
and Berkeley. Both Hartley and Condillact 
have the merit of having been nnseduced by 
the temptations either of scepticism, or of 
useless idealism ; which,even if Berkeley and 
Hume could have been unknown to them, 
must have been within sight. Both agree in 
referring all the intellectual operations to the 
" association of ideas," and in representing 
that association as reducible to the single law, 
u that ideas which enter the mind at the same 
time, acquire a tendency to call up each other, 
which is in direct proportion to the frequen- 

manner of thinking and writing is so different from 
that of Condillac, that there is not the least reason 
to suppose the work of the one to have been 
known to the other. The work of Hartley, as we 
learn from the sketch of his life by his son, pre- 
fixed to the edition of 1791, was begun in 1730, 
and finished in 174fi. 

* Born, 1720; died, 1793. 

t The following note of Condillac will show 
how much he differed from Hartley in his mode of 
considering the Newtonian hypothesis of vibra- 
tions, and how far he was in that respect superior to 
hiii " Je suppose ici et ailleurs que les percep- 
tions de l'ntne ont pour cause physique 1'ebranle- 
rnent des fibres du cerveau ; no?i que je resnrde 
cette hi/pnlhese comme demontrae. mais pnrcequ'elle 
ex! la plus commode pour expliquer ma pensee." — 
(Euvres de Condillac, Paris, P98, i. 60. 



cy of their having entered together." la 
this important part of their doctrine they 
seem, whether unconsciously or otherwise, 
to have only repeated, and very much ex- 
panded, the opinion of Hobbes.* In its sim- 
plicity it is more agreeable than the system 
of Mr. Hume, who admitted five independent 
laws of association ; and it is in comprehen- 
sion far superior to the views of the same 
subject by Mr. Locke, whose ill-chosen name 
still retains its place in our nomenclature, 
but who only appeals to the principle as ex- 
plaining some fancies and whimsies of the 
human mind. The capital fault of Hartley 
is that of a rash generalization, which may 
prove imperfect, and which is at least pre- 
mature. Al! attempts to explain instinct by 
this principle have hitherto been unavailing : 
many of the most important processes of 
reasoning have not hitherto been accounted 
for by it.t It would appear by a close ex- 
amination, that even this theory, simple as 
it appears, presupposes many facts relating to 
the mind, of which its authors do not seem 
to have suspected the existence. How many 
ultimate facts of that nature, for example, 
are contained and involved in Aristotle's 
celebrated comparison of the mind in its first 
state to a sheet of unwritten paper ! j The 
texture of the paper, even its colour, the sort 
of instrument fit to act on it, its capacity to 
receive and to retain impressions, all its dif- 
ferences, from steel on the one hand to water 
on the other, certainly presuppose some facts, 
and may imply many, without a distinct 
statement of which, the nature of writing 
could not be explained to a person wholly 
ignorant of it. How many more, as well as 
greater laws, may be necessary to enable 
mind to perceive outward objects! If the 
power of perception may r be thus depend- 
ent, why may not what is called the " asso- 
ciation of ideas," the attraction between 
thoughts, the power of one to suggest ano- 
ther, be affected by mental laws hitherto 
unexplored, perhaps unobserved 1 

But, to return from this digression into the 
intellectual part of man, it becomes proper 
to say, that the difference between Hartley 
and Condillac, and the immeasurable supe- 
riority of the former, are chiefly to be found 
in the application which Hartley first made 
of the law of association to that other un- 
named portion of our nature with which 
Morality more immediately deals ; — that 
which feels pain and pleasure, — is influ- 
enced by appetites and loathings, by r desires 
and aversions, by affections and repugnances. 
Condillac's Treatise on Sensation, published 
five years after the work of Hartley, repro- 



* Human Nature, chap. iv. v. vi. For more 
ancient statements, see NoieT. 

t " Ce que les logiciens ont dit des raisonne- 
ments dans bien des volumes, me paroit entiere- 
ment superflu, et de nul usage." — Cot'dillac, i. 
115; an assertion of which the gross absurdity 
will be apparent to the readers of Dr. Whateley's 
Treatise on Logic, one of the most important 
works of i he present age, 

1 See Note U. 



348 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



duces the doctrine of Hobbes, with its root, 
namely, that love and hope are but trans- 
formed "sensations,"* (by which he means 
perceptions of the senses,) and its wide- 
spread branches, consisting in desires and 
passions, which are only modifications of 
self-love. '-The words 'goodness' and 'beau- 
ty,' " says he, almost in the very words of 
Hobbes, "express those qualities of things 
by which they contribute to our pleasure."! 
In the whole of his philosophical works, we 
find no trace of any desire produced by as- 
sociation, of any disinterested principle, or 
indeed of any distinction between the per- 
cipient and what, perhaps, we may venture 
to call the emotive or the pathematic part of 
human nature, for the present, until some 
more convenient and agreeable name shall 
be hit on by some luckier or more skilful 
adventurer. 

To the ingenuous, humble, and anxiously 
conscientious character of Hartley himself, 
we owe the knowledge that, about the year 
1730, he was informed that the Rev. Mr. 
Gay of Sidney-Sussex College, Cambridge, 
then living in the west of England, asserted 
the possibility of deducing all our intellectual 
pleasures and pains from association; that 
this led him (Hartley) to consider the power 
of association ; and that about that time Mr. 
Gay published his sentiments on this matter 
in a dissertation prefixed to Bishop Law's 
Translation of King's Origin of Evil. I No 
writer deserves the praise of abundant fair- 
ness more than Hartley in this avowal. The 
dissertation of which he speaks is mentioned 
by no philosopher but himself. It suggested 
nothing apparently to any other reader. The 
general texture of it is that of homespun sel- 
fishness. The writer had the merit to see 
and to own that Hutcheson had established 
as a fact the reality of moral sentiments and 
disinterested affections. He blames, per- 
haps justly, that most ingenious man,$ for 

* Condillac, iii. 21 ; more especially Traite des 
Sensations, pari ii. chap. vi. "lis love for out- 
ward objects is only an effect of love for itself." 

t Trait6 des Sensations, part iv. chap. iii. 

t Hartley's preface to the Observations on Man. 
The word "intellectual" is too narrow. Even 
" mental" would be of very doubtful propriety. 
The theory in its full extent requires a word such 
as " inorganic" (if no better can be discovered), 
extending to all gratification, not distinctly referred 
to some specific organ, or at least to some assign- 
able part of the bodily frame. 

§ It has not been mentioned in its proper place, 
that Hutcheson appears nowhere to greater ad- 
vantage than in some letters on the Fable of the 
Bees, published when he was very young, at Dub- 
lin, with the signature of " Hibernicus." " Pri- 
vate vices — public benefits," says he, " may sig- 
nify any one of these five distinct propositions: 
1st. They are in themselves public benefits; or, 
2d. They naturally produce public happiness ; or, 
3d. They may be made to produce it; or, 4th. 
They may naturally flow from it ; or, 5th. At 
least they may probably flow from it in our infirm 
nature." See a small volume containing Thoughts 
on Laughter, and Remarks on the Fable of the 
Bees, Glasgow, 1758, in which these letters are 
lepublished. 



assuming that these sentiments and affec- 
tions are implanted, and partake of the na- 
ture of instincts. The object of his disserta- 
tion is to reconcile the mental appearances 
described by Hutcheson with the first princi- 
ple of the selfish system, that "the true prin- 
ciple of all our actions is our own happiness." 
Moral feelings and social affections are, ac- 
cording to him, "resolvable into reason, 
pointing out our private happiness; and 
ivhencver this end is not perceived, they are 
to be accounted for from the association of 
ideas." Even in the single passage in which 
he shows a glimpse of the truth, he begins 
with confusion, advances with hesitation, and 
after holding in his grasp for an instant the 
principle which sheds so strong a light around 
it, suddenly drops it from his hand. Instead 
of receiving the statements of Hutcheson 
(his silence relating to Butler is unaccounta- 
ble) as enlargements of the science of man, 
he deals with them merely as difficulties to 
be reconciled with the received system of 
universal selfishness. In the conclusion of 
his fourth section, he well exemplifies the 
power of association in forming the love of 
money, of fame, of power, &c. ; but he still 
treats these effects of association as aberra- 
tions and infirmities, the fruits of our forget- 
fulness and shortsightedness, and not at all 
as the great process employed to sow and 
rear the most important principles of a social 
and moral nature. 

This precious mine may therefore be truly 
said to have been opened by Hartley ; for he 
who did such superabundant justice to the 
hints of Gay, would assuredly not have 
withheld the like tribute from Hutcheson, 
had he observed the happy expression of 
"secondary passions," which ought to have 
led that philosopher himself farther than he 
ventured to advance. The extraordinary 
value of this part of Hartley's system has 
been hidden by various causes, which have 
also enabled writers, who have borrowed 
from it, to decry it. The influence of his 
medical habits renders many of his exam- 
ples displeasing, and sometimes disgusting. 
He has none of that knowledge of the world, 
of that familiarity with Literature, of that 
delicate perception of the beauties of Nature 
and Art, which not only supply the most 
agreeable illustrations of mental philosophy, 
but afford the most obvious and striking in- 
stances of its happy application to subjects 
generally interesting. His particular appli- 
cations of the general law are often mistaken, 
and are seldom more than brief notes and 
hasty suggestions; — the germs of theories 
which, while some might adopt them with- 
out detection, others might discover without 
being aware that they were anticipated. — 
To which it may be added, that in spite m 
the imposing forms of Geometry, the work 
is not really distinguished by good method, 
or even uniform adherence to that which had 
been chosen. His style is entitled to no 
praise but that of clearness, and a simplicity 
of diction, through which is visible a singu- 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



149 



lar simplicity of mind. No book perhaps 
exists which, with so few of the common 
allurements, comes at last so much to please 
by the picture it presents of the writer's cha- 
racter, — a character which kept him pure 
from the pursuit, often from the conscious- 
ness of novelty, and rendered him a discove- 
rer in spite of his own modesty. In those 
singular passages in which, amidst the pro- 
found internal tranquillity of all the Euro- 
pean nations, he foretells approaching con- 
vulsions, to be followed by the overthrow of 
states and Churches, his quiet and gentle 
spirit, elsewhere almost ready to inculcate 
passive obedience for the sake of peace, is 
supported under its awful forebodings by the 
hope of that general progress in virtue and 
happiness which he saw through the prepa- 
ratory confusion. A meek piety, inclining 
towards mysticism, and sometimes indulg- 
ing in visions which borrow a lustre from his 
fervid benevolence, was beautifully, and per- 
haps singularly, blended in him with zeal 
for the most unbounded freedom of inquiry, 
flowing both from his own conscientious be- 
lief and his unmingled love of Truth. Who- 
ever can so far subdue his repugnance to 
petty or secondary faults as to bestow a care- 
ful perusal on the work, must be unfortunate 
if he does not see, feel, and own, that the 
writer was a great philosopher and a good 
man. 

To those who thus study the work, it will 
be apparent that Hartley, like other philoso- 
phers, either overlooked or failed explicitly 
to announce that distinction between per- 
ception and emotion, without which no sys- 
tem of mental philosophy is complete. — 
Hence arose the partial and incomplete view 
of Truth conveyed by the use of the phrase 
"association of ideas." If the word "asso- 
ciation," which rather indicates the connec- 
tion between separate things than the perfect 
combination and fusion which occur in many 
operations of the mind, must, notwithstand- 
ing its inadequacy, still be retained, the 
phrase ought at least to be "association" of 
thoughts with emotions, as well as with each 
other. With that enlargement an objection 
to the Hartleian doctrine would have been 
avoided, and its originality, as well as supe- 
riority over that of Condi Uac, would have 
appeared indisputable. The examples of 
avarice and other factitious passions are very 
well chosen ; first, because few will be found 
to suppose that they are original principles 
of human nature;* secondly, because the 
process by which they are generated, being 
subsequent to the age of attention and recol- 
lection, may be brought home to the under- 
standing of all men; and, thirdly, because 

* A very ingenious man, Lord Karnes, whose 
works had a great effect in rousing the mind of 
his contemporaries and counlrymen, has indeed 
fancied lhat there is " a hoarding instinct" in man 
and other animals. But such conclusions are not 
so much ohjects of confutation, as ludicrous proofs 
of the absurdity of the premises which lead to 
them. 



they afford the most striking instance of se- 
condary passions, which not only become in- 
dependent of the primary principles from 
which they are derived, but hostile to them, 
and so superior in strength as to be capable 
of overpowering their parents. As soon as 
the mind becomes familiar with the frequent 
case of the man who first pursued money to 
purchase pleasure, but at last, when he be' 
comes a miser, loves his hoard better than 
all that it could purchase, and sacrifices all 
pleasures for its increase, we are prepared 
to admit that, by a like process, the affec- 
tions, when they are fixed on the happiness 
of others as their ultimate object, without 
any reflection on self, may not only be per- 
fectly detached from self-regard or private 
desires, but may subdue these and every 
other antagonist passion which can stand in 
their way. As the miser loves money for 
its own sake, so may the benevolent man 
delight in the well-being of his fellows. His 
good-will becomes as disinterested as if it 
had been implanted and underived. The 
like process applied to what is called " self- 
love," or the desire of permanent well-being, 
clearly explains the mode in which that prin- 
ciple is gradually formed from the separate 
appetites, without whose previous existence 
no notion of well-being could be obtained. — ■ 
In like manner, sympathy, perhaps itself the 
result of a transfer of our own personal feel^ 
ings by association to other sentient beingSj 
and of a subsequent transfer of their feelings 
to our own minds, engenders the various so- 1 
cial affections, which at last generate in 
most minds some regard to the well-being 
of our country, of mankind, of all creatures 
capable of pleasure. Rational Self-love con- 
trols and guides those far keener self-regard- 
ing passions of which it is the child, in the 
same manner as general benevolence balan- 
ces and governs the variety of much warmer 
social affections from which it springs. It is 
an ancient and obstinate error of philosophers 
to represent these two calm principles as be- 
ing the source of the impelling passions and 
affections, instead of being among the last 
results of them. Each of them exercises a 
sort of authority in its sphere; but the do- 
minion of neither is co-existent with the 
whole nature of man. Though they have 
the power to quicken and check, they are 
both too feeble to impel ; and if the primary 
principles were extinguished, they would 
both perish from want of nourishment. If 
indeed all appetites and desires were de« 
stroyed, no subject would exist on which 
either of these general principles could act. 

The affections, desires, and emotions, 
having for their ultimate object the disposi- 
tions and actions of voluntary agents, which 
alone, from the nature of their object, are 
co-extensive with the whole of our active 
nature, are, according to the same philoso- 
phy, necessarily formed in every human 
mind by the transfer of feeling which is ef- 
fected by the principle of Association. Gra- 
titude, pity, resentment, and shame, seem to 
n2 



150 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



be the simplest, the most active, and the ' 
most uniform elements in their composition. 
It is easy to perceive how the complacency 
inspired by a benefit maybe transferred to a 
benefactor, — thence to all beneficent beings 
and acts. The well-chosen instance of the 
nurse familiarly exemplifies the manner in 
which the child transfers his complacency 
from the gratification of his senses to the 
■ cause of it. ami thus learns an affection for 
her who is the source of his enjoyment. — , 
With this simple process concur, in the case 
of a tender nurse, and far more of a mother, 
a thousand acts of relief and endearment, the 
complacency that results from which is fixed j 
on the person from whom they flow, and in 
some degree extended by association to all j 
who resemble that person. So much of the I 
pleasure of early life depends on others, that 
the like process is almost constantly repeated. 
Hence the origin of benevolence may be un- , 
derstood, and the disposition to approve all 
benevolent, and disapprove all malevolent 
acts. Hence also the same approbation and 
disapprobation are extended to all acts which ' 
we clearly perceive to promote or obstruct 
the happiness of men. When the compla- 
cency is expressed in action, benevolence 
may be said to be transformed into a part of 
Conscience. The rise of sympathy may pro- 
bably be explained by the process of associ- 
ation, which transfers the feelings of others 
to ourselves, and ascribes our own feelings to 
others, — at first, and in some degree always, 
in proportion as the resemblance of ourselves 
to others is complete. The likeness in the 
outward signs of emotion is one of the widest 
channels in this commerce of hearts. Pity 
thereby becomes one of the grand sources of 
benevolence, and perhaps contributes more 
largely than gratitude: it is indeed one of 
the first motives to the conferring of those 
benefits which inspire grateful affection. — 
Sympathy with the sufferer, therefore, is 
also transformed into a real sentiment, di- 
rectly approving benevolent actions and dis- 
positions, and more remotely, all actions that 
promote happiness. The anger of the suffer- 
er, first against all causes of pain, afterwards 
against all intentional agents who produce it, 
and finally against all those in whom the in- 
fliction of pain proceeds from a mischievous 
disposition, when it is communicated to others 
by sympathy, and is so far purified by gra- 
dual separation from selfish and individual 
interest as to be equally felt against all wrong- 
doers, — whether the wrong be done against 
ourselves, our friends, or our enemies, — is 
the root out of which springs that which is 
commonly and well called a " sense of jus- 
tice" — the most indispensable, perhaps, of 
all the component parts of the moral facul- 
ties. 

This is the main guard against Wrong. 
It relates to that portion of Morality where 
many of the outward acts are capable of 
being reduced under certain rules, of which 
the violations, wherever the rule is suffi- 
ciently precise, and the mischief sufficiently 



great, may be guarded against by the terror 
of punishment. In the observation of the 
rules of justice consists duty; breaches of 
them we denominate v : crimes?' An abhor- 
rence of crimes, especially of those which 
indicate the absence of benevolence, as well 
as of regard for justice, is strongly fell j be- 
cause well -framed penal laws, being the 
lasting declaration of the moral indignation 
of many generations of mankind, as long as 
they remain in unison with the sentiments 
of the age and country for which they are 
destined, exceedingly strengthen the same 
feeling in every individual; and this they do 
wherever the laws do not so much deviate 
from the habitual feelings of the multitude 
as to produce a struggle between law and 
sentiment, in which it is hard to say on 
which side success is most deplorable. A 
man who performs his duties may be es- 
teemed, but is not admired ; because it 
requires no more than ordinary virtue to act 
well where it is shameful and dangerous to do 
otherwise. The righteousness of those who 
act solely from such inferior motives, is little 
better than that " of the Scribes and Phari- 
sees." Those only are just in the eye of the 
moralist who act justly from a constant dis- 
position to render to every man his own.* 
Acts of kindness, of generosity, of pity, of 
placability, of humanity, when they are 
long continued, can hardly fail mainly to 
flow from the pure fountain of an excellent 
nature. They are not reducible to rules; 
and the attempt to enforce them by punish- 
ment would destroy them. They are virtues-, 
of which the essence consists in a good dis- 
position of mind. 

As we gradually transfer our desire from 
praise to praiseworthiness, this principle also 
is adopted into consciousness. On the other 
hand, when we are led by association to feel 
a painful contempt for those feelings and 
actions of our past self which we despise in 
others, there is developed in our hearts an- 
other element of that moral sense. It is a 
remarkable instance of the power of the 
law of Association, that the contempt or ab- 
horrence which we feel for the bad actions 
of others may be transferred by it, in any 
degree of strength, to our own past actions 
of the like kind : and as the hatred of bad 
actions is transferred to the agent, the same 
transfer may occur in our own case in a 
manner perfectly similar to that of which 
we are conscious in our feelings towards our 
fellow-creatures. There are many causes 
which render it generally feebler ; but it is 
perfectly evident that it requires no more 
than a sufficient strength of moral feeling 
to make it equal ; and that the most appa- 
rently hyperbolical language used by peni- 



* " Justitia est constans et perpetua voluntas 
suum cuique tribuendi :" an excellent definition 
in the mouih of the Stoical moralists, from whom 
it is borrowed, but altogether misplaced by the 
Roman jurists in a body of laws which deal only 
with outward acts in their relation to the order 
and interests of society. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



151 



tents, in describing their remorse, may be 
justified by the principle of Association. 

At this step in our progress, it is proper to 
observe, that a most important consideration 
has escaped Hartley, as well as every other 
philosopher.* The language of all mankind 
implies that the Moral Faculty, whatever it 
may be. and from what origin soever it may 
spring, is intelligibly and properly spoken ol 
as One. It is as common in mind, as in 
matter, for a compound to have properties 
not to be found in any of its constituent 
parts. The truth of this proposition is as 
certain in the human feelings as in any ma- 
terial combination. It is therefore easily to 
be understood, that originally separate feel- 
ings may be so perfectly blended by a pro- 
cess performed in each mind, that they can 
no longer be disjoined from each other, but 
must always co-operate, and thus reach the 
only union which we can conceive. The 
sentiment of moral approbation, formed by 
association out of antecedent affections, may 
become so perfectly independent of them, 
that we are no longer conscious of the means 
by which it was formed, and never can in 
practice repeat, though we may in theory 
perceive, the process by which it was gene- 
rated. It is in that mature and sound state 
of our nature that our emotions at the view 
of Right and Wrong are ascribed to Con- 
science. But why, it may be asked, do 
these feelings, rather than others, run into 
each other, and constitute Conscience ? The 
answer seems to be what has already been 
intimated in the observations on Butler. The 
affinity between these feelings consists in 
this, that while all other feelings relate to 
outward objects, they alone contemplate ex- 
clusively the dispositions and actions of volun- 
tary agents. When they are completely 
transferred from objects, and even persons, 
to dispositions and actions, they are iitted. 
by the perfect coincidence of their aim. for 
combining to form that one faculty which is 
directed only to that aim. 

The words "Duty" and "Virtue," and the 
word "ought," which most perfectly denotes 
duty, but is also connected with Virtue, in 
every well-constituted mind, in this state be- 
come the fit language of the acquired, per- 
haps, but universally and necessarily ac- 
quired, faculty of Conscience. Some account 
of its peculiar nature has been attempted in 
the remarks on Butler; for a further one a 
fitter occasion will occur hereafter. Some 
light may however now be thrown on the 
subject by a short statement of the hitherto 
unobserved distinction between the moral 
sentiments and another class of feelings 
with which they have some qualities in 
common. The "pleasures" (so called) of 
imagination appear, at least in most cases, 
to originate in association: but it is not till 
the original cause of the gratification is ob- 
literated from the mind, that they acquire 
their proper character. Order and propor- 

* See supra, section on Butler. 



tion may be at first chosen for their conve- 
nience: it is not until they are admired for 
their own sake that they become objects of 
taste. Though all the proportions for which 
a horse is valued may be indications of 
speed, safety, strength, ami health, it is not 
the less true that they only can be said to 
admire the animal for his beauty, who leave 
such considerations out of the account while 
they admire. The pleasure of contempla- 
tion in these particulars of Nature and Art 
becomes universal and immediate, being 
entirely detached from all regard to indi- 
vidual beings. It contemplates neither use 
nor interest. In this important particular 
the pleasures of imagination agree with the 
moral sentiments: hence the application of 
the same language to both in ancient and 
modern times ; — hence also it arises that they 
may contemplate the very same qualities and 
objects. There is certainly much beauty in 
the softer virtues, — much grandeur in the 
soul of a hero or a martyr : but the essential 
distinction still remains ; the purest moral 
taste contemplates these qualities only with 
quiescent delight or reverence ; it has no 
further view; it points towards no action. 
Conscience, on the contrary, containing in it 
a pleasure in the prospect of doing right, 
and an ardent desire to act well, having for 
its sole object the dispositions and acts of 
voluntary agents, is not, like moral taste, sa- 
tisfied with passive contemplation, but con- 
stantly tends to act on the will and conduct 
of the man. Moral taste may aid it, may 
be absorbed into it, and usually contributes 
its part to the formation of the moral faculty; 
but it is distinct from that faculty, and may 
be disproportioned to it. Conscience, being 
by its nature confined to mental dispositions 
and voluntary acts, is of necessity excluded 
from the ordinary consideration of all things 
antecedent to these dispositions. The cir- 
cumstances from which such states of mind 
may arise, are most important objects of 
consideration for the Understanding; but 
they are without the sphere of Conscience, 
which never ascends beyond the heart of 
the man. It is thus that in the eye of Con- 
science man becomes amenable to its autho- 
rity for all his inclinations as well as deeds; 
that some of them are approved, loved, and 
revered ; and that all the outward effects of 
disesteem, contempt, or moral anger, are 
felt to be the just lot of others. 

But, to return to Hartley, from this per- 
haps intrusive statement of what does not 
properly belong to him : he represents all 
the social affections of gratitude, veneration, 
and love, inspired by the virtues of our fel- 
low-men, as capable of being transferred 
by association to the transcendent and un- 
mingled goodness of the Ruler of the world, 
and thus to give rise to piety, to which he 
gives the name of " the theopathetic affec- 
tion." This principle, like all the former in 
the mental series, is gradually detached from 
the trunk on which it grew : it takes sepa- 
rate root, and may altogether overshadow 



152 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



the parent stock. As such a Being cannot 
be conceived without the most perfect and 
constant reference to His goodness, so piety 
may not only become a part of Conscience, 
but its governing and animating principle, 
which, alter long lending its own energy and 
authority to every other, is at last described 
by our philosopher as swallowing up all of 
them in order to perform the same functions 
more infallibly. 

In every stage of this progress we are 
taught by Dr. Hartley that a new product 
appears, which becomes perfectly distinct 
from the elements which formed it, which 
may be utterly dissimilar to them, and may 
attain any degree of vigour, however superior 
to theirs. Thus the objects of the private 
desires disappear when we are employed 
in the pursuit of our lasting welfare; that 
which was first sought only as a means, 
may come to be pursued as an end, and pre- 
ferred to the original end ; the good opinion 
of our fellows becomes more valued than 
the benefits for which it was at first courted ; 
a man is ready to sacrifice his life for him 
who has shown generosity, even to others ; 
and persons otherwise of common character 
are capable of cheerfully marching in a for- 
lorn hope, or of almost instinctively leaping 
into the sea to save the life of an entire 
stranger. These last acts, often of almost 
unconscious virtue, so familiar to the soldier 
and the sailor, so unaccountable on certain 
systems of philosophy, often occur without 
a thought of applause and reward ; — too 
quickly for the thought of the latter, too ob- 
scurely for the hope of the former; and they 
are of such a nature that no man could be 
impelled to them by the mere expectation 
of either. 

The gratitude, sympathy, resentment, and 
shame, which are the principal constituent 
parts of the Moral Sense, thus lose their 
separate agency, and constitute an entirely 
new faculty, co-extensive with all the dis- 
positions and actions of voluntary agents ; 
though some of them are more predominant 
in particular cases of moral sentiment, than 
others, and though the aid of all continues to 
be necessary in their original character, as 
subordinate but distinct motives of action. 
Nothing more evidently points out the dis- 
tinction of the Hartleian system from all sys- 
tems called "selfish," — not to say its superi- 
ority in respect to disinterestedness over all 
moral systems before Butler and Hutcheson, 
— than that excellent part of it which relates 
to the £; rule of life." The various principles 
of human action rise in value according to 
the order in which they spring up after each 
other. We can then only be in a state of 
as much enjoyment as we are evidently ca- 
pable of attaining, when we prefer interest 
to the original gratifications j honour to in- 
terest : the pleasures of imagination to those 
of sense ; the dictates of Conscience to plea- 
sure, interest, and reputation; the well-being 
of fellow-creatures to our own indulgences; 
in a word, when we pursue moral good and 



social happiness chiefly and for their own 
sake. -'With self-interest," says Hartley, 
somewhat inaccurately in language, "man 
must begin. He may end in self-annihila- 
tion. Theopathy, or piety, although the last 
result of the purified and exalted sentiments, 
may at length swallow up every other prin- 
ciple, and absorb the whole man." Even if 
this last doctrine should be an exaggeration 
unsuited to our present condition, it will the 
more strongly illustrate the compatibility, or 
rather the necessary connection, of this theo- 
ry with the existence and power of perfectly 
disinterested principles of human action. 

It is needless to remark on the secondary 
and auxiliary causes which contribute to the 
formation of moral sentiment; — education, 
imitation, general opinion, laws, and govern- 
ment. They all presuppose the Moral Facul- 
ty : in an improved state of society they con- 
tribute powerfully to strengthen it, and on 
some occasions they enfeeble, distort, and 
maim it ; but in all cases they must them- 
selves be tried by the lest of an ethical stand- 
ard. The value of this doctrine will not be 
essentially affected by supposing a greater 
number of original principles than those as- 
sumed by Dr. Hartley. The principle of As- 
sociation applies as much to a greater as to a 
smaller number. It is a quality common to 
it with all theories, that the more simplicity 
it reaches consistently with truth, the more 
perfect it becomes. Causes are not to be 
multiplied without necessity. If by a con- 
siderable multiplication of primary desires 
the law of Association were lowered nearly 
to the level of an auxiliary agent, the philo- 
sophy of human nature would still be under 
indelible obligations to the philosopher who. 
by his fortunate error, rendered the import- 
ance of that great principle obvious and 
conspicuous. 

ABRAHAM TUCKER.* 

It has been the remarkable fortune of this 
writer to have been more prized and more 
disregarded by the cultivators of moral specu- 
lation, than perhaps any other philosopher.! 
He had many of the qualities which might 
be expected in an affluent country gentleman, 
living in a privacy undisturbed by political 
zeal, and with a leisure unbroken by the 
calls of a profession, at a time when Eng- 
land had not entirely renounced her old taste 
for metaphysical speculation. He was natu- 
rally endowed, not indeed with more than or- , 



* Born, 1705; died, 1774. 

t " I have found in this writer more original 
thinking and observation upon the several subjects 
that he has taken in hand than in any other, — not i 
to say than in all others put togeiher. His talent 
also for illustration is unrivalled." — Palcy, Pre- 
face to Moral and Political Philosophy. See the 
excellent preface to an abridgment, by Mr. Has- 
liit, of Tucker's work, published in London in 
1807. May 1 venture to refer also to my own 
Discourse on the Law of Nature and Naiions, 
London, 1799 ? Mr. Stewart treats Tucker and 
Hartley with unwonted harshness. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



153 



dinavy acuteness or sensibility, nor with a 
high degree of reach, and range of mind, but 
with a singular capacity for careful observa- 
tion and original reflection, and with a fancy 
perhaps unmatched in producing various and 
happy illustration. The most observable 
of his moral qualities appear to have been 
prudence and cheerfulness, good-nature and 
easy temper. The influence of his situation 
and character is visible in his writings. In- 
dulging his own tastes and fancies, like most 
English squires of his lime, he became, like 
many of them, a sort of humourist. Hence 
much of his originality and independence ; 
hence the boldness with which he openly 
employs illustrations from homely objects. 
He wrote to please himself more than the 
public. He had too little regard for readers, 
either to sacrifice his sincerity to them, or to 
curb his own prolixity, repetition, and ego- 
tism, from the fear of fatiguing them. Hence 
he became as loose, as rambling, and as 
much an egotist as Montaigne ; but not so 
agreeably so, notwithstanding a considerable 
resemblance of genius ; because he wrote on 
subjects where disorder and egotism are un- 
seasonable, and for readers whom they dis- 
turb instead of amusing. His prolixity at 
last so increased itself, when his work be- 
came long, that repetition in the latter parts 
partly arose from forgetfulness of the former ; 
and though his freedom from slavish defer- 
ence to general opinion is very commenda- 
ble, it must be owned, that his want of a 
wholesome fear of the public renders the 
perusal of a work which is extremely inter- 
esting, and even amusing in most of its parts, 
on the whole a laborious task. He was by 
early education a believer in Christianity, if 
not by natural character religious. His calm 
good sense and accommodating temper led 
him rather to explain established doctrines 
in a manner agreeable to his philosophy, than 
to assail them. Hence he was represented 
as a time-server by freethinkers, and as a 
heretic by the orthodox.* Living in a coun- 
try where the secure tranquillity flowing 
from the Revolution was gradually drawing 
forth all mental activity towards practical 
pursuits and outward objects, he hastened 
from the rudiments of mental and moral 
philosophy, to those branches of it which 
touch the business of men.t Had he recast 
without changing his thoughts, — had he de- 
tached those ethical observations for which 
he had so peculiar a vocation, from the dis- 
putes of his country and his day, he might 

* This disposition to compromise and accommo- 
dation, which is discoverahle in Paley, was carried 
to its utmost length by Mr. Hey. a man of much 
acuteness. Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. 

t Perhaps no philosopher ever stated more just- 
ly, more naturally, or more modestly than Tucker, 
the ruling maxim of his life. " My thoughts," 
says he, "have taken a turn from my earliest 
youth towards searching into the foundations and 
measures of Right and Wrong; my love for re- 
tirement has furnished me with continual leisure ; 
and the exercise of my reason has been my daily 
employment." 

20 



have thrown many of his chapters into their 
proper form of essays, and these might have 
been compared, though not likened, to those 
of Hume. But the country gentleman, philo- 
sophic as he was, had too much fondness for 
his own humours to engage in a course of 
drudgery and deference. It may, however, 
be confidently added, on the authority of all 
those who have fajrly made the experiment, 
that whoever, unfettered by a previous sys- 
tem, undertakes the labour necessary to dis- 
cover and relish the high excellences of this 
metaphysical Montaigne, will find his toil 
lightened as he proceeds, by a growing in- 
dulgence, if not partiality, for the foibles of 
the humourist, and at last rewarded, in a 
greater degree perhaps than by any other 
writer on mixed and applied philosophy, by 
being led to commanding stations and new 
points of view, whence the mind of a moralist 
can hardly fail to catch some fresh prospects 
of Nature and duty. 

It is in mixed, not in pure philosophy, that 
his superiority consists. In the part of his 
work which relates to the Intellect, he has 
adopted much from Hartley, hiding but ag- 
gravating the offence by a change of techni- 
cal terms ; and he was ungrateful enough to 
countenance the vulgar sneer which involves 
the mental analysis of that philosopher in 
the ridicule to which his physiological hypo- 
thesis is liable.* Thus, for the Hartleian term 
'•'association'' he substitutes that of "trans- 
lation," when adopting the same theory of 
the principles which move the mind to ac- 
tion. In the practical and applicable part 
of that inquiry he indeed far surpasses Hart- 
ley; and it is little to add, that he unspeak- 
ably exceeds that bare and naked thinker 
in the useful as well as admirable faculty 
of illustration . In the strictly theoretical part 
his exposition is considerably fuller ; but the 
defect of his genius becomes conspicuous 
when he handles a very general principle. 
The very term "translation" ought to have 
kept up in his mind a steady conviction that 
the secondary motives to action become as 
independent, and seek their own objects as 
exclusively, as the primary principles. His 
own examples are rich in proofs of this im- 
portant truth. But there is a slippery de- 
scent in the theory of human nature, by 
which he, like most of his forerunners, slid 
unawares into Selfishness. He was not pre- 
served from this fall by seeing that all the 
deliberate principles which have self for 
their object are themselves of secondary for- 
mation ; and he was led into the general 
error by the notion that pleasure, or, as he 
calls it, "satisfaction," was the original and 



* Light of Nature, vol. ii. chap, xviii., of which 
the conclusion may be pointed out as a specimen 
of unmatched fruit fulness, vivacity, and felicity of 
illustration. The admirable sense of the conclu- 
sion of chap. xxv. seems to have suggested Paley's 
good chapter on Happiness. The alteration of 
Plato's comparison of Reason to a charioteer, and- 
the passions to the horses, in chap, xxvi., is of 
characteristic and transcendent excellence, 



154 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



sole object of all appetites and desires; — 
confounding this with the true, but very dif- 
ferent proposition, that the attainment of all 
the objects of appetite and desire is produc- 
tive ol pleasure. He did not see that, with- 
out presupposing desires, the word " plea- 
sure" would have no signification ; and that 
the representations by which he was seduced 
would leave only one appetite or desire in 
human nature. He had no adequate and 
constant conception, that the translation of 
desire from being the end to be the means 
occasioned the formation of a new passion, 
which is perfectly distinct from, and alto- 
gether independent of, the original desire. 
Too frequently (for he was neither obstinate 
nor uniform in error) he considered these 
translations as accidental defects in human 
nature, not as the appointed means of sup- 
plying it with its variety of active principles. 
He was too apt to speak as if the selfish 
elements were not destroyed in the new 
combination, but remained still capable of 
being recalled, when convenient, like the 
links in a chain of reasoning, which we pass 
over from forgetfulness, or for brevity. Take 
him all in all, however, the neglect of his 
writings is the strongest proof of the disin- 
clination of the English nation, for the last 
half century, to metaphysical philosophy.* 

Wir,LIAM PALEY.t 

This excellent writer, who, after Clarke 
and Butler, ought to be ranked among the 
brightest ornaments of the English Church 
in the eighteenth century, is, in the history 
of philosophy, naturally placed after Tucker, 
to whom, with praiseworthy liberality, he 
owns his extensive obligations. It is a mis- 
take to suppose that he owed his system to 
Hume, — a thinker too refined, and a writer 
perhaps too elegant, to have naturally at- 
tracted him. A coincidence in the principle 
of Utility, common to both with so many 
other philosophers, affords no sufficient 
ground for the supposition. Had he been 
habitually influenced by Mr. Hume, who 
has translated so many of the dark and crab- 
bed passages of Butler into his own trans- 
parent and beautiful language, it is not pos- 

* Much of Tucker's chapter on Pleasure, and 
■of Paley'son Happiness (boih of which are invalu- 
able), is contained in the passage of the Traveller, 
of which the following couplet expresses the main 
object : 

" Unknown to them when sensual pleasures cloy, 
To fill the languid pause with finer joy." 

" An honest man," says Hume, (Inquiry con- 
cerning Morals, § ix.) " has the frequent saiis- 
faction of seeing knaves betrayed by their own 
maxims." " I used often to laugh at your honest 
simple neighbour Flamborough, and one way or 
another generally cheated him once a year: yet 
still the honest man went forward without sus- 
picion, and grew rich, while I still continued 
tricksy and cunning, and was poor, without the 
consolation of being honest." — Vicar of Wake- 
. .field, chap. xxvi. 

t Born, 1743 ; died, 1805. 



sible to suppose that such a mind as that of 
Paley would have fallen into those princi- 
ples of aross selfishness of which Mr. Hume 
is a uniform and zealous antagonist. 

The natural frame of Paley 's under- 
standing fitted it more for business and the 
world than for philosophy; and he accord- 
ing!}" enjoyed with considerable relish the 
few opportunities which the latter part of his 
life afforded of taking a part in the affairs of 
his county as a magistrate. Penetration 
and shrewdness, firmness and coolness, a 
vein of pleasantry, fruitful though somewhat 
unrefined, with an original homeliness and 
significancy of expression, were perhaps more 
remarkable in his conversation than the re- 
straints of authorship and profession allowed 
them to be in his writings. Grateful re- 
membrance brings this assemblage of quali- 
ties with unfaded colours before the mind at 
the present moment, after the long interval 
of twenty-eight years. His taste for the 
common business and ordinary amusements 
of life fortunately gave a zest to the company 
which his neighbours chanced to yield, with- 
out rendering him insensible to the pleasures 
of intercourse with more enlightened society. 
The practical bent of his nature is visible in 
the language of his writings, which, on prac- 
tical matters, is as precise as the nature of 
the subject requires, but, in his rare and 
reluctant efforts to rise to first principles, 
become indeterminate and unsatisfactory; 
though no man's composition was more free 
from the impediments which hinder a man's 
meaning from being quickly and clearly seen. 
He seldom distinguishes more exactly than is 
required for palpable and direct usefulness. 
He possessed that chastised acuteness of dis- 
crimination, exercised on the affairs of men, 
and habitually looking to a purpose beyond 
the mere increase of knowledge, which forms 
the character of a lawyer's understanding, 
and which is apt to render a mere lawyer 
too subtile for the management of affairs, 
and yet too gross for the pursuit of general 
truth. His style is as near perfection in its 
kind as any in our language. Perhaps no 
words were ever more expressive and illus- 
trative than those in which he represents the 
art of life to be that of rightly " setting our 
habits." 

The most original and ingenious of his 
writings is the Horae Paulinas. The Evi- 
dences of Christianity are formed out of an 
admirable translation of Butler's Analogy, 
and a most skilful abridgment of Lardner's 
Credibility of the Gospel History. He may 
be said to have thus given value to two 
works, of which the first was scarcely in- 
telligible to the majority of those who were 
most desirous of profiting by it; while the 
second soon wearies out the larger part of 
readers, though the more patient few have 
almost always been gradually won over to 
feel pleasure in a display of knowledge, 
probity, charity, and meekness, unmatched 
by any other avowed advocate in a case 
deeply interesting his warmest feelings. His 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



155 



Natural Theology is the wonderful work of a 
man \vho ; after sixty, had studied Anatomy 
in order" to write it; and it could only have 
been surpassed by one who, to great origin- 
ality of conception ami clearness of exposi- 
tion, adds the advantage of a high place in 
the first class of physiologists.* 

It would be unreasonable here, to say 
much of a work which is in the hands of so 
many as his Moral and Political Philosophy. 
A very few remarks on one or two parts of 
it may be sufficient to estimate his value as 
a moralist, and to show his defects as a me- 
taphysician. His general account of Virtue 
may indeed be chosen for both purposes. 
The manner in which he deduces the ne- 
cessary tendency of all virtuous actions to 
promote general happiness, from the good- 
ness of the Divine Lawgiver, (though the 
principle be not, as has already more than 
once appeared, peculiar to him, but rather 
common to most religious philosophers.) is 
characterised by a clearness and vigour which 
have never been surpassed. It is indeed 
nearly, if $ot entirely, an identical proposi- 
tion, that a Being of unmixed benevolence 
will prescribe those laws only to His crea- 
tures which contribute to their well-being. 
When we are convinced that a course of 
conduct is generally beneficial to all men, 
we cannot help considering it as acceptable 
to a benevolent Deity. The usefulness of 
actions is the mark set on them by the 
Supreme Legislator, by which reasonable 
beings discover it to be His will that such 
actions should be done. In this apparently 
unanswerable deduction it is partly admit- 
ted, and universally implied, that the prin- 
ciples of Right and Wrong may be treated 
apart from the manifestation of them in the 
Scriptures. If it were otherwise, how could 
men of perfectly different religions deal or 
reason with each other on moral subjects? 
How could they regard rights and duties as 
subsisting between them'? To what common 
principles could they appeal in their differ- 
ences 1 Even the Polytheists themselves, 
those worshippers of 

Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust, 
Whose attributes are rage, revenge, or lust,t 

by a happy inconsistency are compelled, how- 
ever irregularly and imperfectly, to ascribe 
some general enforcement of the moral code 
to their divinities. If there were no founda- 
tion for Morality antecedent to the Revealed 
Religion, we should want that important test 
of the conformity of a revelation to pure 
morality, by which its claim to a divine 
origin is to be tried. The interna] evidence 
of Religion necessarily presupposes such a 
standard. The Christian contrasts the pre- 
cepts of the Koran with the pure and bene- 
volent morality of the Gospel. The Maho- 
metan claims, with justice, a superiority over 

* See Animal Mechanics, by Mr. Charles Bell, 
published by the Society for the diffusion of 
Useful Knowledge. 

t Essay on Man, Ep. iii. 



the Hindoo, inasmuch as the Musselman re- 
ligion inculcates the moral perfection of one 
Supreme Ruler of the world. The ceremonial 
and exclusive character of. Judaism has ever 
been regarded as an indication that it was 
intended to pave the way for an universal 
religion, a morality sealed in the heart, and 
a worship of sublime simplicity. These 
discussions would be impossible, unless 
Morality were previously proved or, granted 
to exist. Though the science of Ethics is 
thus far independent, it by no means follows 
that there is any equality, or that there may 
not be the utmost inequality, in the moral 
tendency of religious systems. The most 
ample scope is still left for the zeal and ac- 
tivity of those who seek to spread important 
truth. But it is absolutely essential to ethi- 
cal science that it should contain principles, 
the authority of which must be recognised 
by men of every conceivable variety of reli- 
gious opinion. 

The peculiarities of Paley's mind are 
discoverable in the comparison, or rather 
contrast, between the practical chapter on 
Happiness, and the philosophical portion of 
the chapter on Virtue. tl Virtue is the doing 
good to mankind, in obedience to the will of 
God, and for the sake of everlastirg happi- 
ness."* It is, not perhaps very important to 
observe, that these words, which he offers 
as a "definition," ought in propriety to have 
been called a "proposition;" but it is much 
more necessary to say that they contain a 
false account of Virtue. According to this 
doctrine, every action not done for the sake 
of the agent's happiness is vicious. Now. 
it is plain, that an act cannot be said to be 
done for the sake of any thing which is not 
present to the mind of the agent at the mo- 
ment of action : it is a contradiction in terms 
to affirm that a man acts for the sake of any 
object, of which, however it may be the ne- 
cessary consequence of his act, he is not at 
the time fully aware. The imfelt conse- 
quences of his act can no more influence his 
will than its unknown consequences. Nay, 
further, a man is only with any propriety 
said to act for the sake of his chief object ; 
nor can he with entire correctness be said to 
act for the sake of any thing but his sole 
object. So that it is a necessary consequence 
of Paley's proposition, that every act which 
flows from generosity or benevolence is a 
vice ; — so also is every act of obedience to 
the will of God, if it arises from any motive 
but a desire of the reward which He will 
bestow. Any act of obedience influenced 
by gratitude, and affection, and veneration 
towards Supreme Benevolence and Perfec- 
tion, is so far imperfect ; and if it arises 
solely from these motives it becomes a vice. 
It must be owned, that this excellent and 
most enlightened man has laid the founda- 
tions of Religion and Virtue in a more intense 
and exclusive selfishness than was avowed 
by the Catholic enemies of Fenelon, when 

* Book i. chap. vii. 



156 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



they persecuted him for his doctrine of a 
pure and disinterested love of God. 

In another province, of a very subordinate 
kind, the disposition of Paley to limit his 
principles to his own time and country, and 
to look, at them merely as far as they are 
calculated to amend prevalent vices and 
errors, betrayed him into narrow and false 
views. His chapter on what he calls the 
"Law of Honour" is unjust, even in its own 
small sphere, because it supposes Honour to 
allow what it does not forbid; though the 
truth be, that the vices enumerated by him 
are only not forbidden by Honour, because 
they are not within its jurisdiction. He con- 
siders it as - a system of rules constructed 
by people of fashion ;" — a confused and tran- 
sient mode of expression, which may be un- 
derstood with difficulty by our posterity, and 
which cannot now be exactly rendered per- 
haps in any other language. The subject, 
however, thus narrowed and lowered, is nei- 
ther unimportant in practice, nor unworthy 
of the consideration of the moral philoso- 
pher. Though all mankind honour Virtue 
and despise Vice, the degree of respect or 
contempt is often far from being proportioned 
to the place which virtues and vices occupy 
in a just system of Ethics. Wherever higher 
honour is bestowed on one moral quality 
than on others of equal or greater moral 
value, what is called a li point of honour'''' may 
be said to exist. It is singular that so shrewd 
an observer as Paley should not have ob- 
served a law of honour far more permanent 
than that which attracted his notice, in the 
feelings of Europe respecting the conduct of 
men and women. Cowardice is not so im- 
moral as cruelty, nor indeed so detestable; 
but it is more despicable and disgraceful : 
the female point of honour forbids indeed a 
great vice, but one not so great as many 
others by which it is not violated. It is easy 
enough to see, that where we are strongly 
prompted to a virtue by a natural impulse, 
we love the man who is constantly actuated 
by the amiable sentiment; but we do not 
consider that which is done without diffi- 
culty as requiring or deserving admiration 
and distinction. The kind affections are 
their own rich reward, and they are the ob- 
ject of affection to others. To encourage 
kindness by praise would be to insult it, and 
to encourage hypocrisy. It is for the con- 
quest of fear, it would be still more for the 
conquest of resentment, — if that were not, 
wherever it is real, the cessation of a state 
of mental agony, — that the applause of man- 
kind is reserved. Observations of a similar 
nature will easily occur to every reader re- 
specting the point of honour in the other 
sex. The conquest of natural frailties, espe- 
cially in a case of far more importance to 
mankind than is at first sight obvious, is well 
distinguished as an object of honour, and the 
contrary vice is punished by shame. Honour 
is not wasted on those who abstain from acts 
which are punished by the law. These acts 
may be avoided without a pure motive. 



Wherever a virtue is easily cultivable by 
good men; wherever it is by nature attended 
by delight; wherever its outward observance 
is so necessary to society as to be enforced 
by punishment, it is not the proper object 
of honour. Honour and shame, therefore, 
may be reasonably dispensed, without being 
strictly proportioned to the intrinsic morality 
of actions, if the inequality of their distribu- 
tion contributes to the general equipoise of 
the whole moral system. A wide dispro- 
portion, however, or indeed any dispropor- 
tion not justifiable on moral grounds, would 
be a depravation of the moral principle. 
Duelling is among us a disputed case, though 
the improvement of manners has rendered it 
so much more infrequent, that it is likely in 
time to lose its support from opinion. Those 
who excuse individuals for yielding to a false 
point of honour, as in the suicides of the 
Greeks and Romans, may consistently blame 
the faulty principle, and rejoice in its de- 
struction. The shame fixed on a Hindoo 
widow of rank who voluntarily survives her 
husband, is regarded by all ofher nations 
with horror. 

There is room for great praise and some 
blame in other parts of Paley's work. His 
political opinions were those generally adopt- 
ed by moderate Whigs in his own age. His 
language on the Revolution of 1688 may be 
very advantageously compared, both in pre- 
cision and in generous boldness,* to that of 
Blackstone, — a great master of classical and 
harmonious composition, but a feeble rea- 
soner and a confused thinker, whose wri- 
tings are not exempt from the charge of 
slavishness. 

It cannot be denied that Paley was some- 
limes rather a lax moralist, especially on 
public duties. It is a sin which easily besets 
men of strong good sense, little enthusiasm, 
and much experience. They are naturally led 
to lower their precepts to the level of their 
expectations. They see that higher preten- 
sions often produce less good, — to say no- 
thing of the hypocrisy, extravagance, and 
turbulence, which they may be said to fos- 
ter. As those who claim more from men 
often gain less, it is natural for more sober 
and milder casuists to present a more ac- 
cessible Virtue to their followers. It was 
thus that the Jesuits began, till, strongly 
tempted by their perilous station as the mo- 
ral guides of the powerful, some of them by 
degrees fell into that absolute licentiousness 
for which all, not without injustice, have 



* " Government maybe too secure. The greatest 
tyrants have been those whose titles were the 
most unquestioned. Whenever, therefore, the 
opinion of right becomes too predominant and su- 
perstitious, it is abated by breaking the custom. 
Thus the Revolution broke the custom of suc- 
cession, and thereby moderated, both in the prince 
and in the people, those lofty notions of hereditary 
right, which in the one were become a continual 
incentive to tyranny, 9 »d disposed the other to 
invite servitude, by u-Jue compliances and dan- 
gerous concessions." — Book vi. chap. 2. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



157 



been cruelly immortalized by Pascal. In- 
dulgence, which is a great virtue in judg- 
ment concerning the actions of others, is too 
apt, when blended in the same system with 
the precepts of Morality, to be received as a 
licence for our own offences. Accommoda- 
tion, without which society would be pain- 
ful, and arduous affairs would become im- 
practicable, is more safely imbibed from 
temper and experience, than taught in early 
and systematic instruction. The middle re- 
gion between laxity and rigour is hard to be 
defined ; and it is still harder steadily to re- 
main within its boundaries. Whatever may 
be thought of Paley's observations on politi- 
cal influence and ecclesiastical subscription 
to tests, as temperaments and mitigations 
which may preserve us from harsh judg- 
ment, they are assuredly not well qualified 
to form a part of that discipline which ought 
to breathe into the opening souls of youth, 
at the critical period of the formation of 
character, those inestimable virtues of sin- 
cerity, of integrity, of independence, which 
will even guide them more safely through 
life than will mere prudence ; while they 
provide an inward fountain of pure delight, 
immeasurably more abundant than all the 
outward sources of precarious and perishable 
pleasure. 

JEREMY BENTHAM.* 

The general scheme of this Dissertation 
would be a sufficient reason for omitting the 
name of a living writer. The devoted attach- 
ment and invincible repugnance which an 
impartial estimate of Mr. Bentham has to 
encounter on either side, are a strong induce- 
ment not to deviate from that scheme in bis 
case. But the most brief sketch of ethical 
controversy in England would be imperfect 
without it ; and perhaps the utter hopeless- 
ness of finding any expedient for satisfying 
his followers, or softening his opponents, may 
enable a writer to look steadily and solely 
at what he believes to be the dictates of 
Truth and Justice. He who has spoken of 
former philosophers with unreserved free- 
dom, ought perhaps to subject his courage 
and honesty to the severest test by an at- 
tempt to characterize such a contemporary. 
Should the very few wdio are at once enlight- 
ened and unbiassed be of opinion that his 
firmness and equity have stood this trial, 
they will be the more disposed to trust his 
fairness where the exercise of that quality 
may have been more easy. 

The disciples of Mr. Bentham are more 
like the hearers of an Athenian philosopher 
than the pupils of a modern professor, or the 
cool proselytes of a modern writer. They 
are in general men of competent age, of su- 
perior understanding, who voluntarily em- 
brace the laborious study of useful and noble 
sciences; who derive their opinions, not so 
much from the cold perusal of his writings, 

* Born, 1748 ; died, 1832.— Ed. 



as from familiar converse with a master from 
whose lips these opinions are recommended 
by simplicity, disinterestedness, originality, 
and vivacity, — aided rather than impeded 
by foibles not unamiable, — enforced of late 
by the growing authority of years and of 
fame, and at all times strengthened by that 
undoubting reliance on his own judgment 
which mightily increases the ascendant of 
such a man over those who approach him. 
As he and they deserve the credit of braving 
vulgar prejudices, so they must be content 
to incur the imputation of falling into the 
neighbouring vices of seeking distinction by 
singularity, — of clinging to opinions, because 
they are obnoxious, — of wantonly wounding 
the most respectable feelings of mankind, — 
of regarding an immense display of method 
and nomenclature as a sure token of a corres- 
ponding increase of knowledge, — and of con- 
sidering themselves as a chosen few, whom 
an initiation into the most secret mysteries 
of Philosophy entitles to look down with pity, 
if not contempt, on the profane multitude. 
Viewed with aversion or dread by the pub- 
lic, they become more bound to each other 
and to their master ; while they are provoked 
into the use of language which more and 
more exasperates opposition to them. A 
hermit in the greatest of cities, seeing only 
his disciples, and indignant that systems of 
government and law which he believes to be 
perfect, are disiegarded at once by the many 
and the powerful, Mr. Bentham has at length 
been betrayed into the most unphilosophical 
hypothesis, that all the ruling bodies who 
guide the community have conspired to stifle 
and defeat his discoveries. He is too little 
acquainted with doubts to believe the honest 
doubts of others, and he is too angry to mako 
allowance for their prejudices and habits. 
He has embraced the most extreme party in 
practical politics ; — manifesting more dislike 
and contempt towards those who are mo- 
derate supporters of popular principles than 
towards their most inflexible opponents. To 
the unpopularity of his philosophical and 
political doctrines, he has added the more 
general and lasting obloquy due to the un- 
seemly treatment of doctrines and principles 
which, if there were no other motives for 
reverential deference, ought, from a regard 
to the feelings of the best men, to be ap- 
proached with decorum and respect. 

Fifty-three years have passed since the 
publication of Mr. Bentham's first work, A 
Fragment on Government, — a considerable 
octavo volume, employed in the examination 
of a short paragraph of Blackstone, unmatch- 
ed in acute hypercnticism, but conducted 
with a severity which leads to an unjust esti- 
mate of the writer criticised, till the like ex- 
periment be repeated on other writings. It 
was a, waste of extraordinary power to em- 
ploy it in pointing out fkaws and patches in 
the robe occasionally stolen from the philoso- 
phical schools, which hung loosely, arid not 
unbecomingly, on the elegant commentator. 
This volume, and especially the preface, 




158 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



abounds in fine, original, and just observa- 
tion; it contains the germs of most of his 
subsequent productions, and it is an early 
example of that disregard for the method, 
proportions, and occasion of a writing which. 
with all common readers, deeply affects its 
power of interesting or instructing. Two 
years after, he published a most excellent 
tract on the Hard Labour Bill, which, con- 
curring with the spirit excited by Howard's 
inquiries, laid the foundation of just reason- 
ing on reformatory punishment. The Letters 
on Usury,*' are perhaps the best specimen 
of the exhaustive discussion of a moral or 
political question, leaving no objection, how- 
ever feeble, unanswered, and no difficulty, 
however small, unexplained ; — remarkable 
also, as they are, for the clearness and spirit 
of the style, for the full exposition which 
suits them to all intelligent readers, and for 
the tender and skilful hand with which pre- 
judice is touched. The urbanity of the apo- 
logy for projectors, addressed to Dr. Smith, 
whose temper and manner the author seems 
for a time to have imbibed, is admirable. 

The Introduction to the Principles of Morals 
and Politics, printed before the Letters, but 
published after them, was the first sketch 
of his system, and is still the only account 
of it by himself. The great merit of this 
work, and of his other writings in relation to 
Jurisprudence properly so called, is not within 
our present scope. To the Roman jurists be- 
longs the praise of having alloted a separate 
portion of their Digest to the signification of 
the words of the most frequent use in law 
and legal discussion. t Mr. Bentham not 
only first perceived and taught the great 
value of an introductory section, composed 
of the definitions of general terms, as subser- 
vient to brevity and precision in every part of 



* They were addressed to Mr. George Wilson 
who retired trom the English bar to his own coun- 
try, and died at Edinburgh in 1816; — an early 
friend of Mr. Hem ham, ana afterwards an intimate 
one of Lord Ellenburough, of Sir Vieary Gibbs, 
and of all the most eminent of his professional 
contemporaries. The rectitude of judgment, purity 
of heart, elevation of honour, the siernness only 
in integrity, the scorn of baseness, and indulgence 
towards weakness, which were joined in him with 
a gravity exclusive neiiher of feeling nor of plea- 
santry, comributed still more than his abilities and 
attainments of various sorts, to a moral authority 
with his friends, and in his profession, which few- 
men more amply possessed, or more usefully 
exercised. The same character, somewhat soft- 
ened, and the same influence, distinguished his 
closest friend, the late Mr. Lens. Boih were in- 
flexible and incorrupiible friends of civil and reli- 
gious liberty, and both knew how to reconcile the 
warmest zeal for that sacred cause, with a charity 
towards their opponents, which partisans, ofien 
more violent than steady, treated as lukewarm. 
The present writer hopes that ihe good-natured 
reader will excuse him for having thus, perhaps 
unseasonably, bestowed heartfelt commendation 
on those who were above the pursuit of praise, and 
the remembrance of whose pood opinion and good- 
will help to support him under a deep sense of 
faults and vices. 

t Digest, lib. i. tit. 16. De Verborum Significa- 
tione. 



a code ; but he also discovered the unspeak- 
able importance of natural arrangement in Ju- 
risprudence, by rendering the mere place of a 
proposed law in such an arrangement a short 
and easy test of the fitness of the proposal.* 
But here he does not distinguish between 
the value of arrangement as scaffolding, and 
the inferior convenience of its being the very 
frame-work of the structure. He, indeed, is 
much more remarkable for laying down de- 
sirable rules for the determination of rights. 
and the punishment of wrongs, in general, 
than for. weighing the various circumstances 
which require them to be modified in differ- 
ent countries and times, in order to render 
them either more useful, more easily intro- 
duced, more generally respected, or more 
certainly executed. The art of legislation 
consists in thus applying the principles of 
Jurisprudence to the situation, wants, inter- 
ests, feelings, opinions, and habits, of each 
distinct community at any given time. It 
bears the same relation to Jurisprudence 
which the mechanical arts bear to' pure 
Mathematics. Many of these considerations 
serve to show, that the sudden establishment 
of new codes can seldom be practicable or 
effectual for their purpose ; and that reforma- 
tions, though founded on the principles of 
Jurisprudence, ought to be not only adapted 
to the peculiar interests of a people, but en- 
grafted on their previous usages, and brought 
into harmony with those national dispositions 
on which the execution of laws depends. t 
The Romans, under Justinian, adopted at 
least the true principle, if they did not apply 
it with sufficient freedom and boldness. They 
considered the multitude of occasional laws, 
and the still greater mass of usages, opinions, 
and determinations, as the materials of legis- 
lation, not precluding, but demanding a sys- 
tematic arrangement of the whole by the 
supreme authority. Had the arrangement 

* See a beautiful article on Codification, in the 
Edinburg Review, vol. xxix. p. 217. It need no 
longer be concealed that it was contributed by 
Sir Samuel Romilly. The steadiness with which 
he held the balance in weighing the merits of his 
friend against his unfortunate defects, is an exam- 
ple of his union of the most commanding moral 
principle with a sensibility so warm, that, if it 
had been released from that stern authority, it 
would not so long have endured the coarseness 
and roughness of human concerns. From the 
tenderness of his feelings, and from an anger never 
roused but by cruelty and baseness, as much as 
from his genius and his pure taste, sprung that 
original and characteristic eloquence, which was 
the hope of the afflicted as well as the terror of 
the oppressor. If his oratory had not flowed so 
largely from this moral source, which years do 
not dry up, he would not perhaps have been the 
only exnmple of an orator who, after the age of 
sixty, daily increased in polish, in vigour, and in 
splendour. 

t An excellent medium between those who 
absolutely require new codes, and those who ob- 
stinately ndhere to ancient usages, has been point- 
ed out by ill. Meyer, in his most justly celebrated 
work. Esprit, &c. des Ins'iiutions Judiciares v des 
Principoux Pays de 1'Europe, La iriaye, 181'J, 
tome i. Introduction, p. 8. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY 



159 



been more scientific, had there been a bolder 
examination and a more free reform of many 
particular branches, a model would have 
been offered for liberal imitation by modem 
lawgivers. It cannot be denied, without in- 

i'ustice and ingratitude, that Mr. Beutham 
as done more than any other writer to rouse 
the spirit of juridical reformation, which is 
now gradually examining every part of law, 
and which, when further progress is facili- 
tated by digesting the present laws, will 
doubtless proceed to the improvement of all. 
Greater praise it is given to few to earn : it 
ought to satisfy him for the disappointment 
of hopes which were not reasonable, that 
Russia should receive a code from him, or 
that North America could be brought to re- 
nounce the variety of her laws and institu- 
tions, on the single authority of a foreign 
philosopher, whose opinions had not worked 
their way, either into legislation or into gene- 
ral reception, in his own country. It ought 
also to dispose his followers to do fuller jus- 
tice to the Romillys and Broughams, without 
whose prudence and energy, as well as rea- 
son and eloquence, the best plans of refor- 
mation must have continued a dead letter; 
— for whose sake it might have been fit to 
reconsider the obloquy heaped on their pro- 
fession, and to show more general indul- 
gence to all those whose chief offence seems 
to consist in their doubts whether sudden 
changes, almost always imposed by violence 
on a community, be the surest road to lasting 
improvement. 

It is unfortunate that ethical theory, with 
which we are now chiefly concerned, is not 
the province in which Mr. Benlham has 
reached the most desirable distinction. It 
may be remarked, both in ancient and in 
modern times, that whatever modifications 
prudent followers may introduce into the 
system of an innovator, the principles of the 
master continue to mould the habitual dis- 
positions, and to influence the practical ten- 
dency of the school. Mr. Bentham preaches 
the principle of Utility with the zeal of a 
discoverer. Occupied more in reflection 
than in reading, he knew not, or forgot, how 
often it had been the basis, and how gene- 
rally an essential part, of all moral sys- 
tems.* That in which he really differs from 
others, is in the Necessity which he teaches, 
and the example which he sets, of constant- 
ly bringing that principle before us. This 
peculiarity appears to us to be his radical 
error. In an attempt, of which the constitu- 
tion of human nature forbids the success, he 
seems to us to have been led into funda- 
mental errors in moral theory, and to have 
given to his practical doctrine a dangerous 
direction. 

The confusion of moral approbation with 
the moral qualities which are its objects, 
common to Mr. Bentham with many other 
philosophers, is much more uniform and 
prominent in him than in most others. This 

* See Note V. 



general error, already mentioned at the open- 
ing of this Dissertation, has led him more 
than others to assume, that because the prin- 
ciple of Utility forms a necessary part of 
every moral theory, it ought therefore to be 
the chief motive of human conduct. Now 
it is evident that this assumption, rather 
tacitly than avowedly made, is wholly gra- 
tuitous. No practical conclusion can be de- 
duced from the principle, but that we ought 
to cultivate those habitual dispositions which 
are the most effectual motives to useful ac- 
tions. But before a regard to our own in- 
terest, or a desire to promote the welfare of 
men in general, be allowed to be the exclu- 
sive, or even the chief regulators of human 
conduct, it must be shown that they are the 
most effectual motives to such useful actions : 
it is demonstrated by experience that they 
are not. It is even owned by the most in- 
genious writers of Mr. Bentham's school, 
that desires which are pointed to general and 
distant objects, although they have their 
proper place and their due value, are com- 
monly very faint and ineffectual inducements 
to action. A theory founded on Utility, 
therefore, requires that we should cultivate, 
as excitements to practice, those other ha- 
bitual dispositions which we know by expe- 
rience to be generally the source of actions 
beneficial to ourselves and our fellows; — 
habits of feeling productive of habits of vir- 
tuous conduct, and in their turn strengthened 
by the re-action of these last. What is the 
result of experience on the choice of the 
objects of moral culture? Beyond all dis- 
pute, that we should labour to attain that 
state of mind in which all the social affec- 
tions are felt with the utmost warmth, giving 
birth to more comprehensive benevolence, 
but not supplanted by it ; — when the Moral 
Sentiments most strongly approve what is 
right and good, without being perplexed by 
a calculation of consequences, though not 
incapable of being gradually rectified by 
Reason, whenever they are decisively proved 
by experience not to correspond -in some of 
their parts to the universal and perpetual ef- 
fects of conduct. It is a false representation 
of human nature to affirm that "coinage" is 
only " prudence."* They coincide in their 
effects, and it is always prudent to be cou- 
rageous: but a man who fights because he 
thinks it more hazardous to yield, is not brave. 
He does not become brave till he feels cow- 
ardice to be base and painful, and till he is 
no longer in need of any aid from prudence. 
Even if it were the interest of every man to 
be bold, it is clear that so cold a considera- 

* Mill, Analysis of the Human Mind, vol. ii. 
p. 237. It would be unjust not to say that this 
book, partly perhaps from a larger adoption of the 
principles of Hartley, holds out fairer opportuni- 
ties of negotiation with natural fe< lings and the 
doctrines of former philosophers, than any other 
production of the same school. But this very as- 
sertion about courage clearly shows at least a for- 
oetfulness that courage, even if it were the off- 
spring of prudence, would not for that reason be 
a species of it. 



160 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



tion cannot prevail over the fear of danger. 
Where it seems to do so, it must be the un- 
seen power either of the fear of shame, or 
of some other powerful passion, to which it 
lends its name. It was long ago with strik- 
ing justice observed by Aristotle, that he 
who abstains from present gratification, under 
a distinct apprehension of its painful conse- 
quences, is only prudent, and that he must 
acquire a disrelish for excess on its own ac- 
count, before he deserves the name of a 
temperate man. It is only when the means 
are firmly and unalterably converted into 
ends, that the process of forming the mind 
is completed. Courage may then seek, in- 
stead of avoiding danger: Temperance may 
prefer abstemiousness to indulgence : Pru- 
dence itself may choose an orderly govern- 
ment of conduct, according to certain rules, 
without regard to the degree in which it 
promotes welfare. Benevolence must desire 
the happiness of others, to the exclusion of 
the consideration how far it is connected 
with that of the benevolent agent ; and those 
alone can be accounted just who obey the 
dictates of Justice from having thoroughly 
learned an habitual veneration for her strict 
rules and for her larger precepts. In that 
complete state the mind possesses no power 
of dissolving the combinations of thought 
and feeling which impel it to action. Nothing 
in this argument turns on the difference be- 
tween implanted and acquired principles. 
As no man can cease, by any act of his, to 
see distance, though the power of seeing it 
be universally acknowledged to be an acqui- 
sition, so no man has the power to extinguish 
the affections and the moral sentiments, 
(however much they may be thought to be 
acquired,) any more than that of eradicating 
the bodily appetites. The best writers of 
Mr. Bentham's school overlook the indisso- 
lubility of these associations, and appear not 
to bear in mind that their strength and rapid 
action constitute the perfect state of a moral 
agent. 

The pursuit of our own general welfare, 
or of that of mankind at large, though from 
their vagueness and coldness they are unfit 
habitual motives and unsafe ordinary guides 
of conduct, yet perform functions of essen- 
tial importance in the moral system. The 
former, which we call "self-love," preserves 
the balance of all the active principles which 
regard ourselves ultimately, and contributes 
to subject them to the authority of the moral 
principles.* The latter, which is general 
benevolence, regulates in like manner the 
equipoise of the narrower affections. — quick- 
ens the languid, and checks the encroach- 
ing, — borrows strength from pity, and even 
from indignation, — receives some compensa- 
tion, as it enlarges, in the addition of beauty 
and grandeur, for the weakness which arises 
from dispersion, — enables us to look on all 
men as brethren, and overflows on every 
sentient being. The general interest of man- 

* See Note W. 



kind, in truth, almost solely affects'us through 
the affections of benevolence and sympathy; 
for the coincidence of general with indivi- 
dual interest, — even where it is certain, — is 
too dimly seen to produce any emotion which 
can impel to, or restrain from action. Asa 
general truth, its value consists in its com- 
pleting the triumph of Morality, by demon- 
strating the absolute impossibility of forming 
any theory of human nature which does not 
preserve the superiority of Virtue over Vice ; 
— a great, though not a directly practical 
ad van ta<re . 

The followers of Mr. Bentham have car- 
ried to an unusual extent the prevalent fault 
of the more modern advocates of Utility, 
who have dwelt so exclusively on the out- 
ward advantages of Virtue as to have lost 
sight of the delight which is a part of vir- 
tuous feeling, and of the beneficial influence 
of good actions upon the frame of the mind. 
" Benevolence towards others," says Mr. 
Mill, "produces a return of benevolence 
from them." The fact is true, and ought to 
be stated : but how unimportant is it in com- 
parison with that which is passed over in 
silence, — the pleasure of the affection itself, 
which, if it could become lasting and in- 
tense, would convert the heart into a heaven ! 
No one who has ever felt kindness, if he 
could accurate]}' recall his feelings, could 
hesitate about their infinite superiority. The 
cause of the general neglect of this consi- 
deration is, that it is only when a gratifica- 
tion is something distinct from a state of 
mind, that we can easily learn to consider it 
as a pleasure. Hence the great error re- 
specting the affections, where the inherent 
delight is not duly estimated, on account of 
that very peculiarity of its being a part of 
a state of mind which renders it unspeakably 
more valuable as independent of every thing 
without. The social affections are the only 
principles of human nature which have no 
direct pains: to have any of these desires is 
to be in a state of happiness. The malevo- 
lent passions have properly no pleasures ; 
for that attainment of their purpose which is 
improperly so called, consists only in healing 
or assuaging the torture which envy, jealousy, 
and malice, inflict on the malignant mind. 
It might with as much propriety be said that 
the toothache and the stone have pleasures, 
because their removal is followed by an 
agreeable feeling. These bodily disorders, 
indeed, are often cured by the process which 
removes the sufferings; but the mental dis- 
tempers of envy and revenge are nourished 
by every act of odious indulgence which for 
a moment suspends their pain. 

The same observation is applicable to 
every virtuous disposition, though not so ob- 
viously as to the benevolent affections. That 
a brave man is, on the whole, far less ex- 
posed to danger than a coward, is not the 
chief advantage of a courageous temper. 
Great dangers are rare; but the constant 
absence of such painful and mortifying sen- 
sations as those of fear, and the steady con- 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



161 



sciousness of superiority to what subdues 
ordinary men, are a perpetual source of in- 
ward enjoyment. No man who has ever 
been visited by a gleam of magnanimity, can 
place any outward advantage of fortitude in 
comparison with the feeling of beingalways 
able fearlessly to defend a righteous cause.* 
Even humility, in spite of first appearances, 
is a remarkable example : — though it has of 
late been unwarrantably used to signify that 
painful consciousness of J(|feriority which is 
the first stage of envy.t It is a term conse- 
crated in Christian Ethics to denote that dis- 
position which, by inclining towards a modest 
estimate of our qualities, corrects the preva- 
lent tendency of human nature to overvalue 
our merits and to overrate our claims. What 
can be a less doubtful, or a much more con- 
siderable blessing than this constant seda- 
tive, which soothes and composes the irrita- 
ble passions of vanity and pride ? What is 
more conducive to lasting peace of mind 
than the consciousness of proficiency in that 
most delicate species of equity which, in 
the secret tribunal of Conscience, labours to 
be impartial in the comparison of ourselves 
with others? What can so perfectly assure 
us of the purity of our Moral Sense, as the 
habit of contemplating, not that excellence 
which we have reached, but that which is 
still to be pursued, t — of not considering how 
far we may outrun others, but how far we 
are fi;om the goal ? 

Virtue has often outward advantages, and 
always inward delights: but the last, though 
constant, strong, inaccessible and inviolable. 
are not easily considered by the common 
observer as apart from the form with which 
they are blended. They are so subtile and 
evanescent as to escape the distinct contem- 
plation of all but the very few who meditate 
on the acts of the mind. The outward ad- 
vantages, on the other hand, — cold, uncer- 
tain, dependent and precarious as they are. — 
yet stand out to the sense and to the memory, 
may be as it were handled and counted, and 
are perfectly on a level with the general ap- 
prehension. Hence they have become the 
almost exclusive theme of all moralists who 
profess to follow Reason. There is room for 
suspecting that a very general illusion pre- 
vails on this subject. Probably the smallest 
part of the pleasure of Virtue, because it is 
the most palpable, has become the sign and 
mental representative of the whole : the 



* According to Cicero's definition of fortitude, 
"Virtus pugnans pro eequitate." The remains 
of the original sense of " virtus," manhood, give 
a beauty and force to these expressions, which 
cannot he preserved in our language. The Greek 
u .c£T!»," and 'he German " tugend," originally 
denoted " strength," afterwards "courage," and 
at last " virtue." But the happy derivation of 
"virtus" from " vir" gives an energy to the 
phrase of Cicero, which illustrates the use of ety- 
mology in the hands of a skilful writer. 

t Anal. Hum. Mind, vol. ii. p. 222. 
, t For a description of vanity, by a great orator, 
see the Rev. R. Hall's Sermon on Modern Infi- 
delity. 

21 



outward and visible sign suggests only in- 
sensibly the inward and mental delight. 
Those who are prone to display chiefly the 
external benefits of magnanimity and kind- 
ness, would speak with tar less fervour, and 
perhaps less confidence, if their feelings 
were not unconsc.ously affected by ihe men- 
tal state which is overlooked in their state- 
ments. But when they speak of what is 
without, they feel what was within, and their 
words excite the same feeling in others. 

Is it not probable that much of our love of 
praise may be thus ascribed to humane and 
sociable pleasure in the sympathy of others 
with us? Praise is the symbol which repre- 
sents sympathy, and which the mind insen- 
sibly substitutes for it in recollection and in 
language. Does not the desire of posthu- 
mous fame, in like manner, manifest an 
ambition for the fellow-feeling of our race, 
when it is perfectly unproductive of any 
advantage to ourselves? In this point of 
view, it may be considered as the passion the 
very existence of which proves the mighty 
power of disinterested desire. Every other 
pleasure from sympathy is derived from con- 
temporaries : the love of fame alone seeks 
the sympathy of unborn generations, and 
stretches the chain which binds the race of 
man together, to an. extent to which Hope 
sets no bounds. There is a noble, even if 
unconscious union of Morality with genius in 
the mind of him who sympathizes with the 
masters who lived twenty centuries before 
him, in order that he may learn to command 
the sympathies of the countless generations 
who are to come. 

In the most familiar, as well as in the 
highest instances, it would seem, that the 
inmost thoughts and sentiments of men are 
more pure than their language. Those who 
speak of "a regard to character," if they be 
serious, generally infuse into that word, una- 
wares, a large portion of that sense in which 
it denotes the frame of the mind. Those 
who speak of "honour" very often mean a 
more refined and delicate sort of conscience, 
which ought to render the more edi-cated 
classes of society alive to such smaller 
wrongs as the laborious and the ignorant 
can scarcely feel. What heart does not 
warm at the noble exclamation of the an- 
cient poet: "Who is pleased by false hon- 
our, or frightened by lying infamy, but he 
who is false and depraved !"* Every un- 
corrupted mind feels unmerited praise as a 
bitter reproach, and regards a consciousness 
of demerit as a drop of poison in the cup 
of honour. How different is the applause 
which truly delights us all, a proof that the 
consciences of others are in harmony with 
our own! <• What," says Cicero, -'is glory 
but the concurring praise of the good, the 
unbought approbation of those who judge 
aright of excellent Virtue!"! A far greater 

* Horat. Epistol. lib. i. 16. 
+ Probably quoted memoriter from De Fin. lib. 
iv. cap. 23.— Ed. 

o 2 



162 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



than Cicero rises from the purest praise of 
man, to more sublime contemplations. 

Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, 
But lives and spreads aloft, by those pure eyes 
And perfect witness of all-judging Juve.* 

Those who have most earnestly inculcated 
the doctrine of Utility have given another 
notable example of the very vulgar preju- 
dice which treats the unseen as insignificant. 
Tucker is the only one of them who occa- 
sionally considers that most important effect 
of human conduct which consists in its ac- 
tion on the frame of the mind, by fitting its 
faculties and sensibilities for their appointed 
purpose. A razor or a penknife would well 
enough cut cloth or meat; but if they were 
often so used, they would be entirely spoiled. 
The same sort of observation is much more 
strongly applicable to habitual dispositions, 
which, if they be spoiled, we have no cer- 
tain means of replacing or mending. What- 
ever act, therefore, discomposes the moral 
machinery of Mind, is more injurious to 
the welfare of the agent than most disas- 
ters from without can be : for the latter are 
commonly limited and temporary; the evil 
of the former spreads through the whole of 
life. Health of mind, as well as of body, is 
not only productive in itself of a greater 
amount of enjoyment than arises from other 
sources, but is the only condition of our 
frame in which we are capable of receiving 
pleasure from without. Hence it appears 
how incredibly absurd it is to prefer, on 
grounds of calculation, a present interest to 
the preservation of those mental habits on 
which our well-being depends. When they 
are most moral, they may often prevent us 
from obtaining advantages : but it would be 
as absurd to desire to lower them for that 
reason, as it would be to weaken the body, 
lest its sttength should render it more liable 
to contagious disorders of rare occurrence. 

It is, on the other hand, impossible to com- 
bine the benefit of the general habit with the 
advantages of occasional deviation; for every 
such deviation either produces remorse, or 
weakens the habit, and prepares the way for 
its gradual destruction. He who obtains a 
fortune by the undetected forgery of a will, 
may indeed be honest in his other acts; but 
if he had such a scorn of*fraud before as he 
must himself allow to b^generally useful, 
he must suffer a severe punishment from 
contrition : and he will be haunted with the 
fears of one who has lost his own security 
for his good conduct. In all cases, if they be 
well examined, his loss by the distemper of 
his mental frame will outweigh the profits 
of his vice. 

By repeating the like observation on simi- 
lar occasions, it will be manifest that the 
infirmity of recollection, aggravated by the 
defects of language, gives an appearance of 
more selfishness to man than truly belongs 
to his nature; and that the effect of active 



Lycidas, I. 78. 



agents upon the habitual state of mind, — 
one of the considerations to which the epi- 
thet "sentimental'' has of late been applied 
in derision, — is really among the most seri- 
ous and reasonable objects of Moral Philoso- 
phy. When the internal pleasures and pains 
which accompany good and bad feelings, or 
rather form a part of them, and the internal 
advantages and disadvantages which follow 
good and bad actions, are sufficiently con- 
sidered, the comparative importance of out- 
ward consequences will be more and more 
narrow; so that the Stoical philosopher may 
be thought almost excusable for rejecting 
it altogether, were it not an almost indis- 
pensably necessary consideration for those 
in whom right habits of feeling are not suffi- 
ciently strong. They alone are happy, or 
even truly virtuous, who have little need 
of it. 

The later moralists who adopt the princi- 
ple of Utility, have so misplaced it, that in 
their hands it has as great a tendency as any 
theoretical error can have, to lessen the in- 
trinsic pleasure of Virtue, and to unfit our 
habitual feelings for being the most effectual 
inducements to good conduct. This is the 
natural tendency of a discipline which brings 
Utility too closely and frequently into contact 
with action. By this habit, in its best state, 
an essentially weaker motive is gradually 
substituted for others which must always be 
of more force. The frequent appeal to Utility 
as the standard of action tends to introduce 
an uncertainty with respect to the conduct 
of other men, which would render all inter- 
course with them insupportable. It affords 
also so fair a disguise for selfish and malig- 
nant passions, as often to hide their nature 
from him who is their prey. Some taint 
of these mean and evil principles will at 
least spread itself, and a venomous anima- 
tion, not its own, will be given to the cold 
desire of Utility. Moralists who take an 
active part in those affairs which often call 
out unajmiable passions, ought to guard with 
peculiar watchfulness against such self-de- 
lusions. The sin that must most easily beset 
them, is that of sliding from general to par- 
ticular consequences, — that of trying single 
actions, instead of dispositions, habits, and 
rules, by the standard of Utility, — that of 
authorizing too great a latitude for discretion 
and policy in moral conduct, — that of readily 
allowing exceptions to the most important 
rules, — that of too lenient a censure of the 
use of doubtful means, when the end seems 
to them good, — and that of believing unphi- 
losophically, as well as dangerously, that 
there can be any measure or scheme so use- 
ful to the world as the existence of men who 
would not do a base thing for any public 
advantage. It was said of Andrew Fletcher, 
u that he would lose his life to serve his 
country, but would not do a base thing to 
save it." Let those preachers of Utility who 
suppose that such a man sacrifices ends to 
means, consider whether the scorn of base- 
ness be not akin to the contempt of danger, 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY 



169 



and whether a nation composed of such men 
would not be invincible. But theoretical 
principles are counteracted by a thousand 
causes, which confine their mischief as well 
as circumscribe their benefits. Men are 
never so good or so bad as their opinions. All 
that can be with reason apprehended is, that 
these last may always produce some part of 
their natural evil, and that the mischief will 
be greatest among the many who seek ex- 
cuses for their passions. Aristippus found 
in the Socratic representation of the union 
of virtue and happiness a pretext for sensu- 
ality; and many Epicureans became volup- 
tuaries in spite of the example of their 
master, — easily dropping by degrees the 
limitations by which he guarded his doc- 
trines. In proportion as a man accustoms 
himself to be influenced by the utility of 
particular acts, without regard to rules, he 
approaches to the casuistry of the Jesuits, 
and to the practical maxims of Cassar Borgia. 

Injury on this, as on other occasions, has 
been suffered by Ethics, from their close 
affinity to Jurisprudence. The true and 
eminent merit of Mr. Bentham is that of a 
reformer of Jurisprudence : he is only a mo- 
ralist with a view to being a jurist : and he 
sometimes becomes for a few hurried mo- 
ments a metaphysician with a view to lay- 
ing the foundation of both the moral sciences. 
Both he and his followers have treated Ethics 
too juridically : they do not seem to be a war---, 
or at li-ast they do not bear constantly in 
mind, that there is an essential difference in 
the subjects of these two sciences. 

The object of law is the prevention of 
actions injurious to the community: it con- 
siders the dispositions from which they flow 
only indirectly, to ascertain the likelihood of 
their recurrence, and thus to determine the 
necessity and the means of preventing them. 
The direct object of Ethics is only mental 
disposition : it considers actions indirectly as 
the signs by which such dispositions are 
manifested. If it were possible for the mere 
moralist to see that a moral and amiable 
temper was the mental source of a bad 
action, he could not cease to approve and 
love the temper, as we sometimes presume 
to suppose may be true of the judgments of 
the Searcher of Hearts. Religion necessarily 
coincides with Morality in this respect : and 
it is the peculiar distinction of Christianity 
that it places the seat of Virtue in the heart. 
Law and Ethics are necessarily so much 
blended, that in many intricate combinations 
the distinction becomes obscure : but in all 
strong cases the difference is evident. Thus. 
law punishes the most sincerely repentant ; 
but wherever the soul of the penitent can be 
thought to be thoroughly purified, Religion 
and Morality receive him with open arms. 

It is needless, after these remarks, to ob- 
serve, that those whose habitual contempla- 
tion is directed to the rules of action, are 
likely to underrate the importance of feeling 
and disposition; — an error of very unfortu- 
nate consequences, since the far greater part 



of human actions flow from these neglected! 
sources; while the law interposes only irs 
cases which may be called exceptions, which 
are now rare, and ought to be less frequent. 

The coincidence of Mr. Bentham's school 
with the ancient Epicureans in the disregard 
of the pleasures of taste and of the arts de- 
pendent on imagination, is a proof both of 
the inevitable adherence of much of the 
popular sense of the words --interest" and 
u pleasure," to the same words in their 
philosophical acceptation, and of the perni- 
cious influence of narrowing Utility to mere 
visible and tangible objects, to the exclusion 
of those which form the larger part of human 
enjoyment. 

The mechanical philosophers who, under 
Descartes and Gassendi, began to reform 
Physics in the seventeenth century, attempt- 
ed to explain all the appearances of nature* 
by an immediate reference to the figure of 
particles of matter impelling each other in 
various directions, and with unequal force, 
but in all other points alike. The commu- 
nication of motion by impulse they conceived 
to be perfectly simple and intelligible. It 
never occurred to them, that the movement 
of one ball when another is driven against 1 
it, is a fact of which no explanation can be 
given which will amount to more than a 
statement of its constant occurrence. That 
jo body can act where it is not, appeared to 
them as self-evident as that the whole is 
equal to all the parts. By this axiom they 
understood that no body moves another with- 
out touching it. They did not perceive, that" 
it was only self-evident where it means that 
no body can act where it has not the -power 
of acting; and that if it bo understood more 
largely, it is a mere assumption of the pro- 
position on which their whole system rested. 
Sir Isaac Newton reformed Physics, not by 
simplifying that science, but by rendering-, 
it much more complicated. He introduced 
into it the force of attraction, of which he 
ascertained many laws, but which even he 
did not dare to represent as being as intelli- 
gible, and as conceivably ultimate as impul- 
sion itself. It was necessary for Laplace to 
introduce intermediate laws, and to calculate 
disturbing forces, before the phenomena of 
the heavenly bodies could be reconciled even 
to Newton's more complex theory. In the 
present state of physical and chemical know- 
ledge, a man who should attempt to refer ali 
the immense variety of facts to the simple 
impulse of the Cartesians, would have no' 
chance of serious confutation. The number 
of laws augments with the progress of know- 
ledge. 

The speculations of the followers of Mr. 
Bentham are not unlike the unsuccessful 
attempt of the Cartesians. Mr. Mill, for ex 
ample, derives the whole theory of Govern- 
ment* from the single fact, that every mail 
pursues his interest when he knows it; 
which he assumes to-be a sort of self-evi- 



Encyc. B-it., article " Government,''' 



364 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



dent practical principle, — if such a phrase 
be not contradictory. That a man's pur- 
suing the interest of another, or indeed any 
other object in nature, is just as conceivable 
as that he should pursue his own interest, is 
a proposition which seems never to have oc- 
curred to this acute and ingenious writer. 
Nothing, however, can be more certain than 
its truth, if the term ' ; interest" be employed 
in its proper sense of general well-being, 
which is the only acceptation in which it can 
serve the purpose of hisarguments. If. indeed, 
the term be employed to denote the gratifi- 
cation of a predominant desire, his proposi- 
tion is self-evident, but wholly unserviceable 
in his argument ; for it is clear that individu- 
als and multitudes often desire what they 
know to be most inconsistent with their gene- 
ral welfare. A nation, as much as an indi- 
vidual, and sometimes more, may not only 
mistake its interest, but, perceiving it clearly, 
may prefer the gratification of a strong passion 
to it.* The whole fabric of his political rea- 
soning seems to be overthrown by this single 
observation ; and instead of attempting to ex- 
plain the immense variety of political facts 
by the simple principle of a contest of inter- 
ests, we are reduced to the necessity of once 
more referring them to that variety of pas- 
sions, habits, opinions, and prejudices, which 
we discover only by experience. Mr. Mill's 
essay on Education! affords another example 
of the inconvenience of leaping at once from 
the most general laws, to a multiplicity of 
minute appearances. Having assumed, or 
at least inferred from insufficient premises, 
that the intellectual and moral character is 
entirely formed by circumstances, he pro- 
ceeds, in the latter part of the essay, as if it 
were a necessary consequence of that doc- 
trine that we might easily acquire the power 
of combining and directing circumstances in 
such a manner as to produce the best possi- 
ble character. Without disputing, for the 
present, the theoretical proposition, let us 
consider what would be the reasonableness 
of similar expectations in a more easily in- 
telligible case. The general theory of the 
winds is pretty well understood ; we know 
(hat they proceed from the rushing of air 
from those portions of the atmosphere which 
are more condensed, into those which are 
more rarefied: but how great a chasm is 
there between that simple law and the great 
variety of facts which experience exhibits ! 
The constant winds between the tropics are 
large and regular enough to be in some mea- 
sure capable of explanation : but who can 
tell why. in variable climates, the wind 
blows to-day from the east, to-morrow from 
the west? Who can foretell what its shift- 
ing and variations are to be? Who can ac- 
count for a tempest on one day, and a calm 
on another ? Even if we could foretell the 
irregular and infinite variations, how far 



* The same mode of reasoning has been adopt- 
ed by lhe writer of a late criticism, on Mr Mill's 
Essay. See Edinburgh Review, vol. xlix. p. 159. 

t Encyc. Brit., article " Education." 



might we not still be from the power of com- 
bining and guiding their causes? No man 
but the lunatic in the story of Rasselas ever 
dreamt that he could command the weather. 
The difficulty plainly consists in the multi- 
plicity and minuteness of the circumstances 
which act on the atmosphere : are those 
which influence the formation of the human 
character likely to be less minute and multi- 
plied ? 

The style of Mr. Benlham underwent a 
more remarkable revolution than perhaps 
befell that of any other writer. In his early 
works, it was clear, free, spirited, often and 
seasonably eloquent: many passages of his 
later writings retain the inimitable stamp of 
genius ; but he seems to have been oppressed 
by the vastness of his projected works, — to 
have thought that he had no longer more 
than leisure to preserve the heads of them, — 
to have been impelled by a fruitful mind to 
new plans before he had completed the old. 
In this state of things, he gradually ceased 
to use words for conveying his thoughts to 
others, but merely employed them as a sort 
of short-hand to preserve his meaning for his 
own purpose. It was no wonder that his 
language should thus become obscure and 
repulsive. Though many of his technical 
terms are in themselves exact and pithy, yet 
the overflow of his vast nomenclature was 
enough to darken his whole diction. 

It was at this critical period that the ar- 
rangement and translation of his manuscripts 
were undertaken by M. Dumont, a generous 
disciple, who devoted a genius formed for 
original and lasting works, to diffuse the 
principles, and promote the fame of his mas- 
ter. He whose pen Mirabeau did not dis- 
dain to borrow, — who, in the same school 
with Romilly, had studiously pursued the 
grace as well as the force of composition, 
was perfectly qualified to strip of its uncouth- 
ness a philosophy which he understood and 
admired. As he wrote in a general language, 
he propagated its doctrines throughout Eu- 
rope, where they were beneficial to Juris- 
prudence, but perhaps injurious to the cause 
of reformation in Government. That they 
became more popular abroad than at home, 
is partly to be ascribed to the taste and 
skill of M. Dumont ; partly to that tendency 
towards free speculation and bold reform 
which was more prevalent among nations 
newly freed, or impatiently aspiring to free- 
dom, than in a people such as ours, long 
satisfied with their government, but not yet 
aware of the imperfections and abuses in 
their laws ; — to the amendment of which last 
a cautious consideration of Mr. Bentham's 
works will undoubtedly most materially con- 
tribute. 

DUGALD STEWART.* 

Manifold are the discouragements rising 
up at every step in that part of this Disserta- 

* Born, 1753; died, 1828. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



tion which extends to very recent times. 
No sooner does the writer escape from the 
angry disputes of the living, than he may 
feel his mind clouded by the name of a de- 
parted friend. But there are happily men 
whose fame is brightened by free discussion, 
and to whose memory an appearance of belief 
that they needed tender treatment would be 
a grosser injury than it could suffer from a 
respectable antagonist. 

Dugald Stewart was the son of Dr. Matthew 
Stewart, Professor of Mathematics in the 
University of Edinburgh, — a station immedi- 
ately before filled by Maclaurin, on the re- 
commendation of Newton. Hence the poet* 
spoke of '-'the philosophic sire and son." 
He was educated at Edinburgh, and he heard 
the lectures of Reid at Glasgow. He was 
early associated with his father in the duties 
of the mathematical professorship ; and dur- 
ing the absence of Dr. Adam Ferguson as 
secretary to the commissioners sent to con- 
clude a peace with North America, he oc- 
cupied the chair of Moral Philosophy. He 
was appointed to the professorship on the 
resignation of Ferguson, — not the least dis- 
tinguished among the modern moralists in- 
clined to the Stoical school. 

This office, filled in immediate succession 
by Ferguson, Stewart, and Brown, received a 
lustre from their names, which it owed in no 
degree to its modest exterior or its limited 
advantages ; and was rendered by them the 
highest dignity, in the humble, but not ob- 
scure, establishments of Scottish literature. 
The lectures of Mr. Stewart, for a quarter of 
a century, rendered it famous through every 
country where the light of reason was al- 
lowed to penetrate. Perhaps few men ever 
lived, who poured into the breasts of youth 
a more fervid and yet reasonable love of 
liberty, of truth, and of virtue. How many 
are still alive, in different countries, and in 
every rank to which education reaches, who, 
if they accurately examined their own minds 
and lives, would not ascribe much of what- 
ever goodness and happiness they possess, 
to the early impressions of his gentle and 
persuasive eloquence ! He lived to see his 
disciples distinguished among the lights and 
ornaments of the council and the senate.! 
He had the consolation, to be sure, that no 

* Burns. 

t As an example of Mr. Stewart's school may 
be mentioned Francis Horner, a favourite pupil, 
and, till his last moment, an affectionate friend. 
The short life of this excellent person is worthy 
of serious contemplation, by those more especially, 
who, in circumstances like his, enter on the slip- 
pery path of public affairs. Without the aids of 
birth or fortune, in an assembly where aristocrati- 
cal propensities prevail, — by his understanding, 
industry, pure taste, and useful information, — still 
more by modest independence, by steadiness and 
sincerity, joined to moderation, — by the stamp of 
unbending integrity, and by the conscientious con- 
siderateness which breathed through his well- 
chosen language, he raised himself, at the early a»e 
of thirty-six, to a moral authority which, without 
these qualities, no brilliancy of talents or power of 
reasoning could have acquired. No eminent speak- 



words of his promoted the growth of an im- 
pure taste, of an exclusive prejudice, or of 
a malevolent passion. Without derogation 
from his writings, it may be said that his 
disciples were among his best works. He, 
indeed, who may justly be said to have cul- 
tivated an extent of mind which would other- 
wise have lain barren, and to have contribu- 
ted to raise virtuous dispositions where the 
natural growth might have been useless or 
noxious, is not less a benefactor of man- 
kind, and may indirectly be a larger con- 
tributor to knowledge, than the author of 
great works, or even the discoverer of im- 
portant truths. The system of conveying 
scientific instruction to a large audience by 
lectures, from which the English universities 
have in a great measure departed, renders 
his qualities as a lecturer a most important 
part of his merit in a Scottish university 
which still adheres to the general method of 
European education. Probably no modern 
ever exceeded him in that species of elo- 
quence which springs from sensibility to lite- 
rary beauty and moral excellence, — which 
neither obscures science by prodigal orna- 
ment, nor disturbs the serenity of patient at- 
tention, — but though it rather calms and 
soothes the feelings, yet exalts the genius, 
and insensibly inspires a reasonable enthusi* 
asm for whatever is good and fair. 

He embraced the philosophy of Dr. Reid, 
a patient, modest, and deep thinker,* whoj 

er in Parliament owed so much of his success td 
his moral character. His high place was therefore 
honourable to his audience and to his country. 
Regret for his death was expressed with touching 
unanimity from every part of a divided assembly, 
unused to manifestations of sensibility, abhorrent 
from theatrical display, and whose tribute on such 
an occasion derived its peculiar value from their 
general coldness and sluggishness. The tears of 
those to whom he was unknown were shed over 
him ; and at the head of those by whom he was 
" praised, wept, and honoured," was one, whose 
commendation would have been more enhanced 
in the eye of Mr. Horner, by his discernment 
and veracity, than by the signal proof of the con-> 
currence of all orders, as well as parties, which 
was afforded by the name of Howard. 

* Those who may doubt the justice of this de- 
scription will do well to weigh the words of the 
most competent of judges, who, though candid and 
even indulgent, was not prodigal of praise. " It 
is certainly very rare that a piece so deeply philo- 
sophical is wrote with so much spirit, and affords 
so much entertainment to the render. Whenever 
I enter into your ideas, no man appears to express 
himself with greater perspicuty. Your style is so 
correct and so good English, that I found not any 
thing worth the remarking. I beg my compli- 
ments to my friendly adversaries Dr. Campbell 
and Dr. Gerard, and also to Dr. Gregory, whom 
I suspect to be of the same disposition, though he 
has not openly declared himself such." — Letter 
from Mr. Hume to Dr. Reid : Stewart's Biogra- 
phical Memoirs, p. 417. The latter part of the 
above sentences (written after a perusal of Dr. 
Reid's Inquiry, but before its publication) suffi- 
ciently shows, that Mr. Hume felt no displeasure 
against Reid and Campbell, undoubtedly his most 
formidable antagonist, however he might resent 
the language of Dr. Beattie, an amiable man, an 
elegant and tender poet, and a good writer on 



I&6 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



m his first work (Inquiry into the Human 
Mind), deserves a commendation more de- 
scriptive of a philosopher than that bestowed 
upon him by Professor Cousin, — of having 
made "a vigorous protest against scepticism 
on behalf of common sense." Reid'si \ 
vations on Suggestion, on natural signs, on 
the connection between what he calls "sen- 
sation" and '"perception," though perhaps 
suggested by Berkeley (whose idealism he 
had once adopted), are marked by the genu- 
ine spirit of original observation. As thf re 
are too many who seem more wise than they 
,are, so it was the more uncommon fault with 
Jteid to appear less a philosopher than he 
really was. Indeed his temporary adoption 
of Berkeleianism is a proof of an unpreju- 
diced and acute mind. Perhaps no man ever 
rose finally above the seductions of that sim- 
ple and ingenious system, who had not some- 
times tried their full effect by surrendering 
lis whole mind to them. 

But it is never with entire impunity that 
philosophers borrow vague and inappropri- 
ate terms from vulgar use. Never did any 
man afford a stronger instance of this danger 
than Reid, in his two most unfortunate terms, 
''common sense" and "instinct." Common 
sense is that average portion of understand- 
ing, possessed by most men, which, as it is 
nearly always applied to conduct, has ac- 
quired an almost exclusively practical sense. 
Instinct is the habitual power of producing 
•effects like contrivances of Reason, yet so far 
beyond the intelligence and experience of 
lhe agent, as to be utterly inexplicable by 
reference to them. No man, if he had been 
in search of improper words, could have dis- 
covered any more unfit than these two, for 
denoting that law, or state, or faculty of Mind, 
which compels us to acknowledge certain 
simple and very abstract truths, not being 
identical propositions, to lie at the foundation 
of all reasoning, and to be the necessary 
ground of all belief. 

Long after the death of Dr. Reid, his phi- 
losophy was taught at Paris by M. Royer 
Collard,* who on the restoration of free de- 
bate, became the most philosophical orator 
of his nation, and now! fills, with impartiali- 
ty and dignity, the chair of the Chamber of 
Deputies. His ingenious and eloquent scho- 
lar. Professor Cousin, dissatisfied with what 
he calls "the sage and timid" doctrines of 
Edinburgh, which he considered as only a 
vigorous protest, on behalf of common sense, 
against the scepticism of Hume, sought in 
Germany for a philosophy of "such a mascu- 
line and brilliant character as might com- 
mand the attention of Europe, and be able 

miscellaneous literature in prose, but who, in his 
Essay on Truth, — (an unfair appeal to the multi- 
tude of philosophical questions) indulged himself 
in the personalities and invectives of a popular 
pamphleteer. 

* Fragments of his lectures have been recently 
published in a French translation of Dr. Reid, by 
JV1. Jonffroy : CEuvres Completes de Thomas 
Jieid. vol iv. Paris, 1828. 

1 1831.— Ed. 



to struggle with success on a great theatre, 
against the genius of the adverse school."* 
It maybe questioned whether he found in 
Kant more than the same vigorous protest, 
under a more systematic form, with an im- 
mense nomenclature, and constituting, a phi- 
losophical edifice of equal symmetry and 
yastuess. The preference of the more boast- 
ful system, over a philosophy thus chiefly 
blamed for its modest pretensions^ does not 
seem to be entirely justified by its permanent 
authority even in the country which gave it 
birth; where, however powerful its influence 
still continues to be, its doctrines do not ap- 
pear to have now many supporters. Indeed, 
the accomplished professor himself has ra- 
pidly shot through Kantianism, and now ap- 
pears to rest or to stop at the doctrines of 
Schelling and Hegel, at a point so high, that 
it is hard to descry from it any distinction be- 
tween objects, — even that indispensable dis- 
tinction between reality and illusion. As the 
works of Reid, and those of Kant, otherwise 
so different, appear to be simultaneous efforts 
of the conservative power of philosophy to 
expel the mortal poison of scepticism, so the 
exertions of M. Royer Collard and M. Cousin, 
however at variance in metaphysical princi- 
ples, seem to have been chiefly roused by 
the desire of delivering Ethics from that fatal 
touch of personal, and, indeed, gross interest, 
which the science had received in France at 
the hands of the followers of Cond iliac, — 
especially Helvetius, St. Lambert, and Caba- 
nis. The success of these attempts to render 
speculative philosophy once more popular in 
the country of Descartes, has already been 
considerable.' The French youth, whose de- 
sire of knowledge and love of liberty afford 
an auspicious promise of the succeeding age, 
have eagerly received doctrines, of which 
the moral part is so much more agreeable to 
their liberal spirit, than is the Selfish theory, 
generated in the stagnation of a corrupt, 
cruel, and dissolute tyranny. 

These agreeable prospects bring us easily 
back to our subject ; for though the restora- 
tion of speculative philosophy in the country 
of Descartes is due to the precise statement 
and vigorous logic of M. Royer Collard, the 
modifications introduced by him into the 
doctrine of Reid coincide with those of Mr. 
Stewart, and would have appeared to agree 
more exactly, if the forms of the French phi- 
losopher had not been more dialectical, and 
the composition of Mr. Stewart had retained 
less of that oratorical character, which be- 
longed to a justly celebrated speaker. Amidst 
excellencies of the highest order, the writings 
of the latter, it must be confessed, leave 
some room for criticism. He took precau- 
tions against offence to the feelings of his 
contemporaries, more anxiously and fre- 
quently than the impatient searcher for truth 
may deem necessary. For the sake of pro- 
moting the favourable reception of philosophy 



CoursdePhilosophie.parM. Cousin, le$ 
•is. 1858 



Paris, 1828 



ion x:i. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



167 



itself, he studies, perhaps too visibly, to avoid 
whatever might raise up prejudices against 
it. H.s gratitude and native modesty d c- 
tated a superabundant care in softening and 
excusing his dissent from those who had 
been his own instructors, or who were the 
objects of general reverence. Exposed by 
his station, bolh to the assaults of political 
prejudice, and to the religious animosities 
of a country where a few sceptics attacked 
the slumbering zeal of a Calvinistic people, 
it would have been wonderful if he had not 
betrayed more weariness than would have 
been necessary or becoming in a very differ- 
ent position. The fulness of his literature 
seduced him too much into multiplied illus- 
trations. Too many of the expedients hap- 
pily used to allure the young may unneces- 
sarily swell his volumes. Perhaps a succes- 
sive publication in separate parts made him 
more voluminous than he would have been 
if the whole had been at once before his 
eyes. A peculiar susceptibility and delicacy 
of taste produced forms of expression, in 
themselves extremely beautiful, but of which 
the habitual use is not easily reconcilable 
with the condensation desirable in works 
necessarily so extensive. If, however, it 
must be owned that the caution incident to 
his temper, his feelings, his philosophy, and 
his station, has somewhat lengthened his 
composition, it is not less true, that some of 
the same circumstances have contributed to- 
wards those peculiar beauties which place 
him at the head of the most adorned writers 
on philosophy in our language. 

Few writers rise with more grace from a 
plain groundwork, to the passages which re- 
quire greater animation or embellishment. 
He gives to narrative, according to the pre- 
cept of Bactm, the colour of the time, by a 
selection of happy expressions from original 
writers. Among the secret arts by which he 
diffuses elegance over his diction, may be 
remarked the skill which, by deepening or 
brightening a shade in a secondary term, 
and by opening partial or preparatory glimp- 
ses of a thought to be afterwards unfolded, 
unobservedly heightens the import of a word, 
and gives it a new meaning, without any 
offence against old use. It is in this manner 
that philosophical originality may be recon- 
ciled to purity and stability of speech, and 
that we may avoid new terms, which are 
the easy resource of the unskilful or the in- 
dolent, and often a characteristic mark of 
writers who love their language too little to 
feel its peculiar excellencies, or to study the 
art of calling forth its powers. 

He reminds us not unfrequently of the 
character given by Cicero to one of his con- 
temporaries, ' £ who expressed refined and 
abstruse thought in soft and transparent dic- 
tion." His writings are a proof that the 
mild sentiments have their eloquence as 
well as the vehement passions. It would 
be difficult to name works in which so much 
refined philosophy is joined with so fine 
a fancy, — so much elegant literature, with 



such a delicate perception of the distinguish- 
ing excellencies of great writers, and with 
an estimate in general so just of ihe services 
rendered to Knowledge by a succession of 
philosophers. They are pervadi <l by a ] hilo- 
sophieal benevolence*, winch keeps up the 
ardour of his genius, without disturbing; the 
serenity of his mind. — which is felt equally 
in the generosity of his praise, and in the 
tenderness of his censure. It is still more 
sens.ble in the general tone wilh which he 
relates the successful progress of the human 
understanding, among many formidable ene- 
mies. Those readers are not to be envied 
who limit their admiration to particular parts, 
or to excellencies merely literary, without 
being warmed by the glow of that honest 
triumph in the advancement of Knowledge, 
and of that assured faith in the final preva- 
lence of Truth and Justice, which breathe 
through every page of them, and give the 
unity and dignity of a moral purpose to the 
whole of these classical works. 

In quoting poetical passages, some of 
which throw much light on our mental ope- 
rations, if he sometimes prized the moral 
common-places of Thomson and the specu- 
lative fancy of Akenside more highly than 
the higher poetry of their betters, it was not 
to be wondered at that the metaphysician 
and the moralist should sometimes prevail 
over the lover of poetry. His natural sensi- 
bility was perhaps occasionally cramped by 
the cold criticism of an unpoetical age ; and 
some of his remarks may be thought to indi- 
cate a more constant and exclusive regard to 
diction than is agreeable to a generation 
which has been trained by tremendous events 
to a passion for daring inventions, and to an 
irregular enthusiasm, impatient of minute 
elegancies and refinements. Many of those 
beauties which his generous criticism de- 
lighted to magnify in the works of his con- 
temporaries, have already faded under the 
scorching rays of a fiercer sun. 

Mr. Stewart employed more skill in con- 
triving, and more care in concealing his very 
important reforms of Reid's doctrines, than 
others exert to maintain their claims to origi- 
nality. Had his well-chosen language of 
' : laws of human thought or belief" been at 
first adopted in that school, instead of " in- 
stinct" and il common sense," it would have 
escaped much of the reproach (which Dr. 
Reid himself did not merit) of shallowness 
and popularity. Expressions so exact, em- 
ployed in the opening, could not have failed 
to influence the whole system, and to have 
given it, not only in the general estimation, 
but in the minds of its framers, a more scien- 
tific complexion. In those parts of Mr. 
Stewart's speculations in which he farthest 
departed from his general principles, ne 
seems sometimes, as it were, to be suddenly 
driven back by what heunconsciously shrinks 
from as ungrateful apostasy, and to be desi- 
rous of making amends to his master, by 
more harshness, than is otherwise natural to 
him towards the writers whom he has insen- 



168 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



sibly approached. Hence perhaps the un- 
wonted severity of his language towards 
Tucker and Hartley. It is thus at the very 
time when he largely adopts the principle 
of Association in his excellent Essay on the 
Beautiful,* that he treats most rigidly the 
latter of these writers, to whom, though 
neither the discoverer nor the sole advocate 
of that principle, it surely owes the greatest 
illustration and support. 

In matters of far other importance, causes 
perhaps somewhat similar may have" led to 
the like mistake. When he absolutely con- 
tradicts Dr. Reid, by truly stating that "it is 
more philosophical to resolve the power of 
habit into the association of ideas, than to 
resolve the association of ideas into habit,"t 
he, in the sequel of the same volume,t re- 
fuses to go farther than to own, that " the 
theory of Hartley concerning the origin of 
our affections, and of the Moral Sense, is a 
most ingenious refinement on the Selfish sys- 
tem, and that by means of it the force of 
many of the common reasonings against that 
system is eluded ;" though he somewhat in- 
consistently allows, that "active principles 
which, arising from circumstances in which 
all the situations of mankind must agree, 
are therefore common to the whole species, 
at whatever period of life they may appear, 
are to be regarded as a part of human nature, 
no less than the instinct of suction, in the 
same manner as the acquired perception of 
distance, by the eye, is to be ranked among 
the perceptive powers of man, no less than 
the original perceptions of the other sen- 
ses. "$ In another place also he makes a 
remark on mere beauty, which might have 
led him to a more just conclusion respecting 
the theory of the origin of the affections and 
the Moral Sense : " It is scarcely necessary 
for me to observe, that, in those instances 
where association operates in heightening" 
(or he might have said creates) "the plea- 
sure we receive from sight, the pleasing 
emotion continues still to appear, to our con- 
sciousness, simple and uncompounded."1F 
To this remark he might have added, that 
until all the separate pleasures be melted 
into one, — as long as any of them are dis- 
cerned and felt as distinct from each other, — 
the associations are incomplete, and the 
qualities which gratify are not called by the 
name of -'beauty." In like manner, as has 
been repeatedly observed, it is only when 
all the separate feelings, pleasurable and 
painful, excited by the contemplation of vo- 
luntary action, are lost in the general senti- 
ments of approbation or disapprobation, — 
when these general feelings retain no trace 



* Philosophical Essays, part ii. essay i., espe- 
cially chap. vi. The condensation, if not omission, 
of the discussion of the theories of Buffier, Rey- 
nolds, Burke, and Price, in this essay, would have 
lessened that temporary appearance which is un- 
suitable to a scientific work. 

t Elements of the Philosophy of the Human 
Mind (1792, 4to.), vol. i.p. 281. 

J Ibid. p. 383. § Ibid. p. 385. 

H Philosophical Essays, part ii. essay i. chap. xi. 



of the various emotions which originally at- 
tended different actions, — when they are 
held in a state of perfect fusion by the ha- 
bitual use of the words used in every lan- 
guage to denote them, that Conscience can 
be said to exist, or that we can be considered 
as endowed with a moral nature. The 
theory which thus ascribes the uniform for- 
mation of the Moral Faculty to universal 
and paramount laws, is not a refinement of 
the Selfish system, nor is it any modification 
of that hypothesis. The partisans of Sel- 
fishness maintain, that in acts of Will the 
agent must have a view to the pleasure or 
happiness which he hopes to reap from it: 
the philosophers who regard the social affec- 
tions and the Moral Sentiments as formed by 
a process of association, on the other hand, 
contend that these affections and sentiments 
must work themselves clear from every par- 
ticle of self-regard, before they deserve the 
names of benevolence and of Conscience. 
In the actual state of human motives the 
two systems are not to be likened, but to be 
contrasted to each other. It is remarkable 
that Mr. Stewart, who admits the "question 
respecting the origin of the affections to be 
rather curious than important,"* should have 
held a directly contrary opinion respecting 
the Moral Sense,t to which these words, in 
his sense of them, seem to be equally appli- 
cable. His meaning in the former affirma- 
tion is, that if the affections be acquired, yet 
they are justly called natural; and if their 
origin be personal, yet their nature may and 
does become disinterested. What circum- 
stance distinguishes the former from the 
latter case ? With respect to the origin of 
the affections, it must not be overlooked that 
his language is somewhat contradictory. For 
if the theory on that subject from which 
he dissents were merely "a refinement on 
the Selfish system," its truth or falsehood 
could not be represented as subordinate; 
since the controversy would continue to re- 
late to the existence of disinterested motives 
of human conduct. X It may also be ob- 
served, that he uniformly represents his op- 
ponents as deriving the affections from ; self- 
love,' which, in its proper sense, is not the 
source to which they refer even avarice, and 
which is itself derived from other antecedent 
principles, some of which are inherent, and 
some acquired. If the object of this theory 
of the rise of the most important feelings of 
human nature were, as our philosopher sup- 
poses, " to elude objections against the Sel- 
fish system," it would be at best worthless. 



* Outlines of Moral Philosophy, p. 93. 

t Outlines, p. 117. " This is the most impor- 
tant quesiion that can be staled with respect to 
the theory of Morals." l 

t In the Philosophy of the Active and Moral 
Powers of Man (vol. i. p. 164.), Mr. Stewart has 
done more manifest injustice to the Hartleian 
theory, by calling it "a doctrine fundamentally 
the same with the Selfish system,' 1 and especially 
by representing Hartley, who ought to be rather 
classed with Butler and Hume, as agreeing with 
Gay, Tucker, and Paley. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



169 



Its positive merits are several. It affirms the 
actual disinterestedness of human motives, 
as strongly as Butler himself. The explana- 
tion of the mental law. by which benevo- 
lence and Conscience are formed habitually, 
when it is contemplated deeply, impresses 
on the mind the truth that they not only are 
but must be disinterested. It confirms, as it 
were, the testimony of consciousness, by 
exhibiting to the Understanding the means 
employed to insure the production of disin- 
terestedness. It affords the only effectual 
answer to the prejudice against the disinte- 
rested theory, from the multiplication of ulti- 
mate facts and implanted principles, which, 
under all its other forms, it seems to require. 
No room is left for this prejudice by a repre- 
sentation of disinterestedness, which ulti- 
mately traces its formation to principles al- 
most as simple as those of Hobbes himself. 
Lastly, every step in just generalization is 
an advance in philosophy. No one has yet 
shown, either that Man is not actually dis- 
interested, or that he may not have been 
destined to become so by such a process as 
has been described : the cause to which the 
effects are ascribed is a real agent, which 
seems adequate to the appearance ; and if 
future observation should be found to require 
that the theory shall be confined within nar- 
rower limits, such a limitation will not de- 
stroy its value. 

The acquiescence of Mr. Stewart in Dr. 
Reid's general representation of our mental 
constitution, led him to indulge more freely 
the natural bent of his understanding, by 
applying it to theories of character and 
manners, of life and literature, of taste and 
the arts, rather than to the consideration of 
those more simple principles which rule over 
human nature under every form. His chief 
work, as he frankly owns, is indeed rather a 
collection of such theories, pointing toward 
the common end of throwing light on the 
structure and functions of the mind, than a 
systematic treatise, such as might be ex- 
pected from the title of '■'• Elements." It is 
in essays of this kind that he has most sur- 
passed other cultivators of mental philosophy. 
His remarks on the effects of casual associa- 
tions may be quoted as a specimen of the most 
original and just thoughts, conveyed in the 
best manner.* In this beautiful passage, he 
proceeds from their power of confusing spe- 
culation to that of disturbing experience and 
of misleading practice, and ends with their 
extraordinary effect in bestowing on trivial, 
and even ludicrous circumstances, some por- 
tion of the dignity and sanctity of those 
sublime principles with which they are as- 
sociated. The style, at first only clear, af- 
terwards admitting the ornaments of a calm 
and grave elegance, and at last rising to as 
high a strain as Philosophy will endure, (nil 
the parts, various as their nature is, being- 
held together by an invisible thread of gentle 
transition,) affords a specimen of adaptation 

♦Elem.Philos. Hum. Mind, vol. i.pp. 340—352. 
22 



of manner to matter which it will be hard 
to match in any other philosophical writing. 
Another very fine remark, which seems to 
be as original as it is just, may be quoted as 
a sample of those beauties with which his 
writings abound. "The apparent coldness 
and selfishness of mankind may be traced, in 
a great measure, to a want of attention and a 
want of imagination. In the case of those mis- 
fortunes which happen to ourselves or our 
near connections, neither of these powers is 
necessary to make us acquainted with our 
situation. But without a" uncommon degree 
of both, it is impossible for any man to com- 
prehend completely the situation of his neigh- 
bour, or to have an idea of the greater part of 
the distress which exists in the world. If we 
feel more for ourselves than for others, in the 
former case the facts are more fully before 
us than they can be in the latter."* Yet 
several parts of his writings afford the most 
satisfactory proof, that his abstinence from 
what is commonly called metaphysical spe- 
culation, arose from no inability to pursue it 
with signal success. As examples, his ob- 
servations on -general terms," and on '-'cau- 
sation," may be appealed to with perfect 
confidence. In the first two dissertations of 
the volume bearing the title u Philosophical 
Essays," he with equal boldness and acute- 
ness grapples with the most extensive and 
abstruse questions of mental philosophy, and 
points out both the sources and the utter- 
most boundaries of human knowledge with 
a Verulamean hand. In another part of his 
writings, he calls what are usually deno- 
minated first principles of experience, " fun- 
damental laws of human belief, or primary 
elements of human reason ;"t which last 
form of expression has so close a resemblance 
to the language of Kant, that it should have 
protected the latter from the imputation of 
writing jargon. 

The excellent volume entitled " Outlines 
of Moral Philosophy," though composed only 
as a text-book for the use of his hearers, is 
one of the most decisive proofs that he was 
perfectly qualified to unite precision with 
ease, to be brief with the utmost clearness, 
and to write with becoming elegance in a 
style where the meaning is not overladen by 
ornaments. This volume contains his pro- 
perly ethical theory.! which is much ex- 
panded, but not substantially altered, in his 
Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers, 
— a work almost posthumous, and composed 
under circumstances which give it a deeper 
interest than can be inspired by any desert 
in science. Though, with his usual modesty, 
he manifests an anxiety to fasten his ethical 
theory to the kindred speculations of other 
philosophers of the "Intellectual school," 
especially to those of Cudworth, — recently 
clothed in more modern phraseology by 
Pnce. — yet he still shows that independence 
and originality which all his aversion from 
parade could not entirely conceal. "Right," 



* Ibid. vol. i. p. 502. 
t pp. 76—148. 



t Ibid. vol. ii. p. 57. 



170 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



"duty," "virtue," u moral obligation," and 
the like or the opposite forms of expression. 
represent, accprdmg to him, certain thoughts, 
which ar.se necessarily ;u;<l instantaneously 
in the mind, (or in the Reason, if we lake 
that word in the large sense; in which it de- 
notes all that is not emotive) at the contem- 
plation of actions, and which are utterly 
incapable of all resolution, and consequent- 
ly of all explanation, and which can be 
known only by being experienced. These 
'^thoughts" or •'• ideas." by whatever name 
they may be called, are followed, — as inex- 
plicably as inevitably, — by pleasurable and 
painful emotions, which suggest the concep- 
tion of moral beauty; — a quality of human 
actions distinct from their adherence to, or 
deviation from rectitude, though generally 
coinciding with it. The question which a 
reflecting reader will here put is, whether 
any purpose is served by the introduction 
of the intermediate mental process between 
the particular thoughts and the moral emo- 
tions 1 How would the view be darkened 
or confused, or indeed in any degree changed, 
by withdrawing that process, or erasing the 
words which attempt to express it ? No ad- 
vocate of the intellectual origin of the Moral 
Faculty has yet stated a case in which a 
mere operation of Reason or Judgment, un- 
attended by emotion, could, consistently with 
the universal opinion of mankind, as it is 
exhibited by the structure of language, be 
said to have the nature or to produce the 
effects of Conscience. Such an example 
would be equivalent to an experimentum cru- 
ris on the side of that celebrated theory. 
The failure to produce it, after long chal- 
lenge, is at least a presumption against it, 
nearly approaching to that sort of decisively- 
discriminative experiment. It would be vain 
to restate what has already been too often 
repeated, that all the objections to the Selfish 
philosophy turn upon the actual nature, not 
upon the original source, of our principles of 
action, and that it is by a confusion of these 
very distinct questions alone that the confu- 
tation of Hobbes can be made apparently to 
involve Hartley. Mr. Stewart appears, like 
most other metaphysicians, to have blended 
the inquiry into the nature of our Moral 
Sentiments with that other which only seeks 
a criterion to distinguish moral from immoral 
habits of feeling and action ; for he considers 
the appearance of the Moral Sentiments at 
an early age. before the general tendency of 
actions can be ascertained, as a decisive ob- 
jection to the origin of these sentiments in 
Association, — an objection which assumes 
that, if utility be the criterion of Morality, 
associations with utility must be the mode 
by which the Moral Sentiments are formed : 
but this no skilful advocate of the theory of 
Association will ever allow. That the main, 
if not sole object of Conscience is to govern 
our voluntary exertions, is manifest : but how 
could it perform this great function if it did 
not impel the Will ? and how could it have 
the latter effect as a mere act of Reason, or, 



indeed, in any respect otherwise than as it 
is made up of emotions'? Judgment and 
Reason are therefore preparatory to Consci- 
ence, — not properly a part of it. The asser- 
tion that the exclusion of Reason reduces 
Virtue to be a relative qua] ty, is another in- 
stance of the confusion of the two questions 
in moral theory: lor though a fitness to 
excite approbation may be only a relation 
ofobjects to our susceptibility, yet the pro- 
position that all virtuous actions are benefi- 
cial, is a proposition as absolute as any other 
within the range of our understanding. 

A delicate state of health, and an ardent 
desire to devote himself exclusively to study 
and composition, induced Mr. Stewart, while 
in the full blaze of his reputation as a lec- 
turer, to retire, in 1810, from the labour of 
public instruction. This retirement, as he 
himself describes it, was that of a quiet but 
active life. Three quarto and two octavo 
volumes, besides the magnificent Disserta- 
tion prefixed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 
were among its happy fruits. This Disser- 
tation is, perhaps, the most profusely orna- 
mented of any of his compositions ; — a pecu- 
liarity which must in part have arisen from 
a principle of taste, which regarded decora- 
tion as more suitable to the history of philo- 
sophy than to philosophy itself. But the 
memorable instances of Cicero, of Milton, 
and still more those of Dryden and Burke, 
seem to show that there is some natural 
tendency in the fire of genius to burn more 
brightly, or to blaze more fiercely, in the 
evening than in the morning of human life. 
Probably the materials which long experi- 
ence supplies to the imagination, the bold- 
ness with which a more established reputa- 
tion arms the mind, and the silence of the 
low but formidable rivals of the higher prin- 
ciples, may concur in producing this unex- 
pected and little observed effect. 

It was in the last years of his life, when 
suffering under the effects of a severe attack 
of palsy, with which he had been afflicted 
in 1822, that Mr. Stewart most plentifully- 
reaped the fruits of long virtue and a well- 
ordered mind. Happily for him, his own 
cultivation and exercise of every kindly 
affection had laid up a store of that domestic 
consolation which none who deserve it ever 
want, and for the loss of which, nothing be- 
yond the threshold can make amends. The 
same philosophy which he had cultivated 
from his youth upward, employed his dying 
hand ; aspirations after higher and brighter 
scenes of excellence, always blended with 
his elevated morality, became more earnest 
and deeper as worldly passions died away, 
and earthly objects vanished from his sight. 

THOMAS BROWN.* 

A writer, as he advances in life, ought to 
speak with diffidence of systems which he 
has only begun to consider with care after 

* Bom, 1778; died, 1820. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 171 



the age in which it becomes hard for his 
thoughts to flow into new channels. A reader 
cannot be said practically to understand a 
theory, till he has acquired the power of 
thinking, at least for a short time, with the 
theorist. Even a hearer, with all the helps 
of voice in the instructor, and of count 
from him and from fellow-hearers, finds it 
difficult to perform this necessary process, 
without either being betrayed into hasty and 
undistitiguishing assent, or falling while he 
is in pursuit of an impartial estimate of opi- 
nions, into an indifference about their truth. 
I have felt this difficulty in reconsidering old 
opinions: but it is perhaps more needful to 
own its power, and to warn the reader against 
its effects, in the case of a philosopher well 
known to me, and with whom common friend- 
ships stood in the stead of much personal 
intercourse, as a cement of kindness. I 
very early read Brown's Observations on the 
Zoonomia of Dr. Darwin, — the perhaps un- 
matched work of a boy in the eighteenth 
year of his age.* His first tract on Causa- 
tion appeared to me to be the finest model 
of discussion in mental philosophy since 
Berkeley and Hume, — with this superiority 
over the latter, that its aim is that of a phi- 
losopher who seeks to enlarge knowledge, — 
not that of sceptic, who — even the most 
illustrious — has no better end than that of 
displaying his powers in confounding and 
darkening truth, — and the happiest efforts of 
whose scepticism cannot be more leniently 
described than as brilliant fits of mental de- 
bauchery, t From a diligent perusal of his 
succeeding works at the time of their publi- 
cation. I was prevented by pursuits and du- 
ties of a very different nature. These causes, 
together with ill health and growing occupa- 
tion, hindered me from reading his Lectures 
with due attention, till it has now become a 
duty to consider with care that part of them 
which relates to Ethics. 

Dr. Brown was born of one of those fami- 

* Welsh's Life of Brown, p. 43 ; — a pleasingly 
affectionate work, full of analytical spirit and meta- 
physical reading, — of such merit, in short, that I 
could wish to have found in it no phrenology. 
Objections o priori in a case dependent on facts 
are, indeed, inadmissible : even the allowance of 
presumptions of that nature would open so wide a 
door for prejudices, that at most they can be con- 
sidered only as maxims of logical prudence, which 
fortify the watchfulness of the individual. The 
fatal objection to phrenology seems to me to be, 
that what is new in it, or peculiar to it, has no 
approach to an adequate foundation in experience. 

t " Bayle, a writer who, pervading human na- 
ture at his ease, struck into the province of paradox, 
as an exercise for the unwearied vigour of his mind ; 
who, with a soul superior to the sharpest attacks 
of fortune, and a heart practised to the best philo- 
sophy, had not enough of real greatness to over- 
come that last foible of superior minds, the temp- 
tation of honour, which the academic exercise of 
wit is conceived to bring to its professor." So says 
Warburton (Divine Legation, book i. sect. 4), 
speaking of Bayle, but perhaps in part excusing 
himself, in a noble strain, of which it would have 
been more agreeable to find the repetition than the 
contrast in his language towards Hume. 



lies of ministers in the Scottish Church, who, 
after a generation or two of a humble life 
spent ia piety and usefulness, with no more 
than needful knowledge, have more than 
once sent forth a man of genius liom their 
cool and quiet shade, to make his fellows 
wiser or belter by tongue or pen, by head or 
hand. Even the scanty endowments and 
constant residence of that Chinch, by keep- 
ing her ministers far from the objects which 
awaken turbulent passions and disperse the 
understanding on many pursuits, affords 
some of the leisure and calm of monastic 
life, without the exclusion of the charities 
of family and kindred. It may be well 
doubted whether this undissipated retire- 
ment, which during the eighteenth century 
was very general in Scotland, did not make 
full amends for the loss of curious and orna- 
mental knowledge, by its tendency to qualify 
men for professional duty ; with its opportu- 
nities for the cultivation of the reason for the 
many, and for high meditation, and concen- 
tration of thought on worthy objects for the 
few who have capacity for such exertions.* 
An authentic account of the early exercises 
of Brown's mind is preserved by his biogra- 
pher,t from which it appears that at the age 
of nineteen he took a part with Others (some 
of whom became the most memorable men 
of their time), in the foundation of a private 
society in Edinburgh, under the name of 
"the Academy of Physics."! 

The character of Dr. Brown is very at- 
tractive, as an example of one in whom 
the utmost tenderness of affection, and the 
indulgence of a flowery fancy, were not 
repressed by the highest cultivation, and by 



* See Sir H. Moncreiff's Life of the Reverend 
Dr. Erskine. 

t Welsh's Life of Brown, p. 77, and App. p. 
498. 

t A part of the first day's minutes is here bor- 
rowed from Mr. Welsh : — " 7th January, 1797. — 
Present, Mr. Erskine, President, — Mr. Broug- 
ham, Mr. Reddie, Mr. Brown, Mr. Birbeck, Mr. 
Leyden," &c. who were afterwards joined by 
Lord Webb Seymour, Messrs. Horner, Jeffrey, 
Sidney Smith, &c. Mr. Erskine, who thus ap- 
pears at the head of so remarkable an association, 
and whom diffidence and untoward circumstances 
have hitherto withheld from the full manifestation 
of his powers, continued to be the bosom friend 
of Brown to the last. He has shown the con- 
stancy of his friendship for others by converting 
all his invaluable preparations for a translation of 
Sultan Baber's Commentaries, (perhaps the best, 
certainly the most European work of modern 
Eastern prose) into the means of completing the 
imperfect attempt of Leyden, with a regard 
equally generous to the fame of his early friend, 
and to the comfort of that friend's surviving rela- 
tions. The review of Baber's Commentaries, by 
M. Silvestre de Sacy, in the Journal des Savans 
for May and June 1829, is perhaps one of the best 
specimens extant of the value of literary commen- 
dation when it is bestowed with conscientious 
calmness, and without a suspicion of bias, by one 
of the greatest orientalists, in a case where he 
pronounces every thing to have been done by 
Mr. Erskine " which could have been performed 
by the most learned and the most scrupulously 
conscientious of editors and translators." 



172 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



a perhaps excessive refinement of intellect. 
His mind soared and roamed through every 
region of philosophy and poetry^ but his 
unt ravelled heart clung to the hearth of his 
father, to the children who shared it with 
him, and after them, first to the other part- 
ners of his childish sports, and then almost 
solely to those companions of his youthful 
studies who continued to be the friends of 
his life. Speculation seemed to keep his 
kindness at home. It is .observable, that 
though sparkling with fancy, he does not 
seem to have been deeply or durably touch- 
ed by those affections which are lighted at 
its torch, or at least tinged with its colours. 
His heart sought little abroad, but content- 
edly dwelt in his family and in his study. 
He was one of those men of genius who re- 
paid the tender care of a mother by rocking 
the cradle of her reposing age. He ended 
a life spent in searching for truth, and exer- 
cising love, by desiring that he should be 
buried in his native parish, with his "dear 
father and mother." Some of his delightful 
qualities were perhaps hidden from the ca- 
sual observer in general society, by the want 
of that perfect simplicity of manner which 
is doubtless their natural representative. 
Manner is a better mark of the state of a 
mind, than those large and deliberate actions 
which form what is called conduct ; it is the 
constant and insensible transpiration of cha- 
racter. In serious acts a man may display 
himself; in the thousand nameless acts 
which compose manner, the mind betrays 
its habitual bent. But manner is then only 
an index of disposition, when it is that of 
men who live at ease in the intimate famili- 
arity of friends and equals. It may be di- 
verted from simplicity by causes which do 
not reach so deep as the character ; — by bad 
models, or by a restless and wearisome 
anxiety to shine, arising from many circum- 
stances, — none of which are probably more 
common than the unseasonable exertions of 
a recluse student in society, and the unfortu- 
nate attempts of some others, to take by 
violence the admiration of those with whom 
they do not associate with ease. The asso- 
ciation with unlike or superior companions 
which least distorts manners, is that which 
takes place with those classes whose secure 
dignity generally renders their own manners 
easy, — with whom the art of pleasing or of 
not displeasing each other in society is a 
serious concern, — who have leisure enough 
to discover the positive and negative parts 
of the smaller moralities, and who, being 
trained to a watchful eye on what is ludi- 
crous, apply the lash of ridicule to affectation, 
the most ridiculous of faults. The busy in 
every department of life are too respectably 
occupied to form these manners - they are the 
frivolous work of polished idleness ; and per- 
haps their most serious value consists in the 
war which they wage against affectation, — 
though even there they betray their origin 
in punishing it, not as a deviation from na- 
ture, but as a badge of vulgarity. 



The prose of Dr. Brown is brilliant to ex- 
cess: it must not be denied that its beauty 
is sometimes womanly, — that it too often 
melts down precision into elegance. — that it 
buries the main idea under a load of illustra- 
tion, of which every part is expanded and 
adorned with such visible labour, as to with- 
draw the mind from attention to the thoughts 
which it professes to introduce more easily 
into the understanding. It is darkened by 
excessive brightness; it loses ease and live- 
liness by over-dress; and, in the midst of its 
luscious sweetness, we wish for the striking 
and homely illustrations of Tucker, and for 
the pithy and sinewy sense of Paley ; — either 
of whom, by a single short metaphor from a 
familiar, perhaps a low object, could at one 
blow set the two worlds of Reason and Fancy 
in movement. 

It would be unjust to censure severely the 
declamatory parts of his Lectures : they are 
excusable in the first warmth of composi- 
tion: they might even be justifiable allure- 
ments in attracting young hearers to abstruse 
speculations. Had he lived, he would pro- 
bably have taken his thoughts out of the 
declamatory forms of spoken address, and 
given to them the appearance, as well as 
the reality, of deep and subtile discussion. 
The habits, indeed, of so successful a lec- 
turer, and the natural luxuriance of his mind, 
could not fail to have somewhat affected all 
his compositions) but though he might still 
have fallen short of simplicity, he certainly 
would have avoided much of the diffusion, 
and even common-place, which hang heavily 
on original and brilliant thoughts : for it must 
be owned, that though, as a thinker, he is 
unusually original, yet when he falls among 
the declaimers, he is infected by their com- 
mon-places. In like manner, he would as- 
suredly have shortened, or left out, many of 
the poetical quotations which he loved to re- 
cite, and which hearers even beyond youth 
hear with delight. There are two very differ- 
ent sorts of passages of poetry to be found in 
works on philosophy, which are as far asun- 
der from each other in value as in matter. 
A philosopher will admit some of those won- 
derful lines or words which bring to light the 
infinite varieties of character, the furious 
bursts or wily workings of passion, the wind- 
ing approaches of temptation, the slippery 
path to depravity, the beauty of tenderness, 
and the grandeur of what is awful and holy 
in Man. In every such quotation, the moral 
philosopher, if he be successful, uses the 
best materials of his science ; for what are 
they but the results of experiment and ob- 
servation on the human heart, performed by 
artists of far other skill and power than his? 
They are facts which could have only been 
ascertained by Homer, by Dante, by Shak- 
speare, by Cervantes, by Milton. Every year 
of admiration since the unknown period 
when the Iliad first gave delight, has extort- 
ed new proofs of the justness of the picture 
of human nature, from the responding hearts 
of the admirers. Every strong feeling which 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 173 



these masters have excited, is a successful 
repetition of iheir original experiment, and 
a continually growing- evidence of the great- 
ness of their discoveries. Quotations of this 
nature may be the most satisfactory, as well 
as the most delightful, proofs of philosophical 
positions. Others of inferior merit are not to 
be interdicted : a pointed maxim, especially 
when familiar, pleases, and is recollected. I 
cannot entirely conquer my passion for the 
Roman and Stoical declamation of some pas- 
sages in Lucan and Akenside : but quota- 
tions from those who have written on philo- 
sophy in verse, or, in other words, from those 
who generally are inferior philosophers, and 
voluntarily deliver their doctrines in the 
most disadvantageous form, seem to be un- 
reasonable. It is agreeable, no doubt, to the 
philosopher, and still more to the youthful 
student, to meet his abstruse ideas clothed 
in the sonorous verse of Akenside ; the sur- 
prise of the unexpected union of verse with 
science is a very lawful enjoyment : but such 
slight and momentary pleasures, though they 
may tempt the writer to display them, do 
not excuse a vain effort to obtrude them on 
the sympathy of the searcher after truth in 
after-times. It is peculiarly unlucky that 
Dr. Brown should have sought supposed or- 
nament from the moral common-places of 
Thomson, rather than from that illustration 
of philosophy which is really to be found in 
his picturesque strokes. 

Much more need not be said of Dr. Brown's 
own poetry, — somewhat voluminous as it is, 
— than that it indicates fancy and feeling, 
and rises at least to the rank of an elegant 
accomplishment. It may seem a paradox, 
but it appears to me that he is really most 
poetical in those poems and passages which 
have the most properly metaphysical charac- 
ter. For every varied form of life and nature, 
when it is habitually contemplated, may in- 
spire feeling; and the just representation of 
these feelings may be poetical. Dr. Brown 
observed Man. and his wider world, with 
the eye of a metaphysician ; and the dark 
results of such contemplations, when he re- 
viewed them, often filled his soul with feel- 
ings which, being both grand and melan- 
choly, were truly poetical. Unfortunately, 
however, few readers can be touched with 
fellow-feelings. He sings to few, and must 
be content with sometimes moving a string 
in the soul of the lonely visionary, who, in 
the day-dreams of youth, has felt as well as 
meditated on the mysteries of nature. His 
heart has produced charming passages in all 
his poems ; but, generally speaking, they are 
only beautiful works of art and imitation. 
The choice of Akenside as a favourite and a 
model may, without derogation from that 
writer, be considered as no proof of a poeti- 
cally formed mind.* There is more poetry 

* His accomplished friend Mr. Erskine con- 
fesses thai Brown's poems "are not written in 
the language of plain and gross emotion. The 
string touched is too delicate for general sympa- 
thy. They are in an unknown tongue to one 



in many single lines of Cowper than in vo- 
lumes of sonorous verses such as Akenside's. 
Philosophical poetry is very different from 
versified philosophy: the former is the high- 
est exertion of genius; the latter cannot be 
be ranked above the slighter amusements 
of ingenuity. Dr Brown's poetry was, it 
must be owned, composed either of imita- 
tions, which, with some exceptions, may be 
produced and read without feeling, or of 
effusions of such feelings only as meet a 
rare and faint echo in the human breast. 

A few words only can here be bestowed 
on the intellectual part of his philosophy. It 
is an open revolt against the authority of 
Reid ; and, by a curious concurrence, he be- 
gan to lecture nearly at the moment when 
the doctrines of that philosopher came to be 
taught with applause in France. Mr. Stew- 
art had dissented from the language of Reid, 
and had widely departed from his opinions 
on several secondary theories: Dr. Brown 
rejected them entirely. He very justly con- 
sidered the claim of Reid to the merit of de- 
tecting the universal delusion which had 
betrayed philosophers into the belief that 
ideas which were the sole objects of know- 
ledge had a separate existence, as a proof 
of his having mistaken their illustrative lan- 
guage for a metaphysical opinion ; # but he 
does not do justice to the service which Reid 
really rendered to mental science, by keep- 
ing the attention of all future speculators in 
a state of more constant watchfulness against 
the transient influence of such an illusion. 
His choice of the term " feeling"t to denote 
the operations which we usually refer to the 
Understanding, is evidently too wide a de- 
parture from its ordinary use, to have any 
probability of general adoption. No definition 
can strip so familiar a word of the thoughts 
and emotions which have so long accompa- 
nied it, so as to fit it for a technical term of 
the highest abstraction. If we can be said 
to have a feeling " of the equality of the 
angle of forty-five to half the angle of ninety 
degrees,"} we may call Geometry and Arith- 
metic sciences of " feeling." He has very 
forcibly stated the necessity of assuming 
"the primary universal intuitions of direct 
belief^ which, intheir nature, are incapable 
of all proof. They seem to be accurately 
described as notions which cannot be con- 
ceived separately, but without which nothing 
can be conceived. They are not only neces- 
sary to reasoning and to belief, but to thought 
itself. It is equally impossible to prove or to 
disprove them. He has very justly blamed 
the school of Reid for '-'an extravagant and 
ridiculous" multiplication of those principles 
which he truly represents as inconsistent 
with sound philosophy. To philosophize is in- 
deed nothing more than to simplify securely.^ 



half" (he might have snid nineteen twentieths) " of 
the reading part of the community."— -Weish's 
Life of Brown, p. 431. 

* Brown's Lectures, vol. ii. pp. 1 — 49. 

t Ibid. vol. i. p. 220. X Ibid. vol. i. p. 222. 

<5> Dr. Brown always expresses himself best 
p2 



174 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



The substitution of "suggestion" for the 
former phrase of "association of ideas," 
would hardly deserve notice in so cursory a 
view, if it had not led him to a serious mis- 
conception of the doctrines and deserts of 
other philosophers. The fault of the latter 
phrase is rather in the narrowness of the last 
than in the inadequacy of the first word. 
'Association' presents the fact in the light 
of a relation between two mental acts : l sug- 
gestion 3 denotes rather the power of the one 
to call up the other. But whether we say 
that the sight of ashes 'suggests' fire, or that 
the ideas of fire and ashes are 'associated;' 
\ve mean to convey the same fact, and, in 
both cases, an exact thinker means to ac- 
company the fact with no hypothesis. Dr. 
Brown has supposed the word "association" 
as intended to affirm that there is some "in- 
termediate process"* between the original 
succession of the mental acts and the power 
which they acquired therefrom of calling up 
each other. This is quite as much to raise 
up imaginary antagonists for the honour of 
conquering them, as he justly reprehends 
Dr. Reid for doing in the treatment of pre- 
ceding philosophers. He falls into another 
more important and unaccountable error, in 
representing his own reduction of Mr. Hume's 
principles of association ( — resemblance, 
contrariety, causation, contiguity in time or 
place) to the one principle of contiguity, as a 
discovery of his own, by which his theory is 
distinguished from "the universal opinion 
of philosophers."! Nothing but too exclu- 
sive a consideration of the doctrines of the 
Scottish school could have led him to speak 
thus of what was hinted by Aristotle, dis- 
tinctly laid down by Hobbes, and fully un- 
folded both by Hartley and Condillac. He 
has, however, extremely enlarged the proof 
and the illustration of this law of mind, by 
the exercise of "a more subtile analysis" 
and the disclosure of "a finer species of 
proximity."! As he has thus aided and 
confirmed, though he did not discover, the 
general law, so he has rendered a new and 
very important service to mental science, by 
drawing attention to what he properly calls 
"secondary laws of Suggestion "§ or Asso- 
ciation, which modify the action of the gene- 
ral law, and must be distinctly considered, 
in order to explain its connection with the 
phenomena. The enumeration and exposi- 
tion are instructive, and the example is wor- 
thy of commendation. For it. is in this lower 



region of the science that most remains to 



where he is short and familiar. " An hypoihesis 
is nothing more lhan a reason for making one ex- 
periment or observation rather than anoiher." — 
Lectures, vol. i. p. 170. In 1812, as ihe present 
writer observed io him that Reid and Hume dif- 
fered more in words lhan in opinion, he answered, 
" Yes, Reid bawled out, we must believe an out- 
ward world, but added in a whisper, we can give 
no reason for our belief: Hume cries out, we can 
give no reason f>r such a rtolion, and whispers, I 
own we cannot set rid of it." 

* Brown's Lectures, vol. ii. pp. 335—347. 

♦ Ibid vol u. p. 349. \ Ibid. vol. ii. p. 218. 
$ Ibid. vol. ii. p. 270. 



be discovered; it is that which rests most 
on observation, and least tempts to contro- 
versy : it is by improvements in this part of 
our knowledge that the foundations are se- 
cured, and the whole building so repaired as 
to rest steadily on them. The distinction 
of common language between the head and 
the heart, which, as we have seen, is so 
often overlooked or misapplied by metaphy- 
sicians, is, in the system of Brown, signified 
by the terms "mental states" and "emo- 
tions." It is unlucky that no single word 
could be found for the former, and that the 
addition of the generic term " feeling" should 
disturb its easy comprehension, when it is 
applied more naturally. 

In our more proper province Brown fol- 
lowed Butler (who appears to have been 
chiefly known to him through the writings 
of Mr. Stewart), in his theory of the social 
affections. Their disinterestedness is en- 
forced by the arguments of both these phi- 
losophers, as well as by those of Hntcheson.* 
It is observable, however, that Brown ap- 
plies the principle of Suggestion, or Associa- 
tion, boldly to this part of "human nature, and 
seems inclined to refer to it even Sympathy 
itself. t It is hard to understand how, with 
such a disposition on the subject of a princi- 
ple so generally thought ultimate as Sympa- 
thy, he should, inconsistently with himself, 
follow Mr. Stewart in representing the theory 
which derives the affections from Associa- 
tion as "a mollification of the Selfish sys- 
tem."! He mistakes that theory when he 
states, that it derives the affections from our 
experience that our own interest is connect- 
ed with that of others; since, in truth, it 
considers our regard to our own interest as 
formed from the same original pleasures by 
association, which, by the like process, may 
and do directly generate affections towards 
others, without passing through the channel 
of regard to our general happiness. But, says 
he, this is only an hypothesis, since the form- 
ation of these affections is acknowledged to 
belong to a time of which there is no re- 
membrancer—an objection fatal to every 
theory of any mental functions, — subversive, 
for example, of Berkeley's discovery of ac- 
quired visual perception, and most strangely 
inconsistent in the mouth of a philosopher 
whose numerous simplifications of mental 
theory are and must be founded on occur- 
rences which precede experience. It is in 
all other cases, and it must be in this, suffi- 
cient that the principle of the theory is' really 
existing, — that it explains the appearances, 
—that its supposed action resembles what we 
know to be its action in those similar cases 
of which we have direct experience. Last- 
ly, he in express words admits that, accor- 
ding to the theory to which he objects, we 
have affections which are at present disin- 

* Brown's lectures, vol. in. p 24^. 

t Ihicl. vol. iv. p 82. t Hid. vol. iii. p. 282. 

$ Ibid. vol. iv. p. 87. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 175 



terested.* Is it not a direct contradiction in 
terms to call such a theory " a modification 
of the Selfish system'?" His language in 
the sequel clearly indicates a distrust of his 
own statement, and a suspicion that he is 
not only inconsistent with himself, but alto- 
gether mistaken. t 

As we enter farther into the territory of 
Ethics, we at length discover a distinction, 
originating with Brown, the neglect of which 
by preceding speculators we have more than 
once lamented as productive of obscurity 
and confusion. "'Ihe moral affections," 
says he, " which I consi'erat present, I con- 
sider rather physiologically" (01, as ne else- 
where better expresses it, '■ psychologically") 
' l 'than ethically, as party of our menial con- 
stitution, not as involving the fulfilment or 
violation of ' duties." $ He immediately, how- 
ever, loses sight of this distinction, and rea- 
sons inconsistently with it, instead of follow- 
ing its proper consequences in his analysis 
of Conscience. Perhaps, indeed, (for the 
words are capable of more than one sense) 
he meant to distinguish the virtuous affec- 
tions from those sentiments which have 
Morality exclusively in view, rather than to 
distinguish the theory of Moral Sentiment 
from the attempt to ascertain the character- 
istic quality of right action. Friendship is 
conformable in its dictates to Morality; but 
it ma)', and does exist, without any view to 
it: he who feels the affections, and performs 
the duties of friendship, is the object of that 
distinct emotion which is called ''moral ap- 
probation." 

It is on the subject of Conscience that, in 
imitation of Mr. Stewart, and with the argu- 
ments of that philosopher, he makes his 
chief stand against the theory which con- 
siders the formation of that master faculty 
itself as probably referable to the necessary 
and universal operation of those laws of hu- 
man nature to which he himself ascribes 
almost every other state of mind. On both 
sides of this question the supremacy of Con- 
science isalike held to be venerable and ab- 
solute. Once more, be it remembered, that 
the question is purely philosophical, and is 
only whether, from the impossibility of ex- 
plaining its formation by more general laws, 
we are reduced to the necessity of consider- 
ing it as an original fact in human nature, of 
which no further account can be given. Let 
it, however, be also remembered, that we 
are not driven to this supposition by the mere 
circumstance, that no satisfactory explana- 
tion has yet appeared; for there are many 
analogies in an unexplained state of mind 
to states already explained, which may jus- 
tify us in believing that the explanation re- 
quires only more accurate observation, and 
more patient meditation, to be brought to 
that completeness which it probably will 
attain. 



* Brown's Lectures, vol. iv. p. 87. 
t :i)id. vol. iv. i-p. 94—97. 
{ Ibid. vol. iii. p. 231. 



SECTION VII. 

GENERAL REMARKS. 

The oft-repeated warning with which the 
foregoing section concluded being again pre- 
mised, it remains that we should offer a few 
observations, which naturally occur on the 
consideration of Dr. Brown's argument in 
support of the proposition, that moral appro- 
bation is not only in its mature state inde- 
pendent of, and superior to, any other prin- 
ciple of human nature (regarding which there 
is no dispute), but that its origin is altogether 
inexplicable, and that its existence is an ulti- 
mate fact in mental science. Though these 
observations are immediately occasioned by 
the writings of Brown, they are yet, in the 
main, of a general nature, and might have 
been made without reference to any paiticu- 
lar writer. 

The term "suggestion," which might be 
inoffensive in describing merely intellectual 
associations, becomes peculiarly unsuitable 
when it is applied to those combinations of 
thought with emotion, and to those unions 
of feeling, which compose the emotive na- 
ture of Man. Its common sense of a sign 
recalling the thing signified, always embroils 
the new sense vainly forced upon it. No one 
can help owning, that if it were consistently 
pursued, so as that we were to speak of 
"suggesting a feeling" or "passion," the 
language would be universally thought ab- 
surd. To "suggest love" or "hatred" is a 
mode of expression so manifestly incongru- 
ous, that most readers would choose to un- 
derstand it as suggesting reflections on the 
subject of these passages. "Suggest" would 
not commonly be understood as synonymous 
wilh "revive" or "rekindle." Defects of 
the same sort may indeed be found in ihe 
parallel phrases of most, if not all. philoso- 
phers; and all of them proceed from the er- 
roneous but prevalent notion, that the law of 
Association produces only such a close union 
of a thought and a feeling, as gives one the 
power of reviving the other ; — the truth being 
that it forms them into a new compound, in 
which the properties of the component parts 
are no longer discoverable, and which may 
itself become a substantive principle of hu- 
man nature. They supposed the condition, 
produced by the power of that law, to re- 
semble that of material substances in a state 
of mechanical separation ; whereas in reality 
it may be better likened to a chemical com- 
bination of the same substances, from which' 
a totally new product arises. Their language 
involves a confusion of the question which 
relates to the origin of the principles of hu- 
man activity, with the other and far more 
important question which relates to their 
natvre ; and as soon as this distinction is 
hidden, the theorist is either betrayed into 
the Selfish system by a desire of clearness 
and simplicity, or tempted to ihe needless 
multiplication of ultimate facts by mistaken 
anxiety for what he supposes to be the 



176 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



guards of our social and moral nature. The 
defect is common to Brown with his prede- 
cessors, but in him it is less excusable; for 
he saw the truth and recoiled from it. It is 
the main defect of the term "association" 
itself, thai it does not, till after long use, con- 
vey the notion of a perfect union, but rather 
leads to that of a combination which may be 
dissolved, if not at pleasure, at least with the 
help of care and exertion ; which is utterly 
and dangerously false in the important cases 
where such unions are considered as consti- 
tuting the most essential principles of human 
nature. Men can no more dissolve these 
unions than they can disuse their habit of 
judging of distance by the eye, and often by 
the ear. But <( suggestion" implies, that 
what suggests is separate from what is sug- 
gested, and consequently negatives that unity 
in an active principle which the whole an- 
alogy of nature, as well as our own direct 
consciousness, shows to be perfectly com- 
patible with its origin in composition. 

Large concessions are, in the first place, 
to be remarked, which must be stated, be- 
cause they very much nanow the matter in 
dispute. Those who, before Brown, con- 
tended against "beneficial tendency" as the 
standard of Morality, have either shut their 
eyes on the connection of Virtue with gene- 
ral utility, or carelessly and obscurely al- 
lowed, without further remark, a connection 
which is at least one of the most remarkable 
and important of ethical facts. He acts more 
boldly, and avowedly discusses " the rela- 
tion of Virtue to Utility." He was compelled 
by that discussion to make those concessions 
which so much abridge this controversy. 
"Utility and Virtue are so related, that there 
is perhaps no action generally felt to be vir T 
tuous, which it would not be beneficial that 
all men in similar circumstances should 
imitate."* "In every case of benefit or in- 
jury willingly done, there arise certain emo- 
tions of moral approbation or disapproba- 
tion.'^ "The intentional produce of evil, 
as pure evil, is always hated, and that of 
good, as pure good, always loved. "I All 
virtuous acts are thus admitted to be univer- 
sally beneficial ; Morality and the general 
benefit are acknowledged always to coincide. 
It is hard to say, then, why they should not 
be reciprocally tests of each other, though in 
a very different way ; — the virtuous feelings, 
fitted as they are by immediate appearance, 
by quick and powerful action, to be sufficient 
tests of Morality in the moment of action, 
and for all practical purposes; while the 



* Lectures, vol. iv. p. 45. The unphilosnphical 
word " perhaps" must be struck out of the propo- 
sition, unless the whole be considered as a mere 
conjecture; it limits no affirmation, but destroys 
it, by converting it into a guess. See the like con- 
cession, vol. iv. p 33, with some words interlard- 
ed, which betrav a sort of reluctance and fluctua- 
tion, indicative of the difficulty with which Brown 
struggled to withhold his assent from truths which 
he unreasonably dreaded. 

*• Ibid. vol. iii. p. 567. t Ibid. vol. iii. p. 621. 



consideration of tendency of those acts to 
contribute to general happiness, a more ob- 
scure and slowly discoverable quality, should 
be applied in general reasoning, as a test of 
the sentiments and dispositions themselves. 
In cases where such last-mentioned test has 
been applied, no proof has been attempted 
that it has ever deceived those who used it 
in the proper place. It has uniformly served 
to justify our moral constitution, and to show 
how reasonable it is for us to be guided in 
action by our higher feelings. At all events 
it should be, but has not been considered, 
that from these concessions alone it follows, 
that beneficial tendency is at least one con- 
stant property of Virtue. Is not this, in ef- 
fect, an admission that beneficial tendency 
does distinguish virtuous acts and disposi- 
tions from those which we call vicious? If 
the criterion be incomplete or delusive, let 
its faults be specified, and let some other 
quality be pointed out, which, either singly 
or in combination with beneficial tendency, 
may r more perfectly indicate the distinction. 
But let us not be assailed by arguments 
which leave untouched its value as a test, 
and are in truth directed only against its fit- 
ness as an immediate incentive and guide to 
right action. To those who contend for its 
use in the latter character, it must be left to 
defend, if they can, so untenable a position : 
but all others must regard as pure sophistry 
the use of arguments against it as a test, 
which really show nothing more than its ac- 
knowledged unfitness to be a motive. 

When voluntary benefit and voluntary in- 
jury are # pointed out as the main, if not the 
sole objects of moral approbation, and disap- 
probation, — when we are told truly, that the 
production of good, as good, is always loved, 
and that of evil, as such, always hated, can 
we require a more clear, short, and unan- 
swerable proof, that beneficial tendency is 
an essential quality of Virtue? It is indeed 
an evidently necessary consequence of this 
statement, that if benevolence be amiable in 
itself, our affection for it must increase with 
its extent, and that no man can be in a per- 
fectly right state of mind, who, if he consider 
general happiness at all, is not ready to ac- 
knowledge that a good man must regard it 
as being in its own nature the most desirable 
of all objects, however the constitution and 
circumstances of human nature may render 
it unfit or impossible to pursue it directly as 
the object of life. It is at the same time ap- 
parent that no such man can consider any 
habitual disposition, clearly discerned to be 
in its whole result at variance with general 
happiness, as not unworthy of being culti- 
vated, or as not fit to be rooted out. It is 
manifest that, if it were otherwise, he would 
cease to be benevolent. As soon as we con- 
ceive the sublime idea of a Being who no ; 
only foresees, but commands, all the conse- 
quences of the actions of all voluntary agents, 
this scheme of reasoning appears far more 
clear. In such a case, if our moral senti- 
ments remain the same, they compel us to 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



177 



attribute His whole government of the world 
to benevolence. The consequence is as ne- 
cessary as in any process of reason ; for if 
our moral nature be supposed, it will appear 
self-evident that it is as much impossible for 
us to love and revere such a Being, if we as- 
cribe to Him a ra xed or imperfect benevo- 
lence, as to believe the most positive contra- 
diction in terms. Now, as Religion consists 
in that love and reverence, it is evident that 
it cannot subsist without a belief in benevo- 
lence as the sole principle of divine govern- 
ment. It is nothing to tell us that this is not 
a process of reasoning, or, to speak more ex- 
actly, that the first propositions are assumed. 
The first propositions in every discussion re- 
lating to intellectual operations must likewise 
be assumed. Conscience is not Reason, but 
it is not less an essential part of human na- 
ture. Principles which are essential to all its 
operations are as much entitled to immediate 
and implicit assent, as those principles which 
stand in the same relation to the reasoning 
faculties. The laws prescribed by a bene- 
volent Being to His creatures must necessa- 
rily be founded on the principle of promoting 
their happiness. It would be singular indeed, 
if the proofs of the goodness of God, legible 
in every part of Nature, should not. above 
all others, be most discoverable and conspi- 
cuous in the beneficial tendency of His moral 
laws. 

But we are asked, if tendency to general 
welfare be the standard of Virtue, why is it 
not always present to the contemplation of 
every man who does or prefers a virtuous 
action] Must not Utility be in that case 
"the felt essence of Virtue?"* Why are 
other ends, besides general happiness, fit to 
be morally pursued 1 

These questions, which are all founded on 
that confusion of the theory of actions with 
the theory of sentiments, against which the 
reader was so early warned, t might be dis- 
missed with no more than a reference to that 
distinction, from the forgetfulness of which 
they have arsen. By those advocates of the 
principle of Utility, indeed, who hold it to be 
a necessary part of their system, that some 
glimpse at least of tendency to personal or 
general well-1 eing is an essential part of the 
motives which render an action virtuous, 
these questions cannot* be satisfactorily an- 
swered. Against such they are arguments 
of irresistible force; but against the doctrine 
itself, rightly understood and justlv bounded, 
they are altogether powerless. The reason 
why there may, and must be many ends mo- 
rally more fit to be pursued in practice than 
general happiness, is plainly to be found in 
the limited capacity of Man. A perfectly 
good Being, who foresees and commands all 
the consequences of action, cannot indeed be 
conceived by us to have any other end in 
view than general well-being. Why evil 
exists under that perfect government, is a 



* Lectures, vol iv. p. 38. 
t See supra, p. 97. 
23 



question towards the solution of which the 
human understanding can scarcely advance 
a single step. But all who hold the evil to 
exist only for good, ami own their inability 
to explain why or how, are perfectly exempt 
from any charge of inconsistency in their 
obedience to the dictaies of their moral na- 
ture. The measure of the faculties of Man 
renders it absolutely necessary for him to 
have many other practical ends; the pursuit 
of all of which is moral, v\hen it actually 
tends to general happiness, though that last 
end never entered into the contemplation of 
the agent. It is impossible for us to calcu- 
late the effects of a single action, any more 
than the chances of a single life. But let it 
not be hastily concluded, that the calculation 
of consequences is impossible in moral sub- 
jects. To calculate the general tendency of 
every sort of human action, is a possible, 
easy, and common operation. The general 
good effects of temperance, prudence, forti- 
tude, justice, benevolence, gratitude, vera- 
city, fidelity, of the affections of kindred, 
and of love for our country, are the subjects 
of calculations which, taken as generalities, 
are absolutely unerring. They are founded 
on a larger and firmer basis of more uniform 
experience, than any of those ordinary cal- 
culations which govern prudent men in the 
whole business of life. An appeal to these 
daily and familiar transactions furnishes at 
once a decisive answer, both to those advo- 
cates of Utility who represent the considera- 
tion of it as a necessary ingredient in virtu- 
ous motives, as well as moral approbation, 
and to those opponents who turn the unwar- 
rantable inferences of unskilful advocates 
into proofs of the absurdity into which the 
doctrine leads. 

The cultivation of all the habitual senti- 
ments from which the various classes of vir- 
tuous actions flow, the constant practice of 
such actions, the strict observance of rules 
in all that province of Ethics which can be 
subjected to rules, the watchful care of all 
the outworks of every part of duty, and of 
that descending series of useful habits which, 
being securities to Virtue, become themselves 
virtues, — are so many ends which it is abso- 
lutely necessary for man to pursue and to 
seek for their own sake. "I saw D'Alem- 
bert," says a very late writer, "congratulate 
a young man very coldly, who brought him 
a solution of a problem The young man 
said, ' I have done this in order to have a seat 
in the Academy.' 'Sir,' answered D'Alem- 
bert, ! wilh such dispositions you never 
will earn one. Science must be loved for 
its own sake, and not for the advantage to 
be derived. No other principle will enable 
a man to make progress in the sciences.'"* 
It is singular that D'Alembert should not 
perceive the extensive application of this 
truth to the whole nature of Man. No man 
can make progress in a virtue who does 
not seek it for its own sake. No man is a 

I * Memoires de Mondosier, vol. i. p. 50. 



178 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



friend, a Jover of his country, a kind father^ 
a dutiful son, who does not consider the culti- 
vation of affection and the performance of 
duty in all these cases, respectively, as in- 
cumbent on him for their own sake, and 
not for the advantage to be derived from 
them. Whoever serves another with a view 
of advantage to himself is universally ac- 
knowledged not to act from affection. But 
the more immediate application of this truth 
to our purpose is, that in the case of those 
virtues which are the means of cultivating 
and preserving other virtues, it is necessary 
to acquire love and reverence for the se- 
condary virtues for their own sake, without 
which they never will be effectual means of 
sheltering and strengthening those intrinsi- 
cally higher qualities lo which they are ap- 
pointed to minister. Every moral act must 
be considered as an end, and men must ba- 
nish from their practice the regard to the 
most naturally subordinate duty as a means. 
Those who are perplexed by the supposition 
that secondary virtues, making up by the 
extent of their beneficial tendency for what 
in each particular instance they may want 
in magnitude, may become of as great im- 
portance as the primary virtues themselves, 
would do well to consider a parallel though 
very homely case. A house is useful for 
many purposes: many of these purposes 
are in themselves, for the time, more im- 
portant than shelter. The destruction of the 
house may, nevertheless, become a greater 
evil than the defeat of several of these pur- 
poses, because it is permanently convenient, 
and indeed necessary to the execution of 
most of them. A Moor is made for warmth, 
for dryness, — to support tables, chairs, beds, 
and all the household implements which 
contribute lo accommodation anil to plea- 
sure. The floor is valuable only as a means ; 
but, as the only means by which many ends 
are attained, it may be much more valuable 
than some of them. The table might be, 
and generally is, of more valuable timber 
than the floor; but the workman who should 
for that reason take more pains in making 
the table strong, than ihe floor secure, would 
not long be employed by customers of com- 
mon sense. 

The connection of that part of Morality 
which regulates the intercourse of the sexes 
with benevolence, affords the most striking 
instance of the very great importance which 
may belong to a virtue, in itself secondary, 
but on which the general cultivation of the 
highest virtues permanently depends. Deli- 
cacy and modesty may be thought chiefly 
worthy of cultivation, because they guard 
purity; but they must be loved for their 
own sake, without wh ch they cannot flou- 
rish. Purity is the sole school of domestic 
fidelity, and domestic fidelity is the only 
nursery of the affections between parents 
and children, from children towards each 
other, and, through these affections, of all 
the kindness which renders the world ha- 
bitable. At each step in the progress, the 



appropriate end must be loved for its own 
sake; and it is easy to see how the only 
means of sowing the seeds of benevolence, 
in all its forms, may become of far greater 
importance than many of the modifications 
and exertions even of benevolence itself. 
To those who will consider this subject, it 
will not long seem strange that the sweetest 
and most gentle affections grow up only 
under the apparently cold and dark shadow 
of stern duly. The obligation is strength- 
ened, not weakened, by the consideiation 
that it arises from human imperfection ; 
which only proves it to be founded on the 
nature of man. It is enough that Ihe pursuit 
of all ihese separate ends leads to general 
well-being, the promotion of which is the 
final purpose of the Creation. 

The last and most specious argument 
against beneficial tendency, even as a test, 
is conveyed in the question, Why moral ap- 
probation is not bestowed on every thing 
beneficial, instead of being confined, as it 
confessedly is, to voluntary acts'? It may 
plausibly be said, that the establishment of 
the beneficial tendency of all those voluntary 
acts which are the objects of moral approba- 
tion, is not sufficient; — since, if such ten- 
dency be the standard, it ought to follow, that 
whatever is useful should also be morally 
approved. To answer, as has before been 
done,* that experience gradually limits mo- 
ral approbation and disapprobation to volun- 
tary acts, by teaching us that they influence 
the Will, but are wholly wasted if they be 
applied to any other object, — though the 
fact be true, and contributes somewhat to 
the result, — is certainly not enough. It is 
at best a paitial solution. Perhaps, on recon- 
sideration, it is entitled only to a secondary 
place. To seek a foundation for universal, 
ardent, early, and immediate feelings, in pro- 
cesses of an intellectual nalure, has, since 
the origin of philosophy, been the grand 
error of ethical inquirers into human nature. 
To seek for such a foundation in Association, 
— an early and insensible process, which 
confessedly mingles itself with the compo- 
sition of our first and simplest feelings, and 
which is common to both parts of our nature, 
is not liable to the same animadversion. If 
Conscience be uniformly produced by the 
regular and harmonious co-operation of many 
processes of association, the objection is in 
reality a challenge to produce a complete 
theory of it, founded on that principle, by 
exhibiting such a full account of all these 
processes as may satisfactorily explain why 
it proceeds thus far and no farther. This 
would be a very arduous attempt, and per 
haps it may be premature. But something 
may be more modestly tried towards an 
outline, which, though it may leave many 
particulars unexplained, may justify a rea- 
sonable expectation that they are not incapa- 
ble of explanation, and may even now assign 
such reasons for the limitation of approbation 

* See supra, p. 142. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



n9 



to voluntary acts, as may convert the objec- 
tion derived from that fact into a corrobora- 
tion of the doctrines to which it has been 
opposed as an insurmountable difficulty. 
Such an attempt will naturally lead to the 
close of the present Dissertation, The at- 
tempt has indeed been already made,* but 
not without great apprehensions on the part 
of the author that he has not been clear 
enough, especially in those parts which ap- 
peared to himself to owe most to his own 
reflection. He will now endeavour, at the 
expense of some repetition, to be more satis- 
factory. 

There must be primary pleasures, pains, 
and even appetites, which arise from no 
prior state of mind, and which, if explained 
at all, can be derived only from bodily 
organization ; for if there were not, there 
could be no secondary desires. What the 
number of the underived principles may be. 
is a question to which the answers of phi- 
losophers have been extremely various, and 
of which the consideration is not necessary 
to our present purpose. The rules of phi- 
losophizing, however, require that causes 
should not be multiplied without necessity. 
Of two explanations, therefore, which give 
an equally satisfactory account of appear- 
ances, that theory is manifestly to be pre- 
ferred which supposes the smaller number 
of ultimate and inexplicable principles. This 
maxim, it is true, is subject to three indis- 
pensable conditions : — 1st, That the princi- 
ples employed in the explanation should be 
known really to exist; in which consists the 
main distinction between hypothesis and 
theory. Gravity is a principle universally 
known to exist; ether and a nervous fluid 
are mere suppositions. — 2dly, That these 
principles should be known to produce ef- 
fects like those which are ascribed to them 
in the theory. This is a further distinction 
between hypothesis and theory; for there 
are an infinite number of degrees of likeness, 
from the faint resemblances which have led 
some to fancy that the functions of the 
nerves depend on electricity, to the remark- 
able coincidences between the appearances 
of projectiles on earth, and the movements 
of the heavenly bodies, which constitutes 
the Newtonian system, — a theory now per- 
fect, though exclusively founded on analogy, 
and in "which one of the classes of pheno- 
mena brought together by it is not the sub- 
ject of direct experience. — 3dly, That it 
should correspond, if not with all the facts 
to be explained,*at least with so great a ma- 
jority of them as to render it highly proba- 
ble that means will in time be found of re- 
conciling it to all. It is only on this ground 
that the Newtonian system justly claimed 
the title of a legitimate theory during that 
long period when it was unable to explain 
many celestial appearances, before the la- 
bours of a century, and the genius of La- 
place, at length completed it by adapting it 



* See suvra p. 149, el seq. 



to all the phenomena. A theory may be 
just before it is complete. 

In the application of these canons to the 
theory which derives most of the principles 
of human action from the transfer of a small 
number of pleasures, perhaps organic ones, 
by the law of Association to a vast variety 
of new objects, it cannot be denied, 1st, 
That it satisfies the first of the above condi- 
tions, inasmuch as Association is really one 
of the laws of human nature ; 2dly, That it 
also satisfies the second, for Association cer- 
tainly produces effects like those which are 
referred to it by this theory; — otheiwise 
there would be no secondary desires, no 
acquired relishes and dislikes, — facts uni- 
versally acknowledged, which are. and can 
be explained only by the principle called by 
Hobbes "Mental Discourse," — by Locke, 
Hume, Hartley, Condillac, and the majority 
of speculators, as well as in common speech, 
"Association," — by Tucker, "Translation," 
— and by Brown, "Suggestion." The facts 
generally referred to the principle resemble 
those facts which are claimed for it by the 
theory in this important particular, that in 
both cases equally, pleasure becomes at- 
tached to perfectly new things, — so that the 
derivative desires become perfectly inde- 
pendent of the primary. The great dissimi- 
larity of these two classes of passions has 
been supposed to consist in this, that the for- 
mer always regards the interest of the indi- 
vidual, while the latter regards the welfare 
of others. The philosophical world has been 
almost entirely divided into two sects, — the 
partisans of Selfishness, comprising mostly 
all the predecessors of Butler, and the greater 
part of his successors, and the advocates of 
Benevolence, who have generally contended 
that the reality of Disinterestedness depends 
on its being a primary principle. Enough 
has been said by Butler against the more- 
fatal heresy of Selfishness: something also 
has already been said against the error of the 
advocates of Disinterestedness, in the pro- 
gress of this attempt to develope ethical 
truths historically, in the order in which 
inquiry and controversy brought them out 
with increasing brightness. The analogy of 
the material world is indeed faint, and often 
delusive ; yet we dare not utterly reject that 
on which the whole technical language of 
mental and moral science is necessarily 
grounded. The whole creation teems with 
instances where the most powerful agents 
and the most lasting bodies are the acknow- 
ledged results of the composition, sometimes 
of a few, often of many elements. These 
compounds often in their turn become the 
elements. of other substances; and it is with 
them that we are conversant chiefly in the 
pursuits of knowledge, and solely in the con- 
cerns of life. No man ever fancied, that 
because they were compounds, they were 
therefore less real. It is impossible to con 
found them with any of the separale ele 
meuts which contribute towards their forma- 
tion. But a much more close resemblance 



180 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



presents itself: every secondary desire, or 
acquired relish, involves in it a transfer of 
pleasure to something which was before in- 
different or disagreeable. Is the new plea- 
sure the less real for being acquired ? Is it 
not often preferred to the original enjoyment? 
Are not many of the secondaw pleasures in- 
destructible ? Do not many o* them survive 
primary appetites? Last fyy the important 
principle of regard to our qJwn general wel- 
fare, which disposes .u'js- to prefer it to imme- 
diate pleasure (unfortunately called "Self-. 
Jove," — as if, in any intelligible sense of the- 
term "love," it were possible for a man to 
love himself), is perfectly intelligible, if its 
origin be ascribed to Association, but utterly 
incomprehensible, if it be considered as prior 
to the appetites and desires, which alone 
furnish it with materials. As happiness con- 
sists of satisfactions, Self-love presupposes 
appetites and desires which are to be satis- 
fied. If the order of time were important, 
the affections are formed at an earlier period 
than many self-regarding passions, and they 
always precede the formation of Self-love. 

Many of the later advocates of the Disin- 
terested system, though recoiling from an 
apparent approach to the Selfishness into 
which the purest of their antagonists had 
occasionally fallen, were gradually obliged 
to make concessions to the Derivative system, 
though clogged with the contradictory asser- 
tion, that it was only a refinement of Selfish- 
ness: and we have seen that Brown, the last 
and not the least in genius of them, has 
nearly abandoned the greater, though not 
indeed the most important, part of the terri- 
tory in dispute, and scarcely contends for any 
underived principle but the Moral Faculty. 
This being the state of opinion among the 
very small number in Great Britain who still 
preserve some remains of a taste for such 
speculations, it is needless here to trace the 
application of the law of Association to the 
formation of the secondary desires, whether 
private or social. For our present purposes, 
the explanation of their origin may be as- 
sumed to be satisfactory. In what follows, 
it must, however, be steadily borne in mind, 
that this concession involves an admission 
that the pleasure derived from low objects 
may be transferred to the most pure. — that 
from a part of a self-regarding appetite such 
a pleasure may become a portion of a per- 
fectly disinterested desire, — and that the 
disinterested nature and absolute indepen- 
dence of the latter are not in the slightest 
degree impaired by the consideration, that 
it is formed by one of those grand mental 
processes to which the formation of the other 
habitual states of the human mind have 
been, with great probability, ascribed. 

When the social affections are thus form- 
ed, they are naturally followed in every in- 
stance by the will to do whatever can pro- 
mote their object. Compassion excites a 
voluntary determination to do whatever re- 
lieves the person pitied : the like process 
must occur in every case of gratitude, gene- 



rosity, and affection. Nothing so uniformly 
follows the kind disposition as the act of 
Will, because it is the only means by which 
the benevolent desire can be gratified. The 
result of what Brown justly calls "a finer 
analysis," shows a mental contiguity of the 
affection to the volition to be much closer 
than appears on a coarser examination of this 
part of our nature. No wonder, then, that 
the strongest association, the most active 
power of reciprocal suggestion, should sub- 
sist between them. As all the affections are 
delightful, so the volitions, — voluntary acts 
which are the only means of their gratifica- 
tion' — become agreeable objects of contem- 
plation to the mind. The habitual disposi- 
tion to perform them is felt in ourselves, and 
observed in others, with satisfaction. As 
these feelings become more lively, the ab- 
sence of them may be viewed in ourselves 
with a pain, — in others with an alienation 
capable of indefinite increase. They become 
entirely independent sentiments, — still, how- 
ever, receiving constant supplies of nourish- 
ment from their parent affections, — which, in 
well-balanced minds, reciprocally strengthen 
each other; — unlike the unkind passions, 
which are constantly engaged in the most 
angry conflicts of civil war. In this state we 
desire to experience the beneficicnt volitions, 
to cultivate a disposition towards them, and 
to do every correspondent voluntary act : 
they are for their own sake the objects of 
desire. They thus constitute a large portion 
of those emotions, desires, and affections, 
which regard certain dispositions of the mind, 
and determinations of the Will as their sole 
and ultimate end. These are what are called 
the "Moral Sense," the "Moral Sentiments," 
or best, though most simply, by the ancient 
name of Conscience, — which has the merit, 
in our language, of being applied to no other 
purpose, — which peculiarly marks the strong 
working of these feelings on conduct, — and 
which, from its solemn and sacred character, 
is well adapted to denote the venerable au- 
thority of the highest principle of human 
nature. 

Nor is this all : it has already been seen 
that not only sympathy with the sufferer, 
but indignation against the wrong-doer, con- 
tributes a large and important share towards 
the moral feelings. We are angry at those 
who disappoint our wish for the happiness 
of others ; we make the resentment of the 
innocent person wronged our own : our mo- 
derate anger approves all well-proportioned 
punishment of the wrong-doer. We hence 
approve those dispositions and actions of 
voluntary agents which promote such suit- 
able punishment, and disapprove those which 
hinder its infliction, or destroy its effect; at 
the head of which may be placed that excess 
of punishment beyond the average feelings 
of good men which turns the indignation of 
the calm by-stander against the culprit into 
pity. In this state, when anger is duly mo- 
derated, — when it is proportioned to the 
wrong, — when it is detached from personal 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



181 



considerations, — when dispositions and actions 
are its ultimate objects, it becomes a sense of 
justice, and is so purified as to be fitted to 
be a new element of Conscience. There is 
no part of Morality which is so directly aided 
by a conviction of the necessity of its observ- 
ance to the general interest, as Justice. The 
connection between them is discoverable by 
the most common understanding. All pub- 
lic deliberations profess the public welfare 
to be their object ; all laws propose it as their 
end. This calm principle of public utility- 
serves to mediate between the sometimes 
repugnant feelings which arise in the punish- 
ment of criminals, by repressing undue pity 
on one hand, and reducing resentment to its 
proper level on the other. Hence the un- 
speakable importance of criminal laws as a 
part of the moral education of mankind. 
Whenever they carefully conform to the Mo- 
ral Sentiments of the age and country, — when 
they are withheld from approaching the 
limits within which the disapprobation of 
good men would confine punishment, they 
contribute in the highest degree to increase 
the ignominy of crimes, to make men recoil 
from the first suggestions of criminality, and 
to nourish and mature the sense of justice, 
which lends new vigour to the conscience 
with which it has been united. 

Other contributary streams present them- 
selves : qualities which are necessary to Vir- 
tue, but may be subservient to Vice, may, 
independently of that excellence, or of that 
defect, be in themselves admirable : courage, 
energy, decision, are of this nature. In their 
wild state they are often savage and destruc- 
tive : when they are tamed by the society 
of the affections, and trained up in obedience 
to the Moral Faculty, they become virtues 
of the highest order, and, by their name of 
"magnanimity," proclaim the general sense 
of mankind that they are the characteristic 
qualities of a great soul. They retain what- 
ever was admirable in their unreclaimed 
state, together with all that they borrow from 
their new associate and their high ruler. 
Their nature, it must be owned, is prone to 
evil ; but this propensity does not hinder 
them from being rendered capable of being 
ministers of good, when in a state where the 
gentler virtues require to be vigorously 
guarded against the attacks of daring de- 
pravity. It is thus that the strength of the 
well-educated elephant is sometimes em- 
ployed in vanquishing the fierceness of the 
tiger, and sometimes used as a means of de- 
fence against the shock of his brethren of the 
same species. The delightful contempla- 
tion, however, of these qualities, when purely 
applied, becomes one of the sentiments of 
which the dispositions and actions of volun- 
tary agents are the direct and final object. 
By this resemblance they are associated with 
» the other moral principles, and with them 
contribute to form Conscience, which, as the 
master faculty of the soul, levies such large 
contributions on every province of human 
nature. 



It is important, in this point of view, to 
consider also the moral approbation which 
is undoubtedly bestowed on those dispositions 
and actions of voluntary agents which termi- 
nate in their own satisfaction, security, and 
well-being. They have been called ' ; duties 
to ourselves," as absurdly as a regard to our 
own greatest happiness is called " self-love." 
Rut it cannot be reasonably doubted, that in- 
temperance, improvidence, timidity, — even 
when considered only in relation to the indi- 
vidual. — are not only regretted as imprudent, 
but blamed as morally wrong. It was ex- 
cellently observed by Aristotle, that a man 
is not commended as temperate, so long as it 
costs him efforts of self-denial to persevere 
in the practice of temperance, but only when 
he prefers that virtue for its own sake. He is 
not meek, nor brave, as long as the most 
vigorous self-command is necessary to bridle 
his anger or his fear. On the same princi- 
ple, he may be judicious or prudent, but he 
is not benevolent, if he confers benefits with 
a view to his own greatest happiness. In 
like manner, it is ascertained by experience, 
rhat all the masters of science and of art, — 
that all those who have successfully pursued 
Truth and Knowledge, love them for their 
own sake, without regard to the generally 
imaginary dower of interest, or even to the 
dazzling crown which Fame may place on 
their heads.* But it may still be reasonably 
asked, why these useful qualities are morally 
improved, and how they become capable of 
being combined with those public and disin- 
terested sentiments which principally con- 
stitute Conscience % The answer is, because 
they are entirely conversant with volitions 
and voluntary actions, and in that respect 
resemble the other constituents of Con- 
science, with which they are thereby fitted to 
mingle and coalesce. Like those other prin- 
ciples, they may be detached from what is 
personal and outward, and fixed on the dis- 
positions and actions, which are the only 
means of promoting their ends. The se- 
quence of these principles and acts of Will 
becomes so frequent, that the association 
between both may be as firm as in the for- 



* See the Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficul- 
ties, a discourse forming ihe first pari of the ihird 
volume of the Library of Entertaining Knowledge, 
London, 1829. The author of this essay, for it; 
can be no other than Mr. Brougham, will by 
others be placed at the head of those who, in the 
midst of arduous employments, and surrounded 
by all the allurements of society, yet find leisure 
for exerting the unwearied vigour of their minds 
in every mode of rendering permanent service to 
the human species; more especially in spreading 
a love of knowledge, and diffusing useful truth 
among all classes of men. These voluntary occu- 
pations deserve our attention still less as examples 
of prodigious power than as proofs of an intimate 
conviction, which hinds them by unity of purpose 
with his public duties, that (to use the almost dying 
words of an excellent person) '' man can neither be 
happy without virtue, nor actively virtuous without 
liberty, nor securely free without rational know- 
ledge." — Close of Sir VV. Jones' last Discourse 
to the Asiatic Society of Calcutta. 

a 



182 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



mer cases. All those sentiments of which 
the final object is a state of the Will, become 
thus intimately and inseparably blended; 
and of that perfect state of solution (if such 
words may be allowed) the result is Con- 
science — the judge and arbitef of human 
conduct — which, though ii does not super- 

•dinary main::* o? virtuous reeling 
habits (equally the ordinary motives • I 
actions), yet exercises a lawful authority 
even over them, and ought to blend with 
them. Whatsoever actions and dispositions 
an- approved l>\ Conscience acquire the name 
<il virtues or duties: they are pronounced to 
d i< srve commendation; and we are justly 
considered as undera moral obligation to prac- 
tise llif actions and cultivate the dispositions. 
The coalition of the private and public 
feelings is very remarkable in two points of 
view, from which it seems hitherto to have 
been scarcely observed. 1st. It illustrates 
very forcibly all that has been here offered 
to prove, that the peculiar character of the 
Moral Sentiments consists in their exclusive 
reference to states of Will, and that every 
feeling which has that quality, when it is 
purified from all admixture with different 
objects, becomes capable of being absorbed 
into Conscience, and of being assimilated to 
it, so as to become a part of it. For no feel- 
ings can be more unlike each other in their 
object, than the private and the social ; 
and yet, as both employ voluntary actions 
as their sole immediate means, both may 
be transferred by association to states of the 
Will, in which case they are transmuted into 
moral sentiments. No example of the coali- 
tion of feelings in their general nature less 
widely asunder, could afford so much sup- 
port to this position. 2d. By raising quali- 
ties useful to ourselves to the rank of virtues, 
it throws a strong light on the relation of 
Virtue to individual interest ; very much as 
Justice illustrates the relation of Morality to 
general interest. The coincidence of Mo- 
rality with individual interest is an impor- 
tant truth in Ethics: it is most manifest in 
that part of the science which we are now 
considering. A calm regard to our general 
interest is indeed a faint and infrequent mo- 
tive to action. Its chief advantage is, that 
it is regular, and that its movements maybe 
calculated. In deliberate conduct it may 
often be relied on, though perhaps never 
safely without knowledge of the whole tem- 
per an t character of the agent. But in moral 
reasoning at least, the fore-named coinci- 
dence is of unspeakable advantage. If there 
be a miserable man who has cold affections, 
a weak sense of justice, dim perceptions of 
right and wrong, and faint feelings of them, — 
if, still more wretched, his heart be con- 
stantly torn and devoured by malevolent pas- 
sions — the vultures of the soul, we have one 
.esource still left, even in cases so dreadful. 
Even he still retains a human principle, to 
which we can speak : he must own that he 
has some wish for his own lasting welfare. 
We can prove to him that his state of mind 



is inconsistent with it. It may be impossible 
indeed to show, that while his disposition 

continues tin- samej he can derive any en- 
joyment from the practice of virtue: but it 
may be most clearly shown, that every ad- 
vance in the amendment of that disposition 
is a step towards even temporal happiness. 
If he do not amend his character, we may 
I him to own lint he is at variance 
with himself and offend.- against a principle 
of which wen he must recognise the reason- 
ableness. 

The formation of Conscience from so many 
elements, and especially from the combina- 
tion of elements so unlike as the private de- 
sires and the social affections, early con- 
tributes to give it the appearance of that 
simplicity and independence which in its 
mature state really distinguish it. It be- 
comes, from these circumstances, more diffi- 
cult to distinguish its separate principles; 
and it is impossible to exhibit them in sepa- 
rate action. The affinity of these various 
passions to each other, which consists in 
their having no object but stales of the Will, 
is the only common property which strikes 
the mind. Hence the facility with which 
the general terms, first probably limited to 
the relations between ourselves and others, 
are gradually extended to all voluntary acts 
and dispositions. Prudence and temperance 
become the objects of moral approbation. 
When imprudence is immediately disap- 
proved by the by-stander, without deliberate 
consideration of its consequences, it is not 
only displeasing, as being pernicious, but is 
blamed as wrong, though with a censure so 
much inferior to {fiat bestowed on inhumani- 
ty and injustice, as may justify those writers 
who use the milder term ( improper. ' At 
length, when the general words come to sig- 
nify the objects of moral approbation, and 
the reverse, they denote merely the power to 
excite feelings, which are as independent as 
if they were underived, and which coalesce 
the more perfectly, because they are de- 
tached from objects so various and unlike as 
to render their return to their primitive state 
very difficult. 

The question,* Why we do not morally 
approve the useful qualities of actions which 
are altogether involuntary? may now be 
shortly and satisfactorily answered : — be- 
cause Conscience is in perpetual contact, as 
it were, with all the dispositions and actions 
of voluntary agents, and is by that means in- 
dissolubly associated with them exclusively. 
It has a direct action on the Will, and a 
constant mental contiguity to it. It has 
no such mental contiguity to involuntary 
changes. It has never perhaps been ob- 
served, that an operation of the conscience 
precedes all acts deliberate enough to be in 
the highest sense voluntary and does so as 
much when it is defeated as when it pre- 
vails. In either case the association is re- 
peated. It extends to the whole of the ac- 



* See supra, p. 178. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



183 



live man. All passions have a definite out- 
ward object to which they tend, and a limited 
sphere within which Iney act. But Con- 
science has no object but a state of Will ; 
and as an act of Will is the sol:: means of 
gratifying any passion, Conscience is co-ex- 
t •nsive will ill - whole man, and without en- 
croachment curbs or aids every feeling, — 
even within the peculiar province of that 
feeling itself. As Will is the universal 
means, Conscience, which regards Will, must 
be a universal principle. As nothing is in- 
terposed between Conscience and the Will 
when the mind is in its healthy state, the 
dictate of Conscience is followed by the de- 
termination of the Will, with a promptitude 
and exactness which very naturally is likened 
to the obedience of an inferior to the lawful 
commands of those whom he deems to be 
rightfully placed over him. It therefore 
seems clear, that on the theory which has 
been attempted, moral approbation must be 
limited to voluntary operations, and Con- 
science must be universal, independent, and 
commanding. 

One remaining difficulty may perhaps be 
objected to the general doctrines of this Dis- 
sertation, though it does not appear at any 
time to have been urged against other modi- 
fications of the same principle. "If moral 
approbation," it may be said, "involve no 
perception of beneficial tendency, whence 
arises the coincidence between that princi- 
ple and the Moral Sentiments'?" It may 
seem at first sight, that such a theory rests 
the foundation of Morals upon a coincidence 
altogether mysterious, and apparently ca- 
pricious and fantastic. Waiving all other 
answers, let us at once proceed to that which 
seems conclusive. It is true, that Conssience 
rarely contemplates so distant an object as 
the welfare of all sentient beings; — but to 
what point is every one of its elements di- 
rected ? What, for instance, is the aim of 
all the social affections? — Nothing but the 
production of larger or smaller masses of 
happiness among those of our fellow-crea- 
tures who are the objects of these affections. 
In every case these affections promote hap- 
piness, as far as their foresight and their 
power extend. What can be more condu- 
cive, or even necessary, to the being and 
well-being of society, than the rules of jus- 
tice ? Are not the angry passions themselves, 
as far as they are ministers of Morality, em- 
ployed in removing hindrances to the welfare 
of ourselves and others, and so in indirectly 
promoting it 1 The private passions termi- 
nate indeed in the happiness of the indi- 
vidual, which, however, is a part of general 
happiness, and the part over which we have 
most power. Every principle of which Con- 
science is composed has some portion of hap- 
piness for its object: to that point they all 
converge. General happiness is not indeed 
one of the natural objects of Conscience, be- 
cause our voluntary acts are not felt and per- 
ceived to affect it. But how small a step is 
left for Reason ! It only casts up the items 



of the account. It has only to discover that 
the acts of those who labour to promote sepa- 
tate portions of happiness must increase the 
amount of the whole. It may bo truly said, 
that if observation and experience did not 
clearly ascertain that beneficial tendency is 
the constant attendant and mark of all virtu- 
ous dispositions and actions, the same great 
truth would be revealed to us by the voice 
of Conscience. The coincidence, instead of 
being arbitrary, arises necessarily fiom the 
laws of human nature, and the circumstances 
in which mankind are placet!. We perform 
and approve virtuous actions, partly because 
Conscience regards them as right, partly be- 
cause we are prompted to them by good af- 
fections. All these affections contribute 
towards general well-being, though it is not 
necessary, nor would it be fit, that the agent 
should be distracted by the contemplation of 
that vast and remote object. 

The various relations of Conscience to Re- 
ligion we have already been led to consider 
on the principles of Butler, of Berkeley, of 
Paley, and especially of Hartley, who was 
brought by his own piety to contemplate as 
the last and highest stage of virtue and hap- 
piness, a sort of self-annihilation, which, 
however unsuitable to the present condition 
of mankind, yet places in the strongest light 
the disinterested character of the system, of 
which it is a conceivable, though perhaps 
not attainable, result. The completeness 
and rigour acquired by Conscience, when all 
its dictates are revered as the commands of 
a perfectly wise and good Being, are so ob- 
vious, that they cannot be questioned by any 
reasonable man, however extensive his in- 
credulity may be. It is thus that she can 
add the warmth of an affection to the in- 
flexibility of principle and habit. It is true 
that, in examining the evidence of the divine 
original of a religious system, in estimating 
an imperfect religion, or in comparing the 
demerits of religions of human origin, hers 
must be the standard chiefly applied : but it 
follows with equal clearness, that those who 
have the happiness to find satisfaction and 
repose in divine revelation are bound to con- 
sider all those precepts for«the government 
of the Will, delivered by her, which are 
manifestly universal, as the rules to which 
all their feelings and actions should conform. 
The true distinction between Conscience and 
a taste for moral beauty has already been 
pointed out;* — a distinction which, notwith- 
standing its simplicity, has been unobserved 
by philosophers, perhaps on account of the 
frequent co-operation and intermixture of 
the two feelings. Most speculators have 
either denied the existence of the taste, or 
kept it out of view in their theory, or exalted 
it to the place which is rightfully filled only 
by Conscience. Yet it is perfectly obvious 
that, like all the other feelings called " plea- 
sures of imagination," it terminates in de- 
lightful contemplation, while the Moral 

* See supra, p. 151. 



184 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



Faculty al ways aims exclusively at voluntary 
action. Nothing can more clearly show that 
this last quality is the characteristic of Con- 
science, than its being thus found to distin- 
guish that faculty from the sentiments which 
most nearly resemble it, most frequently at- 
tend it, and are most easily blended with it. 



Some attempt" has now been made to de- 
velope the fundamental principles of Ethical 
theory, in that historical order in which me- 
ditation and discussion brought them suc- 
cessively into a clearer light. That attempt, 
as far as it regards Great Britain, is at least 
chronologically complete. The spirit of bold 
speculation, conspicuous among the English 
of the seventeenth century, languished after 
the earlier part of the eighteenth, and seems, 
from the time of Hutcheson, to have passed 
into Scotland, where it produced Hume, the 
greatest of sceptics, and Smith, the most 
eloquent of modern moralists ; besides giving 
rise to that sober, modest, perhaps timid phi- 
losophy which is commonly called Scotch, 
and which has the singular merit of having 
first strongly and largely inculcated the abso- 
lute necessity of admitting certain principles 
as the foundation of all reasoning, and the 
indispensable conditions of thought itself. 
In the eye of the moralist all the philoso- 
phers of Scotland, — Hume and Smith as 
much as Reid, Campbell, and Stewart. — have 
also the merit of having avoided the Selfish 
system, and of having, under whatever va- 
riety of representation, alike maintained the 
disinterested nature of the social affections 
and the supreme authority of the Moral 
Sentiments. Brown reared the standard of 
revolt against the masters of the Scottish 
School, and in reality still more than in words, 
adopted those very doctrines against which 
his predecessors, after their war against 
scepticism, uniformly combated. The law 
of Association, though expressed in other 
language, became the nearly universal prin- 
ciple of his system ; and perhaps it would 
have been absolutely universal, if he had not 
been restrained rather by respectful feelings 
than by cogent reasons. With him the love 
of speculative philosophy, as a pursuit, ap- 
pears to have expired in Scotland. There 
are some symptoms, yet however very faint, 
of the revival of a taste for it among the Eng- 
lish youth: while in France instruction in it 
has been received with approbation from M. 
Royer Collard, the scholar of Stewart more 
than of Reid. and with enthusiasm from his 
pupil and successor M. Cousin, who has 
clothed the doctrines of the Schools of Ger- 
many in an unwonted eloquence, which al- 
ways adorns, but sometimes disguises them. 

The history of political philosophy, even 
if its extent and subdivisions were better 
defiied, would manifestly have occupied 
another dissertation, at least equal in length 
to the present. The most valuable parts of 
it belong to civil history. It has too much 
of the spirit of faction and turbulence in- 



fused into it to be easily combined with the 
calmer history of the progress of Science, or 
even with that of the revolutions of specu- 
lation. In no age of the world were its prin- 
ciples so interwoven with political events, 
and so deeply imbued with the passions and 
divisions excited by them, as in the eigh- 
teenth century. 

It was at one time the purpose, or rather 
perhaps the hope, of the writer, to close this 
discourse by an account of the Ethical sys- 
tems which have prevailed in Germany 
during the last half century; — which, main- 
taining the same spirit amidst great changes 
of technical language, and even of specula- 
tive principle, have now exclusive possession 
of Europe to the north of the Rhine, — have 
been welcomed by the French youth with 
open arms, — have roused in some measure 
the languishing genius of Italy, but are still 
little known, and unjustly estimated by the 
mere English reader. He found himself, 
however, soon reduced to the necessity of 
either being superficial, and by consequence 
uninstructive, or of devoting to that subject 
a far longer time than he can now spare, and 
a much larger space than the limits of this 
work would probably allow. The majority 
of readers will, indeed, be "more disposed 
to require an excuse for the extent of what 
has been done, than for the relinquishment 
of projected additions. All readers must 
agree that this is peculiarly a subject on 
which it is better to be silent than to say too 
little. 

A very few observations, however, on the 
German philosophy, as far as relates to its 
ethical bearings and influence, may perhaps 
be pardoned. These remarks are not so 
much intended to be applied to the moral 
doctrines of that school, considered in them- 
selves, as to those apparent defects in the 
prevailing systems of Ethics throughout Eu- 
rope, which seem to have suggested the ne- 
cessity of their adoption. Kant has himself 
acknowledged that his whole theory of the 
percipient and intellectual faculty was in- 
tended to protect the first principles of human 
knowledge against the assaults of Hume. 
In like manner, his Ethical system is evi- 
dently framed for the purpose of guarding 
certain principles, either directly governing, 
or powerfully affecting practice, which seem- 
ed to him to have been placed on unsafe 
foundations by their advocates, and which 
were involved in perplexity and confusion, 
especially by those who adapted the results! 
of various and sometimes contradictory sys- 
tems to the taste of multitudes, — more eager 
to know than prepared to be taught. To the 
theoretical Reason the former superadded the 
Practical Reason, which had peculiar laws 
and principles of it:- own, fiom which all the 
rules of Morals may be deduced. The Prac- 
tical Reason cannot be conceived without 
these laws; therefore they are inherent. It 
perceives them to be necessary and universal. 
Hence, by a process not altogether dissimilar, 
at least in its gross results, to that which waa 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



185 



employed for the like purpose by Cudworth 
and Clarke, by Price, and in some degree by 
Stewart, he raises the social affections, and 
still more the Moral Sentiments, above the 
sphere of enjoyment, and beyond that series 
of enjoyments which is called happiness. 
The performance of duty, not the pursuit of 
happiness, is in this system the chief end of 
man. By the same intuition we discover 
that Virtue deserves happiness; and as this 
desert is not uniformly so requited in the 
present state of existence, it compels us to 
believe a moral government of the world, 
and a future state of existence, in which all 
the conditions of the Practical Reason will 
be realized ; — truths, of which, in the opinion 
of Kant, the argumentative proofs were at 
least very defective, but of which the reve- 
lations of the Practical Reason afforded a 
more conclusive demonstration than any pro- 
cess of reasoning could supply. The Un- 
derstanding, he owned, saw nothing in the 
connection of motive with volition different 
from what it discovered in every other uni- 
form sequence of a cause and an effect. But 
as the moral law delivered by the Practical 
Reason issues peremptory and inflexible 
commands, the power of always obeying 
them is implied in their very nature. All 
individual objects, all outward things, must 
indeed be viewed in the relation of cause 
and effect : these last are necessary condi- 
tions of all reasoning. But the acts of the 
faculty which wills, of which we are imme- 
diately conscious, belong to another province 
of mind, and are not subject to these laws of 
the Theoretical Reason. The mere intellect 
must still regard them as necessarily con- 
nected ; but the Practical Reason distinguish- 
es its own liberty from the necessity of nature, 
conceives volition without at the same time 
conceiving an antecedent to it, and regards 
all moral beings as the original authors of 
their own actions. 

Even those who are unacquainted with 
this complicated and comprehensive system, 
will at once see the slightness of the above 
sketch : those who understand it, will own 
that so brief an outline could not be other- 
wise than slight. It will, however, be suf- 
ficient for the present purpose, if it render 
what follows intelligible. 

With respect to what is called the "Prac- 
tical Reason," the Kantian system varies 
from ours, in treating it as having more re- 
semblance to the intellectual powers than to 
sentiment and emotion : — enough has al- 
ready been said on that question. At the 
next step, however, the difference seems to 
resolve itself into a misunderstanding. The 
character and dignity of the human race 
surely depend, not on the state in which 
they are bom, but on that which they are all 
destined to attain, or to approach. No man 
would hesitate in assenting to this observa- 
tion, when applied to the intellectual facul- 
ties. Thus, the human infant comes into 
the world imbecile and ignorant ; but a vast 
majority acquire some vigour of reason and 
24 



extent of knowledge. Strictly, the human 
infant is born neither selfish nor social ; but 
a far greater part acquire some provident 
regard to their own welfare, and a number, 
probably not much smaller, feel some sparks 
of affection towards others. On our princi- 
ples, therefore, as much as on those of Kant, 
human nature is capable of disinterested 
sentiments. For we too allow and contend 
that our Moral Faculty is a necessary part of 
human nature, — that it universally exists in 
human beings, — and that we cannot conceive 
any moral agents without qualities which 
are either like, or produce the like effects. 
It is necessarily regarded by us as co-exten- 
sive with human, and even with moral nature. 
In what other sense can universality be pre- 
dicated of any proposition not identical ? 
Why should it be tacitly assumed that all 
these great characteristics of Conscience 
should necessarily presuppose its being un- 
formed and underived 1 What contradiction 
is there between them and the theory of 
regular and uniform formation 1 

In this instance it would seem that a ge- 
neral assent to truth is chiefly, if not solely, 
obstructed by an inveterate prejudice, arising 
from the mode in which the questions relat- 
ing to the affections and the Moral Faculty 
have been discussed among ethical philo- 
sophers. Generally speaking, those who 
contend that these parts of the mind are 
acquired, have also held that they are, in 
their perfect state, no more than modifica- 
tions of self-love. On the other hand, phi- 
losophers "of purer fire," who felt that Con- 
science is sovereign, and that affection is 
disinterested, have too hastily fancied that 
their ground was untenable, without con- 
tending that these qualities were inherent or 
innate, and absolutely underived from any 
other properties of Mind. If a choice were 
necessary between these two systems as 
masses of opinion, without any freedom of 
discrimination and selection, I should un- 
questionably embrace that doctrine which 
places in the clearest light the reality of 
benevolence and the authority of the Moral 
Faculty. But it is surely easy to apply a 
test which may be applied to our conceptions 
as eifectuallv as a decisive experiment is 
applied to material substances. Does not 
he who, whatever he may think of the origin 
of these parts of human nature, believes 
that actually Conscience is supreme, and af- 
fection terminates in its direct object, retain 
all that for which ihe partisans of the un- 
derived principles value and cling to their 
system? "But they are made," these phi- 
losophers may say, " by this class of our 
antagonists, to rest on insecure foundations : 
unless they are underived, we can see no 
reason for regarding them as independent." 
In answer, it may be asked, how is connec- 
tion between these two qualities established 1 
It is really assumed. It finds its way easily 
into the mind under the protection of another 
coincidence, which is of a totally different 
nature. The great majority of those specu 
Q2 



186 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



lators who have represented the moral and 
social feelings as acquired, have also consi- 
dered I hern as being mere modifications of 
self-love, and sometimes as being casually 
formed and easily eradicated, like local and 
temporary preju lices. But when ihe nature 
of our feelings is thoroughly explored, is it 
not evident that this coincidence is the result 
of superficial confusion 1 The better moralists 
observed accurately, and reasoned justly, on 
the province of the Moral Sense and Ihe 
feelings in the formed and mature man : they 
reasoned mistakenly on the origin of these 
principles. But the Epicureans were by no 
means right, even on the latter question ; 
and they were totally wrong on the other, 
and far more momentous, part of the subject : 
their error is more extensive, and infinitely 
more injurious. But what should now hin- 
der an inquirer after truth from embracing, 
but amending their doctrine where it is par- 
tially true, and adopting without any change 
the just description of the most important 
principles of human nature which we owe 
to their more enlightened as well as more 
generous antagonists ? 

Though unwilling to abandon the argu- 
ments by which, from the earliest times, 
the existence of the Supreme and Eternal 
Mind has been established, we, as well as 
the German philosophers, are entitled to call 
in the help of our moral nature to lighten 
the burden of those tremendous difficulties 
which cloud His moral government. The 
moral nature is an actual part of man, as 
much on our scheme as on theirs. 

Even the celebrated questions of Liberty 
and Necessity may perhaps be rendered 
somewhat less perplexing, if we firmly beat- 
in mind that peculiar relation of Conscience 
to the Will which we have attempted to il- 
lustrate. It is impossible for Reason to con- 
sider occurrences otherwise than as bound 
together by the connection of cause and ef- 
fect ; and in this circumstance consists the 
strength of the Necessitarian system. But 
Conscience, which is equally a constituent 
part of the mind, has other laws. It is com- 
posed of emotions and desires, which contem- 
plate only those dispositions which depend on 
the Will. Now, it is the nature of an emotion 
to withdraw the mind from the contemplation 
of every idea but that of the object which 
excites it : while every desire exclusively 
looks at the object which it seeks. Every 
attempt to enlarge the mental vision alters 
the state of mind, weakens the emotion, or 
•dissipates the desire, and tends to extin- 
guish both. If a man, while he was pleased 
with the smell of a rose, were to leflect on 
the chemical combinations from which it 
arose, the condition of his mind would be 
changed from an enjoyment of the senses 
to an exertion of the Understanding. If. 
in the view of a beautiful scene, a man 
were suddenly to turn his thoughts to the 
disposition of water, vegetables, and earths, 
on which its appearance depended, he might 
enlarge his knowledge of Geology, but he 



must lose the pleasure of the prospect. The 
anatomy and analysis of the flesh and blood 
of a beautiful woman necessarily suspend 
admiration and affection. Man)' analogies 
here present themselves, When hie is in 
daijgt i either in a storm or a battle, it is cer- 
tain that less fear is fell by the command* r 
or the pilot, and even by the private soldier 
actively engaged or the common seaman la- 
boriously occupied, than by those who are 
exposed to the peril, but not employed in 
the means of guarding against it. The rea- 
son is not that the one class believe the dan- 
ger to be less: they are likely in many in- 
stances to perceive it more clearly. But 
having acquired a habit of instantly turning 
their thoughts to means of counteracting the 
danger, their minds are thrown into a state 
which excludes the, ascendency of fear. — 
Mental fortitude entirely depends on this 
habit. The timid horseman is haunted by 
the fear of a fall : the bold and skilful thinks 
only about the best way of curbing or sup- 
porting his horse. Even when all means of 
avoiding danger are in both cases evidently 
unavailable, the brave man still owes to his 
fortunate habit that he does not suffer the 
agony of the coward. Many cases have 
been known where fortitude has reached 
such strength that the faculties, instead of 
being confounded by danger, are never raised 
to their highest activity by a less violent 
stimulant. The distinction between such 
men and the coward does not depend on dif- 
ference of opinion about the reality or extent 
of the danger, but on a state of mind which 
renders it more or less accessible to fear. 
Though it must be owned that the Moral 
Sentiments are very different from any other 
human faculty, yet the above observations 
seem to be in a great measure applicable to 
every state of mind. The emotions and de- 
sires which compose Conscience, while they 
occupy the mind, must exclude all contem- 
plation of the cause in which the object of 
these feelings may have originated. To their 
eye the voluntary dispositions and actions, 
their sole object, must appear to be the first 
link of a chain: in the view of Conscience 
these have no foreign origin, and her view, 
constantly associated as she is with all voli- 
tions, becomes habitual. Being always pos- 
sessed of some, and capable of intense 
warmth, it predominates over the habits of 
thinking of those few who are employed in 
the analysis of mental occupations. 

The reader who has in any degree been 
inclined to adopt the explanations attempted 
above, of the imperative character of Con- 
science, may be disposed also to believe that 
they afford some foundation for that convic- 
tion of the existence of a power to obey its 
commands, which (it ought to be granted to 
the German philosophers) is irresistibly sug- 
gested by the commanding tone of all its 
dictates. If such an explanation should be 
thought worthy of consideration, it must be 
very carefully distinguished from that illu- 
sive sense by which some writers have la- 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



187 



boured to reconcile the feeling of liberty with 
the reality of necessity.,* In this ease there 
is no illusion ; nothing is required but the 
admission, th.it every faculty observes its 
own laws, and that when the action of the 
one (ills the muni, that of every other is sus- 
pended; The ear cannot see. nor can the 
eye hear: why then should not the greatei 
powers of R ason and Conscience have dif- 
ferent habitual modes of contemplating vo- 
luntary actions 1 How strongly do eXpi 
and analogy seem to require the arrange- 
ment of motive and volition under the class 
of causes and effects ! With what irresisti- 
ble power, on the other hand, do all our mo- 
ral sentiments remove extrinsic agency from 
View, and concentrate all feeling in the agent 
himself ! The one manner of thinking may 
predominate among the speculative few in 
their short moments of abstraction ; the other 
will be that of all other men, and of the 
speculator himself when he is called upon 
to act, or when his feelings are powerfully 
excited by the amiable or odious disposi- 
tions of his fellow-men. In these work- 
ings of various faculties there is nothing 
that can be accurately described as contra- 
riety of opinion, An intellectual state, and 
a feeling, never can be contrary to each 
other : they are too utterly incapable of com- 
parison to be the subject of contrast; they 
are agents of a perfectly different nature, 
acting in different spheres. A feeling can 
no more be called true or false, than a de- 
monstration, considered simply in itself, 
can be said' to be agreeable or disagreeable. 
It is true, indeed, that in consequence of 
the association of all mental acts with each 
other, emotions and desires may occasion 
habitual errors of judgment: but liability to 
error belongs to every exercise of human 
reason ; it arises from a multitude of causes ; 
it constitutes, therefore, no difficulty peculiar 
to the case before us. Neither truth nor 
falsehood can be predicated of the percep- 
tions of the senses, but they lead to false 
opinions. An object seen through different 
mediums may by the inexperienced be 
thought to be no longer the same. All men 
long concluded falsely, from what they saw, 
that the earth was stationary, and the sun 
in perpetual motion around it : the greater 
part of mankind still adopt the same error. 
Newton and Laplace used the same language 
with the ignorant, and conformed. — if we 
may not say to their opinion, — at least to 
their habits of thinking: on all ordinary occa- 
sions, and during the far greater part of their 
lives. Nor is this all : the language which 
represents various states of mind is very 
vague. The word which denotes a com- 
pound state is often taken from its principal 
fact, — from that which is most conspicuous, 
most easily called to mind, most warmly felt. 
or most frequently recurring. It is some- 
times borrowed from a separate, but, as it 



* Lord Kames, in his Essays on Morality and 
Natural Religion, and in his Sketches of die His- 
tory of Man. 



were, neighbouring condition of mind. The 
grand distinction between thought and feel- 
ing is so little observed, that we are pecu- * 
liarly liable to confusion on this subject. — 
Perhaps when we us:? language winch indi- 
i opinion concerning the acts of the 
Will, we may mean little more than to ex- 
press strongly and warmly the moral senti- 
ments which voluntary acts alone call up. It 
would argue disrespect for the human un- 
derstanding, vainly employed for so many 
centuries in reconciling contradictory opi- 
nions, to propose such suggestions without 
peculiar diffidence; but before they are alto- 
gether rejected, it may be well to consider, 
whether the constant success of the advo- 
cates of Necessity on one ground, and of the 
partisans of Free Will on another, does not 
seem to indicate that the two parties con- 
template the subject from different points of 
view, that neither habitually sees more than 
one side of it, and that they look at it through 
the medium of different states of mind. 

It should be remembered that these hints 
of a possible reconciliation between seeming- 
ly repugnant opinions are proposed, not as 
perfect analogies, but to lead men's minds 
into the inquiry, whether that which certain- 
ly befalls the mind, in many cases on a small 
scale, may not, under circumstances favour- 
able to its development, occur with greater 
magnitude and more important consequen- 
ces. The coward and brave man, as has 
been stated, act differently at the approach 
of danger, because it produces exertion in the 
one, and fear in the other. But very brave 
men must, by force of the term, be few : 
they have little aid in their highest acts, 
therefore, from fellow-feeling. They are 
often too obscure for the hope of praise ; and 
they have seldom been trained to cultivate 
courage as a virtue. The very reverse oc- 
curs in the different view taken by the Un- 
derstanding and by Conscience, of the nature 
of voluntary actions. The conscientious 
view must, in some degree, present itself to 
all mankind; it is therefore unspeakably 
strengthened by general sympathy. All men 
respect themselves for being habitually 
guided by it : it is the object of general com- 
mendation ; and moral discipline has no other 
aim but its cultivation. Whoever does not 
feel more pain from his crimes than from 
his misfortunes, is looked on with general 
aversion. And when it is considered that a 
Being of perfect wisdom and goodness esti- 
mates us according to the degree in which 
Conscience governs our voluntary acts, it is 
surely no wonder that, in this most impor- 
tant discrepancy between the great faculties 
of our nature, we should consider the best 
habitual disposition to be that which the cold- 
est Reason shows us to be most conducive 
to well-doing and well-being. 

On every other point, at least, it would 
seem that, without the multiplied supposi 
tions and immense apparatus of the German 
school, the authority of Morality may bo 
vindicated, the disinterestedness of human 



188 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



nature asserted, the first principles of know- 
ledge secured, and the hopes and consola- 
tions of mankind preserved. Ages may yet 
be necessary to give to ethical theory all the 
forms and language of a science, and to ap- 
ply it to the multiplied and complicated facts 
and rules which are within its province. In 
the mean time, if the opinions here unfolded, 
or intimated, shall be proved to be at vari- 
ance with the reality of social affections, and 
with the feeling of moral distinction, the 



author of this Dissertation will be the first to 
relinquish a theory which will then show 
itself inadequate to explain the most indis- 
putable, as well as by far the most import- 
ant, parts of human nature. If it shall be 
shown to lower the character of Man, to 
cloud his hopes, or to impair his sense of 
duty, he will be grateful to those who may 
point out his error, and deliver him from the 
poignant regret of adopting opinions which 
lead to consequences so pernicious. 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Note A. page 103. 

The remarks of Cicero on the Stoicism of Cato 
are perhaps the most perfect specimen of that re- 
fined raillery which attains the object of the ora- 
tor without general injustice to the person whose 
authority is tor the moment to be abated: — 

" Accessit his tot doctrina non moderata, nee 
mitis, sed, ut mihi videtur, paulo asperior et durior 
quam aut Veritas aut natura patiatur." After an 
enumeration of the Stoical paradoxes, he adds: 
" Haec homo ingeniosissimus, M. Cato, auctoribus 
eruditissimis inductus, arripuit ; neque disputandi 
causa, ut magna pars, sed ita vivendi . . .Nostri 
autem isti (fatebor enim, Caio, me quoque in ado- 
lescentia diffisum ingenio meo quaesisse adjumenta 
doctrinae) nostri, inquam, illi a Platone atque Aris- 
totele moderati homines et temperaii aiunt apud 
sapienlem valere aliquando gratiam ; viri boniesse 
misereri ; . . . omnes virtutes mediocritate quadam 
esse moderatas. Hos ad magistros si qua te for- 
tuna, Caio, cum isia natura detulisset, non tu qui- 
dem vir melior esses, nee fortior, nee temperantior, 
nee justior (neque enim esse potes), sed paulo ad 
leniiatem propensior." — Fro Murena. — Cap. xxix. 
— xxx i. 

Note B. page 106. 

The greater part of the following extract from 
Grotius' History of the Netherlands is inserted 
as the best abridgment of the ancient history of 
these still subsisting controversies known in our 
time. I extract also the introduction as a model 
of the manner in which an historian may state a 
religious dispute which has influenced political af- 
fairs; but far more because it is an unparalleled' 
example of equity and forbearance in the narra- 
tive of a contest of which the historian was him- 
self a victim : — 

" Habuit hie annus (1608) hand spernendi quoque 
mali sem'ma, vix ut anna desierant, exorto pub- 
licae religionis dissidio, lateniibus iniiiis, sed ut 
paulatim in niajus erumperet. Lugduni sacras 
literas docebant viri erudilione praestantes Goma- 
rus et Arminius ; quorum llle aeterna Dei lege 
fixum memorabat, cui hominum sains desiinaretur, 
quis in exitium lenderet ; inde alios ad pietatem 
trahi, et traetos cusiodiri ne elabantur; relinqui 
alios communi humanitatis vitio et suis cri minibus 
involutos: hie vero contra integrum judicem, .-ed 
eundem optimum pairem. id reoruni feeiss-e dis- 
crimen.ut peccandi perifesisfiduciamque in Chris- 
tum reponentibus veniam ac vitam daret, contu- 
macibus pcenam ; Deoque gratum, ut omnes re- 
gipiacant, ac meliora edocti retineant; sed cogi 



neminem. Accusabantque invicem ; Arminius 
Gomarum, quod peccandi causas Deo ascriberet, 
ac fati persuasione teneret immobiles animos; 
Gomarus Arminium, quod longius ipsis Roman- 
ensium scitis hominem arrogantia impleret, nee 
pateretur soli Deo acceptam ferri, rem maximam, 
bonam mentem. Constat his queis cura legere 
veterum libros, antiquos Christianorum tribuisse 
hominum voluntati vim liberam, tarn in accep- 
tanda, quam in retinenda disciplina ; unde sua 
praemiis ac suppliciis aequitas. Neque iidem tamen 
omisere cuncta divinam ad bonitatem referre, 
cujus munere salutare semen ad nos pervenisset, 
ac cujus singulariauxilio pericula nostra indigerent. 
Primus omnium Augustinus, ex quo ipsi cum Pe- 
lagio et eum secutis certamen {nam ante aliter et 
ipse senseret), acer disputandi, ita libertatis vocem 
relinquere, ut ei decreta quaedam Dei praeponeret, 
quae vim ipsam destruere viderentur. At per Grae- 
ciam quidem Asiamque retenta vetus ilia ac sim- 
plicior sententia. Per Occidentem magnum Au- 
gustini nomen multos traxit in consensum, repertis 
tamen per Galliam et alibi qui se opponerent, pos- 
tcrioribus sagculis, cum schola non alio magis 
quam Augustinodoctore uteretur, quis ipsi sensus r 
quis dexter pugnare visa conciliandi modus, diu 
inter Francisci et Dominici familiam disputato, 
doctissimi Jesuitarum, cum exaction subtilitate 
nodum solvere laborassent, Romae accusati asgre 
damnationem eflugere. At Protestantium prin- 
ceps, Lutherus, egressus monasterio quod Augus- 
tini ut nomen, ita sensus sequebatur, parte Au- 
gustint arrepta, id quod is reliquerat, libertatis 
nomen, ccepit exscindere ; quod tarn grave Eras- 
mo visum, ut cum caetera ipsius aut probaret aut 
silentio transmitteret, hie objiciat sese : cujus ar- 
gumentis motus Philippus Melanchthon, Lutheri 
adjutor, quae prius scripserat immutavit, auctorque 
fuit Luthero, quod multi volunt, certe quod con- 
stat Lutheranis, deserendi decreta rigida et con- 
ditionem respuentia ; sic tamen ut libertatis vo- 
cabulum quam rem magis perhorrescerent. At 
in altera Protestantium parte dux Calvinus, primis 
Lutheri dictis in hac controversial inhaerescens, 
novis ea fulsit praesidiis, addidiique intactwm Au- 
guslitlo, veram ac salutarem fidem rem esse per- 
pcluam et amitli nesciam : cujus proinde qui sibi 
essent conscii, eos icternas felicitatis jam nunc 
cellos esse, quos interim in crirnina, quantumvis 
gravia, prolabi posse non diffliebatur. Auxit sen- 
tentiae rigorem Genevae Beza, per Germaniam 
Zanchius, Ursinus, Piscator, saepe eo usque pro- 
vecii, ut, quod alii anxie viiaverant, apertius non- 
nunqnam iraderent, eiiam peccandi necessiiatem a 
prima causa pendere : quae ampla Lutheranis cri- 
1 minandi materia." — Lib. xvii. p. 552. 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



3S9 



Note C. page 106. 

The Calvinism, or rather ^ugustinianism, of 
Aquinas is placed beyond all doubt by the follow- 
ing passages: "Praedestinatio est causa gratise ei 
gloriae." — Opera, (Pans, 1664.) vol. vii. p. 356 

" Numerus praedesiinatorum certusest." — p 31 '■ 
" Frsesuieniia meritorum nullu modd est causa 
praedestinationis diviiiae." — p. 370. "Liberum 
arbinium est fauuitas qua bonum eligitur, gratia 

assistente, vel malum, eadem d> sistente." — vol. 
viii. p. 222. " Deus inclinat ad bonum adminis- 
trando viriutem agendi et monendo ad bonum. 
Sed ad malum dicitur inclinare in quantum grattam 
non praebet, per quam aliquis a malo retrahere- 
tur." — p. 364. On the other side: " Accipittir 
fides pro eo quo creditur, et est virtus, et pro eo 
-quod creditur, et non est virtus. Fides qua credi- 
tur, si cum caritate sit, virtus est." — vol. ix. p. 
236. " Divina bonitas est primum principium 
communicationis totius quam Deus creaturis lar- 
gitur." " Quamvis omne quod Deus vult justum 
sit, non tamen ex hoc justum dicitur quod Deus 
illud vult."— p. 697. 

Note D. page 106. 

The Augustinian doctrine is, with some hesita-' 
lion and reluctance, acquiesced in by Scotus, in 
that milder form which ascribes election to an ex- 
press decree, and considers the rest of mankind as 
•only left to the deserved penalties of their trans- 
gressions. " In hujus quaestinnis solntione mallem 
alios audire quam docere.'' — Opera, Lugd. 1639. 
vol. v. p. 1329. This modesty and prudence is 
foreign to the dogmatical genius of a Schoolman ; 
and these qualities are still more apparent in the 
very remarkable language which he applies to the 
tremendous doctrine of reprobation. " Eorum 
autem non miseretur (sell. Deus) quihus araliam 
non preBoendinn esse cequitate occultissimd et ab 
humanis sensibus remotissima judical." — p. 1329. 
In the commentary on Scotus which follows, it 
appears that his acute disciple Ockham disputed 
very freely against the opinions of his master. 
"Mala fieri bonum est" is a startling paradox, 
quoted by Scotus from Augus'in. — p 1381. It 
appears that Ockham saw no difference hetween 
election and reprobation, and considered those 
who embraced only the former as at variance with 
themselves. — p. 1313. Scotus, at great length, 
contends that our thoughts (consequently our 
opinions) are not subject to the will. — vol. vi. pp. 
1054 — 1056. One step more would have led him 
to acknowledge that all erroneous judgment is in- 
voluntary, and therefore inculpable and unpunish- 
able, howev-T pernicious. His attempt to recon- 
cile foreknowledge with contingency (vol. v. pp. 
1300 — 1327). is a remarkable example of the power 
of human subtlety to keep up the appearance of a 
struggle where it is impossible to make one real 
effort. But the most dangerous of all the devia- 
tions of Scotus from the system of Aquinas is. 
that he opened the way to the opinion that the 
distinction of right and wrong depends on the 
mere will of trie Eternal Mind. The absolute 
power of the Deity, according to him, extends to 
all but contradictions. His regular power (ordinata) 
is exercised conformably to an order established 
by himself: " si placet voluntati, sub qua libera 
est, recta est lex." — p. 1368, et seq. 

Note E. page 106. 

>A\\a ftw 4 u /t !,v y* ,cr . utv $X6V0<tf Trairuv 7T00I 
ttyvoova-iv. Plai. Op. (Bipont. 1781.) vol. ii. p. 224. 
— rixi-ii focwiop ti(Jt*Atii) s.'i>*/. — p. 227. Plato is 
quoied on this subject by 'Marcus Aurelius, in a 
manner which shows, if there had been any doubt, 
the meaning to be, that all error is involuntary. 
Tldrtt -ifU^ji cUcuiru. (PTifiilTM Tti; d\«6«if, «ij teyu 



n>.dreev. Every mind is unwillingly led from 
truth. — Epict. Dissert, lib. i. cap. xxviii. Augustin 
closes the long line of ancient tesiimony to the in- 
voluntary character of error : " Quis est qui velit 
decipi ! Fallere nolunt bom ; falh autem nee boni 
vuliiui nee malt." — Sernto de Verbo. 

Note F. page 106. 

From a long, able, ard instructive dissertation 
by the commentator on Scotus, it appears that this 
immoral dogma was propounded in terms more 
bold and startling by Ockham, who openly affirm- 
ed, that " moral evil was only evil because it was 
prohibited." — Ochamus, qui putat quod nihil pos- 
set esse malum sine voluntate prohibitiva Dei, 
hancque voluntatem esse liberam ; sic ut posset 
earn non habere, et consequenter ut posset fieri 
quod nulla pmrsus essent mala." — Scot. Op. vol. 
vii. p. 859. But, says the commentator, " Dico 
primo legem naturalem non consisteie in jussione 
ulla quae sit actus voluntatis Dei. Haec est com- 
munissima theologorum sententia." — p. 858. And 
indeed the reason urged against Ockham complete- 
ly justifies this approach to unanimity. " For." he 
asks, " why is it right to obey the will of God ? 
Is it because our moral faculties perceive it to be 
right ? But they equally perceive and feel the 
authority of all the primary principles of morality ; 
and if this answer be made, it is obvious that those 
who make it do in effect admit the independence 
of moral distinctions on the will of God." " If 
God," said Ockham, " had commanded his crea- 
tures to hate himself, hatred of God would have 
been praiseworthy." — Dotnin. Soto de Justitiaet 
Jure, lib. ii. quags'. 3. " Utrum prcecepta Deca- 
logi sint dispensabilia ;" — a book dedicated to 
Don Carlos, the son of Phillip II. Suarez, the 
last scholastic philosopher, rejected the Ockhami- 
cal doctrine, but allowed will to be a. part of the 
foundation of Morality. " Voluntas Dei non est 
tola ratio bonita'is aut maliiiae. — De Legibus, 
(Loud. 1679.) p. 71. As the great majority of the 
Schoolmen supported their opinion of this subject 
by the consideration of eternal and immutable 
ideas of right and wrong in the Divine Intellect, it 
was natural that the Nominalists, of whom Ock- 
ham was the founder, who rejected all general 
ideas, should also have rejected those moral dis- 
tinctions which were then supposed io originate 
in such ideas. Gerson was a celebrated Nomi- 
nalist ; and he was the more disposed to follow 
the opinions of his master because I hey agreed in 
maintaining the independence ot the Stale on the 
Church, and the superiority of the Church over the 
Pope. 

Note G. page 107. 
It must be premised that Charilas among the 
ancient divines corresponded with E^»r of the Pla- 
tonists, and with the <pihiet of later philosophers, 
as comprehending the love of all that is loveworthy 
in the Creator or his creatures. It is the theologi- 
cal virtue of charity, and corresponds with no term 
in use among modern moralists. " Cum objectum 
amoris sit bonum, dupliciter potest aliquis tendere 
in bonum alicujus rei ; uno modo, quod bonum 
illius rei ad alterum referat. sicui amat quis vinum 
in quantum dulcedinem viui peroptat ; et hie amor 
vocatur a quihusdam amor comupiscentiae. Amor 
autem iste von terminaturad rem qua dicitur amari , 
sed refiectitur ad rem Warn cut optatur bonum illius 
rei. Alio modo amor fortior in bonum alicujus rei, 
ita quod ad rem ipsam terminalur; et hie est amor 
benevolentiae. Qua bonum nostrum in Deo perfec- 
tion est. sicui in causa universali bonorum ; ideo bo- 
num in ipso esse magis naturaliier complacet quam 
in nobis ipsis : et ideoetiam amore amicitiae natu- 
raliier Deus ah homine plusseipsodiligitur." The 
above quotations from Aquinas will probably be 
sufficient for those who are acquainted with these 



190 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



questions, and they will certainly be thought too 
large by those who are not. In the next question 
he inquires, whether in the love of God ihere can 
be any view to reward. He appears to consider 
himself as bound by authority fo answer in the 
affirmative ; and he employs much ingenuity in 
reconciling a pertain expectation of reward wiih 
the disinterested character ascribed by him 10 piety 
in common with all the affections which terminate 
in other beings. " Nihil aliud est merces nostra 
quam perfrui Deo- Ergo charitaa non solum non 
'excludu, sed eliam fac.it habere oculura ad refer- 
cedem." In (His answer he seems to have anti- 
cipated the representations of Jeremy Tavlor 
(Sermon on Growth in Grace), of Lord Shaftes- 
bury (Inquiry concerning Virtue, book i. part iii. 
sect. 3), of Mr. T. Erskine (Freeness of the Gos- 
pel, EJiii. 1828), and more especially of Mr. John 
Smith (Discourses, Loud. K5G0). No extracts 
could convey a just conception ol the observations 
which follow, unless they were accompanied by a 
longer examination of i he technical language of 
the Schoolmen than would be warranted on this 
occasion. It is clear that he distinguishes well 
the affeciion of piety from the happy fruits, which, 
as he cautiously expresses it, ''are in the nature 
of a reward ;" — just as the consideraiion of the 
pleasures and advantages of friendship may enter 
into the affection and strengthen it. though ihcy 
are not its objects, and never could inspire such a 
feeling. It seems to me al-o that he had a dim- 
mer view of another doctrine, by which we are 
taught, that though our own happiness be not the 
end which we pursue in loving others, yet it may 
be the final cause of the insertion of disinterested 
affections into the nature of man. " Ponere mer- 
cedern aliquam tinem amoris ex parte amaii, est 
contra rationem amiciriae. Sed ponere mercedem 
esse finem amoris ex parte amanlis, non tamen 
ultimam, prout scilicet ipse amor est queedam 
operatio amantis.'non est contra rationem arnicitiae. 
Possum operationem amoris amare propter aliquid 
aliud, salva amieitia. -Potest habeas charitalem 
habere ocidum ad mercedem. uti ponat beatiludinem 
crtatnm faietn amoris, non au/em jinem amati.' 
Upon the la-u words my interpretation chiefly de- 
pends. The immediately preceding sentence 
must be owned to have been founded on a. distinc- 
tion between viewing the good fruits of our own 
affections as enhancing their intrinsic pleasures, 
and feeling love tor another on account of r he ad- 
vantage to be derived from him ; which last is in- 
conceivable. 

Note H. p. 107. 

" Potestas spiritualis et secularis utraque de- 
ducitur a potestate divina; ideo in tantum secu- 
laris est sub spintuali, in quantum est a Deo 
supposita; scilicet, in his qua? ad salutem animae 
pertinent. In his autem quae ad bonum civile 
speetant, est rnagis obediendum potestati secu- 
lari ; sicut illud Matthagi, ' Reddite quae sunt Cae- 
saris Caesari.' " What follows is more doubtful. 
"... Nisi forte potestati spiriuiali etiam potestas 
secularis conjungatur, ut in Papa, qui utriusque 
potestatis apicem tenet." — Op. vol. viii. p. 435. 
Here, says the French editor, it may be doubted 
whether Aquinas means the Pope's temporal 
power in his own dominions, or a secular autho- 
rity indirectly extending over all for the sake of 
religion. My reasons for adopting the more ra- 
tional construction are shortly these: — 1. The 
text of Matthew is so plain an assertion of the in- 
dependence of both powers, that it would be ihe 
height of extravagance to quote it as an authority 
for the dependence of the state. At most it could 
only be represented as reconcilable with stub a 
dependence in one ease. 2 The word 'forte 1 
feeitis manifestly to refer to the territorial sove- 
reign')- acquired by the Popes. If they have n 
general power m secular affairs, it must be be- 



cause it is necessary to their spiritual authority; 
and in that case to call it fortuitous would be to 
ascribe to it an adjunct destructive of its nature. 
3. His former reasoning on the same question 
seems to be decisive. The power of the Pope 
over bishops, he says, is not founded merely in 
his superior nature, hut in their authority being 
altogether derived from his, as the proconsular 
power from the imperial. Therefore he infers 
that this case is not analagous to the relation be- 
tween the civil and spiritual power, which are 
alike derived from God. 4. Had an Italian monk 
of the twelfth century really intended to affirm 
the Pope's temporal authority, he probably would 
have laid it down in terms more explicit and more 
accepiahle at Rome. Hesita ion and ambiguity 
are here indications of unbelief. Mere veneration 
for the apostolical See might present a more pre- 
cise determination against it, as it caused the quo- 
tation which follows, respecting the primacy of 
Peter. — A mere abridgment of these very cu- 
rious passages might excite a suspicion that I had 
tinctured Aquinas unconsciously with a colour of 
my own opinions. Extracts are very difficult, 
from the scholastic method of stating objections 
and answers, as well as from the mixture of theo- 
logical authorities with philosophical reasons. 

Note I. page 108. 

The debates in the first assembly of the Coun- 
cil of Trent (A. D. 1546) between the Dominicans 
who adnered to Aquinas, and the Franciscans who 
followed Scotuson Original Sin, Justification, and 
Grace, are to be found in Fra Paolo (Istoria del 
Concilio Tridentino, lih.ii.) They show how much 
metaphysical controversy is hid in a theological 
form; how many disputes of our times are ol no 
very ancient origin, and how strongly the whole 
Western Church, through all the divisions into 
which it has been separated, has manifested the 
same unwillingness to avow the Augustinian sys- 
tem, and the same fear of contradicting it. To 
his admirably clear and short statement of these 
abstruse controversies, must be added that of his 
accomplished opponent Cardinal Pallavicino (Isto- 
ria, &,c. Iii). vii. et viii.), who shows still more 
evidently the strength of the Augustinian party, 
and the disposition of the Council to tolerate 
opinions almost Lutheran, if not accompanied by 
revolt from the Church. A little more compro- 
mising disposition in the Reformers might have 
betrayed reason to a prolonged thraldom. We 
must esteem Erasmus and Melanchihon, btft we 
should reserve our gratitude for Lm her and Cal- 
vin. The Scotists maintained their doctrine of 
merit of congruity, waived by the Council, and 
soon after condemned by the Church of England ; 
by which they meant that they who had good dis- 
positions always received the Divine grace, not 
indeed as a reward of which they were worthy, 
but as aid which they were fit and willing to re- 
ceive. The Franciscans denied that belief was in 
the power of man. " I Francescani lo negavano 
seguendo Scoto, qual -vuole che siccome dalle 
dimostrazioni per necessita nasce la scienza, cos- 
dalle persuasioni nasca la fede ; e ch' essae nell' in- 
telletto. il quale e agente naturale, e mosso natural- 
mente dall' oggetto. Allegavano I' esperienza, che 
nessuno puo credere quello che vuole, ma quel lo che 
gli par vero." — Fra. Paolo, Istoria. &c. (Helm- 
stadt, 1763, 4to.), vol. i. p. 193 Cardinal Sforza 
Pallavicino. a learned and very able Jesuit, was 
appointed, according to his own account, in 1651, 
many years after the death of Fra Paolo, to write 
a true history of the Council of Trent, as a cor- 
rective of the misrepresentations of the celebrated 
Venetian. Algernon Sidney, who knew this court 
historian at Rome, and who may lie In I eved when 
lie speaks wi II of a Jesuit and a cardinal, com- 
mends the work in a letter to his father, Lord 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY 



191 



Leicester. At the end of Pallavicino's work is 
a list of three hundred and sixiy errors in matters 
of fact, which the Papal parly pretended to have 
detected in the independent historian, whom they 
charge with heresy or infidelity, and in either 
case, with hypocrisy. 

Note K. patre 110. 

" Hoc tempore. Ferdinando et Isahella regnan- 
tibu«, in academia Salmamina jacta sum roWisti- 
ons theologies s-emiua; itfgentts eniui iamae vir 
Franciseus de Victoria, non tarn lucubrarionibus 
edi'ts quamvia hoec non magnas molts aut majjni 
pretii sint, sed doctissimorum theologoruni cdu- 
catione. quaindiu lueiit saccae set. mite hoiios inter 
mona'es, veheme ter laudahitur." — Antonio, Bi- 
bljoiheca Hispanica Nova. (Madrid, 1783.) in p&i 
" Si ad morum htstructores respicias, Solus iterum 
nominabi i ur. " — Ibid. 

Note L. page 110. 

The title of the published account of the con- 
ference at Valladolid is, " The controversy be- 
tween the Bishop of Chiapa and Ur. Sepnlveda; 
in which the Doctor contended that the conquest 
of the Indies from the natives was lawful, and the 
Bishop maintained that it was unlawful, tyran- 
nical, and unjust, in the presence of many theolo- 
gians, lawyers, a^d oiher learned men assembled 
by his Majesty. "-Bibl. Hisp. Nova, torn. i. p. 192. 

Las Casas died in 1566, in the 92d year of his 
age; Sepulveda died in 1571, in his 82d year. 
Sepulveda was the scholar of Pomponatius, and a 
friend of Erasmus. Cardinal Pole. Aldus Manu- 
tius, &c. In his book " De Justis Belli Causis 
contra Indos suscepti." he contended only that 
the king ought justly "ad dilionem indos, non 
herilem sed regiam et civilem, lege b> I i redigere." 
— Antonio, voce Sepulveda, Bibl. [Ic-p Nova, 
torn. i. p. 703. But this smooth and specious lan- 
guage concealed poison. Had it entirely pre- 
vailed, the cruel consequence of the defeat of the 
advocate of the oppressed would alone have re- 
ntal 'ed ; the limitations and softenings employed 
by their opponent to obtain success would have 
been speedily disregarded and forgotten. Covar- 
ruvias, another eminent Jurist, was sent by Phi- 
lip IF. lo the Council of Trent, at its renewal in 
1560. and, with Cardinal Buoncampagm, drew up 
the decrees of reformation. Francis Sanchez, the 
father of philosophical grammar, published his 
Minerva at Salamanca in 1587; — so active was 
the cultivation of philosophy in Spain in the age 
of Cervantes. 

Note M. page 120. 

" Alorsenrepassant dans mon esprit les diverses 
Opinions qui m'avoient tour-a-iour entraine depuis 
ma naissance. je vis que bien qu'aucune d'elles ne 
fut assez evidente pour produire immediatement 
la conviction, elh s avoient divers degres de vrai- 
Bemblance, et que l'assentiment interieur s'y pre- 
toil ou s'y refusoit a differentes mesnres. Sur 
celte premiere observation, comparant entr'elles 
tomes ces differentes idees dans le silence des 
prejuges, je trouvai que la premiere, et la plus 
commune, etoit aussi la plus simple et la plus rai- 
eonnable ; et qu'il ne lui manquoit, pour reunir 
tons les suffrages, que d'avoir ete proposee la der- 
niere. Imaginez tons vos philosophes anciens et 
modernes. ayant d'ahord epuise leur bizarres sys- 
temes de forces, de chances, de latalite. de neces- 
siie, d'aiomes. de monrie anime, de ma'iere vi- 
vanie. do ma'erialisme de tou'e espece ; et apres 
eux tons I'il'ustre Clarke, edairant !e monde, 
annoi cant enfin I'E're des eircs, et le dir-pensa- 
tenr des choses. Avec quelle universplle admi 
ration, avec quel applaudissemenl unanimc n'eut 



point eie recu ce nouveau sysiome si grand, si 
cousolant, si sublime, si propre a clever I'anie, a 
donner uue base a la vertu, et en memc terns si 
frappant, si luuiincux, si simple, et, ce me semble, 
offrant moins de choses iucomprehensibles a 
1'esprit humain. qu'il n'ett trouve d'absurdes en 
tout nntre systeme! Je me disois, les objections 
insolubles sont communes a ions, parceque I'es- 
prit de I'homme est imp borne pour les resondre; 
elles ne prouvent done rien cotitre aucun par pre- 
ference: mais quelle difference enire les preuves 
directes!'' — Rousseau, CEuvres, tome ix. p. 25. 

Note-N. page 128. 

" Est autem jus quaedam potentia mornlis, et 
obliiiulio necessitas moralis. Moralem autem in- 
telhgo. quae apud virum bonum sequipollel rratu- 
rali : Nam ut prasclare jurisconsuiius Romanus 
ait, quo? contra bonos mores sit7ii , ta necfaeere iios 
posse crtdendum est. Vir bo?ius aulem est, qui 
amat ouines. quanmm ratio permit I it. Jitstitinm 
igitur, quae virius est hnjus affectus rectrix, quern 
•lu\cLjbtur7riit.y Grasci vocant, comuiodissime, ni 
fallor, defiiiiemus caritatem sapienlis. hoc est, 
sequentem sapientiae dictata. Itaque. quod Car- 
neades dixisse lertur, justitiam esse summam stul- 
tiliam, quia alienis uiiliiatibus consult jubeat, ne- 
gleciis propriis, ex ignorata ejus definitione namm 
est. Caritas est benevolentia universalis, et bene- 
volentia amandi sive diligendi habitus. Amare 
autem sive diligere est felicitate alterius delectari, 
vel, quod eodem redit, felicitaiem alienam adscis- 
cere in suam. Unde difticilis nodus solviiur, 
magni etiam in Theologta momenti, quomodo 
amor non mercenarius detur, qui sit a spe meuique 
et omni utihtatis respectu separatus: scilicet, quo- 
rum utilitas delectat, eorum felicitas nostram in- 
greditur; nam quae delectant, perse expetuntur. 
Et uti pulchrorum contemplatio ipsa juennda est, 
piciaque tabula Eaphaelis intelligentem afficit, etsi 
nullos census ferai, adeo ut in oculis dehciisque 
feratur, quodam simulacro amoris ; it a quum res 
pulehra simul etiam felicitatis est capax transit 
affectus in verutn amorem. Superat autem di- 
vi/ius amor alios amores, quos Deus cum maxima 
successu amare potest, quando Deo simul et leli- 
ci us nihil est, et nihil pulchrius felioitateque dig- 
nins intelligi potest. Et quum idem sit potential 
sapieniiasque summae, felicitas ejus non tantum 
ingreditur nosiram (si sapimus. id est. ipsum 
aniamus). sed et facit. Quia aucm sapientia cari- 
tatem dirigere debet, hujus quoque definitione opus 
erit. Arbitror tin tern noiioni honiinum op inic saiis- 
fieri, si sapientiam nihil aliuil esse dicamus. qnam 
ipsam scientiam felicitatis.' 1 — Leihnitii Opera, vol. 
iv. para iii. p. 294. " Ei jus quidem imiuin sive 
stiictum nascitur ex principio servandaG pacis ; 
Eequitas sive caritns ad majusaliquid contendit, ut, 
dum quisque alteri prodest, quantum potest, feli- 
citaiem suam augeat in aliena; et, ut verbodieam. 
jus striemm miseriam vital, jus superius ad felici- 
taiem tendit, sed qualis in hanc mortalitatem cadit. 
Quod vero ipsam vitam, et quicquid hanc vi'am 
expetendam facit, magnocommodo alieno postha- 
bere debeamus, ita ut maxtmos etiam dolores in 
aliornm gratiam perferre oporteat ; magis pulcbre 
praecipimr a philosophis quam solide demonstra- 
tur. Nam decus et gloriam, et animi sui virtute 
gaudentis sensum. ad quae sub honestaiis nomine 
provocant. cogiiationis sive mentis bona esse con- 
stat, magna quidem, sed non omnibus, nee omni 
malorum acerbitati preevalit lira, quando non om- 
nes reque imaginando afficiuntur; pracsertim quos 
neque edncatio liberalise tieque consueiudo vivendi 
iigenoa, vel viias sectasve disciplina ad honoris 
asstimationem. vel animi bona senlienda assuelecit. 
Ut vero iiniversali demonstrationi conficiatui, 
omne hottpstiim esse uiile, et mime turpe damno 
sum. nsHimenda est immorta!itas animre et rector 
universi Deus. lia fit, ul omnes in civitate per- 



192 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



fectissima vivere intelligamur, sub monarcha, qui 
nee ob sapi-'tiiiam falli, nee ob poteuiiam vitari 
potest ; idemque tain amabilis est, ut feliciias sit 
tali domino servire. Huic ig'nur qui animam im- 
pendn, Christo docente, earn lacratur. [lujus 
poteiiiia providentiaque effienur, ut oiune jus in 
factum transeat, ut nemo lie latur nisi a se ipso, ui 
nihil recte gesium sine prsemio sit, nullum pecca- 
tum sine poena." — p. 296. 

Note O. page 130. 

The writer of this Discourse was led, on a for- 
mer occasion, by a generally prevalent notion, to 
confound the theological doctrine of Predestination 
with the philosophical opinion which supposes the 
determination of the Will to be, like other events, 
produced by adequate causes. (See a criticism on 
Mr. Stewart's Dissertation, Edinb. Review, vol. 
xxxvi. p. 225.) More careful reflection has cor- 
rected a confusion common to him with most writ- 
ers on the subject. What is called " Sublapsarian 
Calvinism," which was the doctrine of the most 
eminent men, including Augustin and Calvin him- 
self, ascribed to God. and to man before the Fall, 
what is called " free-will," which they even own 
Still to exist in all the ordinary acts of life, though 
it be lost with respect to religious morality. The 
decree of election, on this scheme, arises from 
God's foreknowledge that man was to fall, and 
that all men became thereby with justice liable to 
eternal punishment. The election of some to sal- 
vation was an act of Divine goodness, and the pre- 
tention of the rest was an exercise of holiness and 
justice. This Sublapsarian predestination is evi- 
dently irreconcilable with the doctrine of Neces- 
sity, which considers free-will, or volitions not 
caused by motives as absolutely inconsistent with 
the definition of an intelligent being, — which is, 
that he acts from a motive, or, in other words, 
with a purpose. The Supralapsarian scheme, 
which represents the Fall itself as fore-ordained, 
imiy indeed be built on necessitarian principles. 
But on that scheme original sin seems wholly to 
lose that importance which the former sys ! em 
gives it as a revolution in the state of the world, 
requiring an interposition of Divine power to re- 
medy a part of its fatal effect*. It becomes no 
more than the first link in the chain of predestined 
offences. Yet both Catholic and Protestant pre- 
destinarians have borrowed the arguments and 
distinctions of philosophical necessitarians. One 
of thfl propositions of Jansenius, condemned bv 
the bull of Innocent X. in 1633, is, that " to merit 
or demerit in a state of lapsed nature, it is not 
necessary that there should be in man a liberty 
free from necessity ; it is sufficient that there be a 
liberty free from constraint." — Dupin, Histoire de 
I'Eglise en abrege, livre iv. chap. viii. Luther, in 
his once famous treatise De Servo Arbitrio against 
Erasmus (printed in 1526). expresses himself as 
follows: " Hie est fidei stimmus gradus, credere 
ilium esse clementem qui tarn paucos salvat, tarn 
multos damnat ; credere jusium qui sua voluntate 
nos necessario dam aabiles f.icit, ut videatur, ut 
Erasmus refert, delectan crucialibus miserorum, 
et odio potiu? quam amore dignus." (My copy 
of this stern arid abusive book is not paged.) In 
another pas-age. he states the distinction between 
co-action and necessity as familiar a hundred and 
thirty years before it was proposed hy Hobbes, or 
condemned in the Jansenists. "Necessario di- 
co, non coaele, sed, nt illi dieur.t, necessitate im- 
Hiutahilitatis, non coactionis; hoc est. homo, cum 
vocat Spirting Dei, non quid em violetnia, velut 
raptns ob'orto cnllo, nolens tacit malum, quemad- 
modum fur ant latro nolens ad poenam ducitur, 
sed sponte et libera voluntate facit " He uses 
also the illustration of Hobbes, from the difference 
between a stream forced out of its course, and 
freely flowing in its channel. 



[The following is the whole of the passage in 
the Edinburgh Review, referred to above : the 
reader, while bearing in mind the modification of 
opinion there announced, may still find sufficient 
interest in the general statement of the argument 
to justify its admission here. — Rd] 

"... It would be inexcusable to revive the 
mention of such a controversy as that which re- 
I ites to Lilierty and Necessity, for any other pur- 
pose than to inculcate mutual candour, and to 
censure the introduction of invidious; topics. If 
tlvre were any hope of terminating that endless 
anil fruitless controversy, the most promising ex- 
pedient would be a general agreement to banish 
the technical terms hitherto employed on both 
sides from philosophy, and to limit ourselves rigor- 
ously to a statement of those facts in which all 
men agree, expressed in language perfectly puri- 
fied from all tincture of system. The agreement 
in facts would then probably be found to be much 
more extensive than is often suspected by either 
party. Experience is, and indeed must be, equally 
appealed to by both. All mankind feel and own, 
that their actions are at least very much affected 
by their situation, their opinions, their feelings, 
and their habits ; yet no man would deserve the 
compliment of confutation, who seriously profess- 
ed to doubt the distinction between right and 
wrong, the reasonableness of moral approbation 
and disapprobation, the propriety of praising and 
censuring voluntary actions, and the justice of re- 
warding or punishing them according to their in- 
tention and tendency. No reasonable person, in 
whatever terms he may express himself concern- 
ing the Will, has ever meant to deny that man 
has powers and faculties which justify the moral 
judgments of the human race. Every advocate 
of Free Will admits the fact of the influence of 
motives, from which the Necessarian infers the 
truth of his opinion. Every Necessarian must 
also admit those attributes of moral and responsi- 
ble agency, for the sake of which the advocate of 
Liberty considers his own doctrine as of such 
unspeakable importance. Both parties ought 
equally to own, that the matter in dispute is a 
question of fact relating to the mind, which must 
be ultimately decided by its own consciousness. 
The Necessarian is even bound to admit, that no 
speculation is tenable on this subject, which is not 
reconcilable to the general opinions of mankind, 
and which does not afford a satisfactory expla- 
nation of that part of common language which at 
first sight appears to be most at variance with it. 

" After the actual antecedents of volition had 
been thus admitted by one party, and its moral 
consequences by another, the subject of conten- 
tion would be reduced to the question, — What is 
the stale of the mind in the interval which passes 
between motive and action ? or, to speak with still 
more strict propriety. By what words is that state 
of the mind most accurately described? If this h.ibit 
of thinking could be steadily and long preserved, 
so evanescent a subject of dispute might perhaps in 
the end disappear, and the contending parlies might 
at length discover that they had been only looking 
at opposite sides of ihe same truth. But the terms 
" Liberty" and " Necessity" embroil the contro- 
versy, inflame the temper of disputants, and in- 
volve them in clouds of angry zeal, which render 
them incapable not only of perceiving their nume- 
rous and important coincidences, but even of 
clearly discerning the single point in which they 
differ. Every generous sentiment, and every hos- 
tile passion of human naiure, have for ages been 
connected with these two words. They are the 
badges of the oldest, the widest, and the most 
obstinate warfare waged by metaphysicians. — 
Whoever refuses to try the experiment of re- 
nouncing them, at least for a time, can neither be 
a peace- maker nor a friend of dispassionate dis- 
| cussion ; and, if he stickles for mere words, he 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



193 



may be justly suspected of being almost aware 
that he is contending for nothing but words. 

" But if projects of perpetual peace should be 
as Utopian in the schools as in the world, it is the 
more necessary to condemn the use of weapons 
which exasperate animosity, without contributing 
to decide the contest. Of this nature, in out- 
opinion, are the imputations of irreligion and im- 
morality which have forages been thrown on those 
divines and philosophers who have espoused Ne- 
cessarian opinions. Mr. Stewart, though he anx- 
iously acquits individuals of evil intention, has too 
much lent the weight of his respectable opinion to 
these useless and inflammatory charges. We are 
at a loss to conceive how he could imagine that 
there is the slightest connection between the doc- 
trine of Necessity and the system of Spinoza. 
That the world is governed by a Supreme Mind, 
which is invariably influenced by the dictates of 
its own wisdom and goodness, seems to be the 
very essence of theism ; and no man who sub- 
stantially dissents from that proposition, can de- 
serve the name of a pure theist. But this is pre- 
cisely the reverse of the doctrine of Spinoza, 
which, in spite of all its ingenious disguises, un- 
doubtedly denies the supremacy of mind. This 
objection, however, has already been answered, 
not only by the pious and profound Jonathan Ed- 
wards (Inquiry, part iv. chap. 7.), an avowed Ne- 
cessarian, but by Mr. Locke, (whose opinions, 
however, about this question are not very distinct,) 
and even by Dr. Clarke himself, the ablest and 
most celebrated of the advocates of liberty. (De- 
monstration of the Being and Attributes of God.) 

" The charge of immoral tendency, however, 
deserves more serious consideration, as it has 
been repeatedly enforced by Mr. Stewart, and 
brought forward also by Dr. Copplestone.* (Dis- 
courses, Lond. 1821), — the only writer of our time 
who has equally distinguished himself in paths so 
distant from each other as classical literature, po- 
litical economy, and metaphysical philosophy. His 
general candour and temperance give weight to 
his accusation ; and it is likely to be conveyed to 
posterity by a volume, which is one of the best 
models of philosophical style that our age has pro- 
duced, — a Sermon of Archbishop King, repub- 
lished by Mr. Whately.t an ingenious and learned 
member of Oriel College. The Sermons of Dr. 
Copplestone do indeed directly relate to theology ; 
but, in this case, it is impossible to separate that 
subject from philosophy. Necessity is a philoso- 
phical opinion relating to the human will : Pre- 
destination is a theological doctrine, concerning 
the moral government of the world. But since 
the writings of Leibnitz and Jonathan Edwards, 
all supporters of Predestination endeavour to 
show its reasonableness by the arguments of the 
Necessarian. It is possible, and indeed very com- 
mon, to hold the doctrines of Necessity, without 
adopting many of the dogmas which the Calvinist 
connects with it : but it is not possible to make 
any argumentative defence of Calvinism, which 
is not founded on the principle of Necessity. The 
moral consequences of both (whatever they may 
be) must be the same ; and both opinions are, ac- 
cordingly, represented by their opponents as tend- 
ing, in a manner very similar, to weaken the mo- 
tives to virtuous action. 

" There is no topic which requires such strong 
grounds to justify its admission into controversy, 
as that of moral consequences ; for, besides its 
incurable tendency to inflame the angry passions, 
and to excite obloquy against individuals, which 
renders it a practical restraint on free inquiry, the 
employment of it in dispute seems to betray ap- 
prehensions derogatory from the dignity of Morals, 
and not consonant cither to the dictates of Reason 



* Afterwards Bishop of Llandaff.— Ed. 
f Afterwards Archbishop of Dublin. — Ed. 
25 



or to the lessons of experience. The rules of 
Morality are too deeply rooted in human nature, 
to be shaken by every veering breath of metaphy- 
sical theory. Our Moral Sentiments spring from 
no theory : they are as general as any part of our 
nature ; the causes which generate, or unfold and 
nourish them, lie deep in the unalterable interests 
of society, and in those primitive feelings of the 
human heart which no circumstance can eradicate. 
The experience of all ages teaches, that these 
deep-rooted principles are far less affected than is 
commonly supposed, by the revolutions of philo- 
sophical opinion, which scarcely penetrate beyond 
the surface of human nature. Exceptions there 
doubtless are : the most speculative opinions are 
not pretended to be absolutely indifferent in their 
moral tendency ; and it is needless to make an 
express exception of those opinions which directly 
relate to practice, and which may have a consider- 
able moral effect. But, in general, the power of 
the moral feelings, and the feebleness of specula- 
tive opinions, are among the most striking pheno- 
mena in the history of mankind. What teacfier, 
either philosophical or religious, has ever been 
successful in spreading his doctrines, who did not 
reconcile them to our moral sentiments, and even 
recommend them by pretensions to a purer and 
more severe morality ? Wherever there is a seem- 
ing, or a real repugnance between speculative 
opinions and moral rules, the speculator has al- 
ways been compelled to devise some compromise 
which, with whatever sacrifice of consistency, 
may appease the alarmed conscience of mankind. 
The favour of a few is too often earned by flatter- 
ing their vicious passions; but no immoral system 
ever acquired popularity. Wherever there is a 
contest, the speculations yield, and the principles 
prevail. The victory is equally decisive, whether 
the obnoxious doctrine be renounced, or so modi- 
fied as no longer to dispute the legitimate authority 
of Conscience. 

"Nature has provided other guards for Virtue 
against t he revolt of sophistry and the inconstancy 
of opinion. The whole system of morality is of 
great extent, and comprehends a variety of prin- 
ciples and sentiments, — of duties and virtues. 
Wherever new and singular speculation has been 
at first sight thought to weaken some of the mo- 
tives of moral activity, it has almost uniformly 
been found, by longer experience, that the same 
speculation itself makes amends, by strengthen- 
ing other inducements to right conduct. There 
is thus a principle of compensation in the opinions, 
as in the circumstances of man ; which, though 
not sufficient to level distinction and to exclude 
preference, has yet such power, that it ought to 
appease our alarms, and to soften our controver- 
sies. A moral nature assimilates every specula- 
tion which it does not reject. If these general 
reasonings be just, with what increased force do 
they prove the innocence of error, in a case where, 
as there seems to be no possibility of difference 
about facts, the mistake of either party must be 
little more than verbal ! 

" We have much more ample experience re- 
specting the practical tendency of religious than 
of philosophical opinions. The latter were for- 
merly confined to the schools, and are still limited 
to persons of some education. They are generally 
kept apart from our passions and our business, 
and are entertained, as Cicero said of the Stoical 
paradoxes. " more as a subject of dispute than as 
a rule of life." Religious opinions, on the con- 
trary, are spread over ages and nations; they are 
felt perhaps most strongly by the more numerous 
classes of mankind ; wherever they are sincerely- 
entertained, they must be regarded as the most 
serious of all concerns ; they are often incorpo- 
rated with the warmest passions of which the hu- 
man heart is capable ; and, in this state, from 
their eminently social and sympathetic nature, 



194 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



they are capable of becoming the ruling principle 
of action in vast multitudes. Lei us therefore 
appeal to experience, on the moral influence of 
Necessarian opinions in their theological form. 
By doing so, we shall have an opportunity of con- 
templating the principle in its most active state, 
operating upon the greatest masses, and for the 
longest time. Predestination, or doctrines much 
inclining towards it, have, on the whole, prevailed 
in the Christian churches of the West since the 
days of Augustine and Aquinas. Who were the 
first Formidable opponents of these doctrines in 
the Church of Rome? The Jesuits — the con- 
trivers of courtly casuistry, and the founders of 
lax morality. Who, in the same Church, inclined 
to the stern theology of Augustine ? The Jan- 
senists — the teachers and the. models of austere 
morals. What are we to think of the morality 
of Calvinistic nations, especially of the most nu- 
merous classes of them, who seem, beyond all 
other men, to be most zealously attached to their 
religion, and most deeply penetrated with its 
spirit? Here, if any where, we have a practical 
and a decisive test of the moral influence of a 
belief in Necessarian opinions. In Protestant 
Switzerland, in Holland, in Scotland, among the 
English Nonconformists, and the Protestants of 
the north of Ireland, in the New England States, 
Calvinism long was the prevalent faith, and is 
probably still the faith of a considerable majority. 
Their moral education was at least completed, and 
their collective character formed, during the preva- 
lence of Calvinistic opinions. Yet where are 
communities to be found of a more pure and ac- 
tive virtue ? Perhaps these, and other very strik- 
ing facts, might justify speculations of a somewhat 
singular nature, and even authorize a retort upon 
our respectable antagonists. But we have no such 
purpose. It is sufficient for us to do what in us 
lies to mitigate the acrimony of controversy, to 
teach disputants on both sides to respect the sacred 
neutrality of Morals, and to show that the provi- 
dent and parental care of Nature has sufficiently 
provided for the permanent security of the princi- 
ples of Virtue. 

" It we were to amuse ourselves in remarks on 
the practical tendency of opinions, we might with 
some plausibility contend, that there was a ten- 
dency in infidelity to produce Toryism. In Eng- 
land alone, we might appeal to the examples of 
Hobbes, Bolingbroke, Hume, and Gibbon; and 
to the opposite cases of Milton, Locke, Addison, 
Clarke, and even Newton himself; for the last 
of these great men was also a Whig. The only 
remarkable example which now occurs to us of a 
zealous believer who was a bigoted Tory, is that of 
Dr. Johnson ; and we may balance against him the 
whole, or the greater part of the life of his illus- 
trious friend, Mr. Burke. We would not, how- 
ever, rest much on observations founded on so 
small an experience, that the facts may arise from 
causes- wholly independent of the opinion. But 
another unnoticed coincidence may serve as an 
introduction to a few observations on the scepti- 
cism of the eighteenth century. 

" The three most celebrated sceptics of modern 
times have been zealous partisans of high autho- 
rity in government. It would be rash to infer, 
from the remarkable examples of this coincidence, 
in Montaigne, Bayle, and Hume, that there is a 
natural connection between scepticism and Tory- 
ism ; or, even, if there were a tendency to such a 
connection, that it might not be counteracted by 
more powerful circumstances, or by stronger prin- 
ciples of human nature. It is more worth while, 
therefore, to consider the particulars in the history 
of these three eminent persons, which may have 
strengthened or created this propensity. 

" Montaigne, who was methodical in nothing, 
does not indeed profess systematic scepticism. He 
was a freethinker who loosened the ground about 



received opinions, and indulged his humour in 
arguing on both sides of most questions. But the 
sceptical tendency of his writings is evident; and 
there is perhaps nowhere to be found a more vigor- 
ous attack on popular innovations, than in the lat- 
ter part of the 22d Essay of his first book. But 
there is no need of any general speculations to 
account for the repugnance to change, felt by a 
man who was wearied and exasperated by the 
horrors of forty years' civil war. 

" The case of Bayle is more remarkable. 
Though banished from France as a Protestant, 
he published, without his name, a tract, entitled, 
" Advice to the Refugees," in (he year 1690, 
which could be considered in no other light than 
that of an apology for Louis XIV., an attack on 
the Protestant cause, and a severe invective 
against his companions in exile. He declares, in 
this unavowed work, for absolute power and pas- 
sive obedience, and inveighs, with an intemper- 
ance scarcely ever found in his avowed writings, 
against "the execrable doctrines of Buchanan," 
and the " pretended sovereignty of the people," 
without sparing even the just and glorious Revo- 
lution, which had at that moment preserved the 
constitution of England, the Protestant religion, 
and the independence of Europe. It is no wonder 
therefore, that he was considered as a partisan of 
France, and a traitor to the Protestant cause ; nor 
can we much blame King William for regarding 
him as an object of jealous policy. Many years 
after, he was represented to Lord' Sunderland as 
an enemy of the Allies, and a detractor of their 
great captain, the Duke of Marlborouah. The 
generous friendship of the illustrious author of the 
Characteristics, — the opponent of Bayle on almost 
every question of philosophy, government, and, 
we may add, religion, — preserved him, on that 
occasion, from the sad necessity of seeking a new- 
place of refuge in the very year of his death. The 
vexations which Bayle underwent in Holland from 
the Calvinist ministers, and his long warfare 
against their leader Jurieu, who was a zealous as- 
sertor of popular opinions, may have given this 
bias to his mind, and disposed him to "fly from 
petty tyrants to the throne." His love of para- 
dox may have had its share ; for passive obedi- 
ence was considered as a most obnoxious paradox: 
in the schools and societies of the oppressed CaL 
vinists. His enemies, however, did not fail to 
impute his conduct to a design of paying his court 
to Louis XIV., and to the hope of being received 
with open arms in France ; — motives which seem 
to be at variance both with the general integrity 
of his life, and with his favourite passion for (he 
free indulgence of philosophical speculation. The 
scepticism of Bayle must, however, be distin- 
guished from that of Hume. The former of 
these celebrated writers examined many ques- 
tions in succession, and laboured to show that 
doubt was, on all of them, the result of examina- 
tion. His, therefore, is a sort of inductive scepti- 
cism, in which general- doubt was an inference 
from numerous examples of uncertainty in par- 
ticular cases. It is a kind of appeal to experience, 
whether so many failures in the search of truth 
ought not to deter wise men from continuing the 
pursuit. Content with proving, or seeming to 
himself to prove, that we have not attained cer- 
tainty, he does not attempt to prove that we can- 
not reach it. 

" The doctrine of Mr. Hume, on the other hand, 
is not that we have not reached truth, but that we 
never can reach it. It is an absolute and universal 
system of scepticism, professing to be derived from 
the very structure of the Understanding, which, 
if any man could seriously believe it, would 
render it impossible for him to form an opinion 
upon any subject, — to give the faintest assent to 
any proposition, — to ascribe any meaning in the 
words ' truth' and ' falsehood,' — to believe, to in- 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



191' 



quire, or to reason, and, on the very same ground, 
to disbelieve, to dissent, or to doubt, — to adhere 
to his own principle of universal doubt, and lastly, 
if he be consistent with himself, even to think. It 
is not easy to believe that speculations so shadowy, 
which never can pretend to be more than the 
amusements of idle ingenuity, should have any in- 
fluence on the opinions of men of great understand- 
ing, concerning the most important concerns of 
human life. But perhaps it may be reasonable to 
allow, that the same character which disposes men 
to scepticism, may dispose them also to acquiesce in 
considerable abuses, and even oppressions, rather 
than to seek redress in forcible resistance. Men 
of such a character have misgivings in every en- 
terprise ; their acuteness is exercised in devising 
objections, — in discovering difficulties, — in fore- 
seeing obstacles ; they hope little from human 
wisdom and virtue, and are rather secretly prone 
to that indolence and indifference which forbade 
the Epicurean sage to hazard his quiet for the 
doubtful interests of a contemptible race. They 
do not lend a credulous ear to the Utopian projec- 
tor ; they doubt whether the evils of change will 
be so little, or the benefits of reform so great, as 
the sanguine reformer foretells that they will be. 
The sceptical temper of Mr. Hume may have thus 
insensibly moulded his political opinions. But 
causes still more obvious and powerful had proba- 
bly much more share in rendering him so zealous 
a partisan of regal power. In his youth, the Pres- 
byterians, to whose enmity his opinions exposed 
him, were the zealous and only friends of civil 
liberty in Scotland ; and the close connection of 
liberty w'ith Calvinism, made both more odious to 
him. The gentry in most parts of Scotland, ex- 
cept in the west, were then Jacobites ; and his 
early education was probably among that party. 
The prejudices which he perhaps imbibed in 
France against the literature of England, extended 
to her institutions ; and in the state of English 
opinion, when his history was published, if he 
sought distinction by paradox, he could not so 
effectually have obtained his object by the most 
startling of his metaphysical dogmas, as by his 
doubts of the genius of Shakespeare, and the vir- 
tue of Hampden." 

Note P. page 139. 

Though some parts of the substance of the fol- 
lowing Tetter have already appeared in various 
forms, perhaps the account of Mr. Hume's illness, 
in the words of his friend and physician Dr. Cul- 
len, will be acceptable to many readers. I owe 
it to the kindness of Mrs. Baillie, who had the 
goodness to copy it from the original, in the col- 
lection of her late learned and excellent husband, 
Dr. Baillie. Some portion of what has been for- 
merly published I do not think it necessary to 
reprint. 

From Dr. Cullen to Dr. Hunter. 

"My Dear Friend, — I was favoured with 
yours by Mr. Halket on Sunday, and have an- 
swered some part of it by a gentleman whom I 
was otherwise obliged to write by ; but as I was 
not certain how soon that might come to your 
hand, I did not answer your postscript ; in doing 
which, if I can oblige you, a part of the merit must 
be that of the information being early, and I there- 
fore give it you as soon as I possibly could. You 
desire an account of Mr. Hume's last days, and I 
give it you with some pleasure ; for though I could 
not look upon him in his illness without much 
concern, yet the tranquillity and pleasantry which 
he constantly discovered did even then give me 
satisfaction, and, now that the curtain is dropped, 
allows me to indulge the less allayed' reflection. 
He was truly an example des grands homtnes qui 



sont marts en plaisantanl. . . . For many weeks- 
before his death he was very sensible of his gradual 
decnv ; and his answer to inquiries after his health 
was, several times, that he was going as fast as 
his enemies could wish, and as easily as his friends 
could desire. He was not, however, without a 
frequent recurrence of pain and uneasiness ; but he 
passed most part of the day in his drawing-room, 
admitted the visits of his friends, and, with his 
usual spirit, conversed with them upon literature, 
politics, or whatever else was accidentally started. 
In conversation he seemed to be perfectly at ease, 
and to the last abounded with that pleasantry, and 
those curious and entertaining anecdotes, which 
ever distinguished him. This, however, I always 
considered rather as an effort to be agreeable ; and 
he at length acknowledged that it became too 
much for his strength. For a few days before his 
death, he became more averse to receive visits ; 
speaking became more and more difficult for him, 
and for twelve hours before his death his speech 
failed altogether. His senses and judgment did 
not fail till the last hour of his life. He constantly 
discovered a strong sensibility to the attention and 
care of his friends ; and, amidst great uneasiness 
and langour, never betrayed any peevishness or 
impatience. This is a general account of his last 
days ; but a particular fact or two may perhaps 
convey to you a still better idea of them. 

" About a fortnight before his death, he added 
a codicil to his will, in which he fully discovered 
his attention to his friends, as well as his own 
pleasantry. What little wine he himself drank 
was generally port, a wine for which his friend 
the poet [John Home] had ever declared the 
strongest aversion. David bequeaths to his friend 
John one bottle of port ; and, upon condition of 
his drinking this even at two down-sittings, be- 
stows upon him twelve dozen of his best claret. 
He pleasantly adds, that this subject of wine was 
the only one upon which they had ever differed. 
In the codicil there are several other strokes of 
raillery and pleasantry, highly expressive of the 
cheerfulness which he then enjoyed. He even 
turned his attention to some of the simple amuse- 
ments with which he had been formerly pleased. 
In the neighbourhood of his brother's house in. 
Berwickshire is a brook, by which the access in. 
time of floods is frequently interrupted. Mr. Hume 
bequeaths 100Z. for building a bridge over this 
brook, but upon the express condition that none of 
the stones for that purpose shall be taken from a. 
quarry in the neighbourhood, which forms part of 
a romantic scene in which, in his earlier days, 
Mr. Hume took particular delight : — otherwise, 
the money to go to the poor of the parish. 

" These are a few particulars which may per- 
haps appear trifling ; but to me no particulars seem 
trifling that relate to so great a man. It is per- 
haps from trifles that we can best distinguish the 
tranquillity and cheerfulness of the philosopher, . 
at a time when the most part of mankind are under 
disquiet, anxiety, and sometimes even horror. . . . 
I had gone so far when I was called to the country ; 
and I have returned only so long before the post. 
as to say, that I am most affectionately yours, 
" William Cullen .. 

" Edhiburgk, Ylth September, 1776." 

Note Q. page 139. 

Pyrrho was charged with carrying his scepti- 
cism so far as not to avoid a carriage if it was 
driven against him. jEnesidemus, the most fa- 
mous of ancient sceptics, with great probability 
vindicates the more ancient doubter from such 
lunacy, of which indeed his having lived to the 
age of ninety seems sufficient to acquit him. Am- 
a-iSufAc; Si qmvi <pthoco<peiv fxh clvtov jwra tw ths swc~ 

yii hOyQV, (JLVi /UlVTOt yi UTrPOOfULT^ iKHtTTX TTpaTTUV" 



196 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



Diogenes Laertius, lib. ix. sect. 62. Brief and 
imperfect as our accounts of ancient scepticism are. 
it does appear that their reasoning on the subject 
of causation had some resemblance to that oi Mr. 
Hume. ' ' AvMf'j'vTi ji to MTtov ZJr to ttlrnv tZv Trpi; 
Ti'itni, irpot yaprZcLiriXTv sot/- tu Si irfis ti \7r1vUt- 
tm/j.^ov u7rdp^ii Js oi/' h.ai to olItiov ouv sttivocitq av 
jusW. — Ibid. sec. 97. It is perhaps impossible to 
translate the important technical expression Ti rr/>;c 
Tt. It comprehends two or more things as related 
to each other; both the relative and correlative 
being taken together as such. Fire considered as 
having the po^ver of burning wood is to wmj t<. 
The words of Laertius may therefore be nearly 
rendered into the language of modern philosophy 
as follows: "Causation they take away thus: — ■ 
A cause is so only in relation to an effect. What 
is relative is only conceived, but does not exist. 
Therefore cause is a mere conception." The first 
attempt to prove the necessity of belief in a Divine 
revelation, by demonstrating that natural reason 
leads to universal scepticism, was made by Alga- 
zel, a professor at Bagdad, in the beginning of the 
twelfth century of our era; whose work entitled 
the " Destruction of the Philosopher" is known 
to us only by the answer of Averroes, called "De- 
struction of the Destruction." He denied a necessa- 
ry connection between cause and effect; for of two 
separate things, the affirmation of the existence of 
one does not necessarily contain the affirmation of 
the existence of the other; and the same may be 
said of denial. It is curious enough that this argu- 
ment was more especially pointed against those 
Arabian philosophers who, from the necessary 
connection of causes and effects, reasoned against 
the possibility of miracles ; — thus anticipating one 
doctrine of Mr. Hume, to impugn another. — Ten- 
nemann, Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. viii. p. 
387. The same attempt was made by the learned 
but unphilosophical Huet, bishop of Avranches. — 
(Qutestiones AlneianEe, Caen, 1690, and Traite 
de la Foiblesse de 1' Esprit Humain, Amsterdam, 
1723.) A similar motive urged Berkeley to his 
attack on Fluxions. The attempt of Huet has 
been lately renewed by the Abbe Lamennais, in 
his treaiisu on Religious Indifference ; — a fine 
writer whose apparent reasonings amount to little 
more than well-varied assertions, and well-dis- 
guised assumptions of the point* to be proved. 
To build religion upon scepticism is the most ex- 
travagant of all attempts ; for it destroys the proofs 
of a divine mission, and leaves no natural means 
of distinguishing between revelation and imposture. 
The Abbe Lamennais represents authority as the 
sole ground of belief. Why ? If any reason can be 
,given, the proposition must be false ; if none, it is 
obviously a mere groundless assertion. 

Note R. page 142. 

Casanova, a Venetian doomed to solitary im- 
prisonment in the dungeons at Venice in 1755, 
thus speaks of the only books which for a time he 
was allowed to read. The title of the first was 
" La Cite Mystique de Scaur Marie de Jesus, ap- 
pellee d' Agrada." " J'y lus tout ce que pent en- 
fanter l'imagination exaltee d'une vierge Espag- 
nole extravagamment devote, cloitree, melancho- 
lique,ayant des directeursde conscience, ignorans, 
faux, et devots. Amoureuse et amie tres intime 
de la Sainte Vierge, elle avait regit ordre de Dieu 
meme d'ecrire la vie de sa divine mere. Les in- 
structions necessaires lui avaient ele fournies par 
le Saint Esprit. Elle commencoit la vie de Marie, 
non pas du jour de sa r.aissance, mais du moment 
de son immaculee conception dans le sein de sa 
mere Anne. Apres avoir narre en detail tout ce 
que sa divine heroine fit les neuf mois qu'elle a 
passe dans le sein maternel, elle nous apprend 
qu'a 1'age de trois ans elle balayoit la maison, 
aidee par neuf cents domestiques, tous anges, 



commandes par Ieur propre Prince Michel. Ce 
qui frappe dans ce livre est l'assurance que tout 
est dit de bonne ibi. Ce sont les visions d'un es- 
prit sublime, qui, sans aucune ombre d'orgueil, 
ivre de Dieu, croit ne reveler que ce que l'Esprit 
Saint lui inspire." — Memoires de Casanova (Leip- 
sic, 1827), vol. iv. p. 343. A week's confinement 
to this volume produced such an effect on Casa- 
nova, an unbeliever and a debauchee, but who was 
1 hen enfeebled by melancholy, bad air, and bad 
food, that his sleep was haunted, and his waking 
hours disturbed by its horrible visions. Many 
years after, passing through Agrada in Old Cas- 
tile, he charmed the old priest of that village by 
speaking of the biographer of the virgin. The 
priest showed him all the spots which were con- 
secrated by her presence, and bitterly lamented 
that the Court of Rome had refused to canonize 
her. It is the natural reflection of Casanova that 
the book was well qualified to turn a solitary pri- 
soner mad, or to make a man at large an atheist. 
It ought not to be forgotten, that the inquisitors 
of state at Venice, who proscribed this book, were 
probably of the latter persuasion. It is a striking 
instance of the infatuation of those who, in their 
eagerness to rivet the bigotry of the ignorant, use 
means which infallibly tend to spread utter unbe- 
lief among the educated. The book is a disgust- 
ing, but in its general outline seemingly faithful, 
picture of the dissolute manners spread over the 
Continent of Europe in the middle of the eighteenth 
century. 

Note S. page 143. 

" The Treatise on the Law of War and Peace, 
the Essay on Human Understanding, the Spirit 
of Laws, and the Inquiry into the Causes of the 
Wealth of Nations, are the works which have 
most directly influenced the general opinion of 
Europe during the two last centuries. They are 
also the most conspicuous landmarks in the pro- 
gress of the sciences to which they relate. It is 
remarkable that the defects of all these great 
works are very similar. The leading notions of 
none of them can, in the strictest sense, be said to 
be original, though Locke and Smith in that re- 
spect surpass their illustrious rivals. All of them 
employ great care in ascertaining those laws which 
are immediately deduced from experience, or di- 
rectly applicable to practice ; but apply metaphy- 
sical and abstract principles with considerable 
negligence. Not one pursues the order of science, 
beginning with first elements, and advancing to 
more and more complicated conclusions ; though 
Locke is perhaps less defective in method than 
the rest. All admit digressions which, though 
often intrinsically excellent, distract attention and 
break the chain of ihought. Not one of them is 
happy in the choice, or constant in the use, of 
technical terms; and in none do we find much of 
that rigorous precision which is the first beauty 
of philosophical language. Grotius and Montes- 
quieu were imitators of Tacitus, — the first with 
more gravity, the second with more vivacity ; but 
both were tempted to forsake t lie simple diction 
of science, in pursuit of the poignant brevity which 
that great historian has carried to a vicious excess. 
Locke and Smith chose an easy, clear, and free, 
but somewhat loose and verbose style, — more 
concise in Locke, — more elegant in Smith, — in 
both exempt from pedantry, but not void of am- 
biguity and repetition. Perhaps all ihese apparent 
defects contributed in some degree to the specific 
usefulness of these great works ; and, by render- 
ing their contents more accessible and acceptable 
to the majority of readers, have more completely 
blended their principles with the common opinions 
of mankind." — Edinburgh Review, vol. xxxvi. p. 
244 [This is a further extract from the article 
alluded to at p. 192.— Ed.] 



DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



197 



Notes T— U. p. 147. 
As; j" s3t«;, Za-T'p h yp*ju/uzTi:(t> Z /u»Sev vtrijftu 
irrtMVUdt yr)pj.fJLpivir wnif cru/ufi-Mvu st< tgu vsu — 
Aristotle. " De Anima," Opera, (Paris, 1639) 
tome li. p. 50. A little before, in the same treatise, 
appears a great part of the substance of the famous 
maxim, iY/7 egt in inl ellectu quod non prius fail in 
sensu. ''HSi 9*vrx<rU x.w<tu ti; iwu s'var, x.*t cux. 
o.wj aiVfloVtoc yiyno-Qu. — Ibid. p. 47. In the tract 
on Memory and Reminiscence we find his enu- 
meration of the principles of association. A/ii x*i 
to iqt?i; Sufi'vc/ma/, vmtmvti; &7ro rov vvv « awou rtvcc, 
x«; a<p'" ofiolsv h ivcLvricu, ii Tuu truveyyut;. — Ibid. p. SG. 
If the latter word be applied to time as well as 
space, and considered as comprehending causa- 
tion, the enumeration will coincide with that of 
Hume. The term $»pw<*> is as significant as if it 
had been chosen by Hobbes. But it is to be ob- 
served, that these principles are applied only to 
explain memory. 

Something has been said on the subject, and 
something on the present writer, by Mr. Cole- 
ridge, in his unfortunately unfinished work called 
" Biographia Literaria," chap, v., which seems to 
justify, if not to require, a few remarks. That 
learned gentleman seems to have been guilty of 
an oversight in quoting as a distinct work the 
" Parva Naturalia," which is the collective name 
given by the scholastic translators to those trea- 
tises of Aristotle which form the second volume 
of Duval's edition of his works, published at Paris 
in 1639. I have already acknowledged the striking 
resemblance of Mr. Hume's principles of associa- 
tion to those of Aristotle. In answer, however, 
to a remark of Mr. Coleridge, I must add, that 
the manuscript of a part of the Aquinas which I 
bought many years ago (on the faith of a booksel- 
ler's catalogue) as being written by Mr. Hume, 
was not a copy of the Commentary on the ' ' Parva 
Naturalia," but of Aquinas' own " Secunda Se- 
cunda? ;" and that, on examination, it proves not 
to be the handwriting of Mr. Hume, and to con- 
tain nothing written by him. It is certain that, 
in the passages immediately preceding the quota- 
tion, Aristotle explains recollection as depending 
on a general law, — that the idea of an object will 
remind us of the objects which immediately pre- 
ceded or followed when originally perceived. But 
what Mr. Coleridge has not told us is, that the 
Stagyrite confines the application of this law ex- 
clusively to the phenomena of recollection alone, 
without any glimpse of a more general opera- 
tion extending to all connections of thought and 
feeling, — a wonderful proof, indeed, even so limit- 
ed, of the sagacity of the great philosopher, but 
which for many ages continued barren of further 
consequences. The illustrations of Aquinas throw 
light on the original doctrine, and show that it 
was unenlarged in his time. " When we recollect 
Socrates, the thought of Plato occurs 'as like 
him.' When we remember Hector, the thought 
of Achilles occurs 'as contrary.' The idea of a 
father is followed by that of a son ' as near.' " — 
Opera, vol. i. pars ii. p. 62. et seq. Those of Lu- 
dovicus Vives, as quoted by Mr. Coleridge, ex- 
tend no fanher. But if Mr. Coleridge will com- 
pare the parts of Hobbes on Human Nature which 
relate to this subject, with those which explain 
general terms, he will perceive that the philoso- 
pher of Malmesbury builds on these two founda- 
tions a general theory of the human understanding, 
of which reasoning is only a particular case, in 
consequence of the assertion of Mr. Coleridge, 
that Hobbes was anticipated by Descartes in his 
excellent and interesting discourse on Method, I 
have twice reperused the letter's work in quest of 
this remarkable anticipation, though, as I thought, 
well acquainted by my old studies with the wri- 
tings of that great philosopher. My labour has, 



however, been vain : I have discovered no trace 
of that or of any similar speculation. My edition 
is in Latin by Elzevir, at Amsterdam, in 1650, 
the year of Descartes' death. I am obliged, 
therefore, to conjecture, that Mr. Coleridge, hav- 
ing mislaid his references, has, by mistake, quo- 
ted the discourse on Method, instead of another 
work ; which would affect his inference from the 
priority of Descartes to Hobbes. It is not to 
be denied, that the opinion of Aristotle, repeated 
by so many commentators, may have found its 
way into the mind of Hobbes, and also of Hume ; 
though neither might be aware of its source, or 
even conscious that it was not originally his own. 
Yet the very narrow view of Association taken 
by Locke, his apparently treating it as a novelty, 
and the silence of common books respecting it, 
afford a presumption that the Peripatetic doctrine 
was so little known, that it might have escaped 
the notice of these philosophers; — one of whom 
boasted that he was unread, while the other is 
not liable to the suspicion of unacknowledged 
borrowing. 

To Mr. Coleridge, who distrusts his own power 
of building a bridge by which his ideas may pass 
into a mind so differently trained as mine, 1 ven- 
ture to suggest, with that sense of his genius 
which no circumstance has hindered me from 
seizing every fit occasion to manifest, that more 
of my early years were employed in contempla- 
tions of an abstract nature, than of those of the 
majority of his readers, — that there are not, even 
now, many of them less likely to be repelled from 
doctrines by singularity or uncouthness ; or many- 
more willing to allow that every system has caught 
an advantageous glimpse of some side or corner 
of the truth ; or many more desirous of exhibit- 
ing this dispersion of the fragments of wisdom by 
attempts to translate the doctrine of one school 
into the language of another ; or many who when 
they cannot discover a reason for an opinion, con- 
sider it more important to discover the causes of 
its adoption by the philosopher ; — believing, as I 
do, that one of the most arduous and useful offices 
of mental philosophy is to explore the subtile illu- 
sions which enable great minds to satisfy them- 
selves by mere words, before they deceive others 
by payment in the same counterfeit coin. My 
habits, together with the natural influence of my 
age and avocations, lead me to suspect that in 
speculative philosophy I am nearer to indifference 
than to an exclusive spirit. I hope that it can 
neither be thought presumptuous nor offensive in 
me to doubt, whether the circumstance of its being 
found difficult to convey a metaphysical doctrine 
to a person who, at one part of his life, made such 
studies his chief pursuit, may not imply either 
error in the opinion, or defect in the mode of com- 
munication. 

Note V. page 159. 

A very late writer, who seems to speak for Mr. 
Bentham with authority, tells us that " the first 
time the phrase of ' the principle of utility' was 
brought decidedly into notice, was in the ' Essays,' 
by David Hume, published about the year 1742. 
In that work it is ?ne?itioned as the name of a prin- 
ciple which might be made the foundation of a sys- 
tem of morals, in opposition to a system then in 
vogice, ivhich v>as founded on what teas called the 
' moral sense.' The ideas, however, there at- 
tached to it, are vague, and defective in practical 
application."— Westminster Review, vol. xi. p. 
258. If these few sentences were scrutinised 
with the severity and minuteness of Bentham's 
Fragment on Government, they would be found 
to contain almost as many misremembrances as 
assertions. The principle of Utility is not "men- 
tioned," but fully discussed, in Mr. Hume's dis- 
course. It is seldom spoken of by " wame." In- 
r2 



£98 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



stead of charging the statements of it with ' ' vague- 
ness," it would be more just to admire the preci- 
sion which it combines with beauty. Instead of 
being "defective in practical application," per- 
haps the desire of rendering it popular has crowd- 
ed it with examples and illustrations taken from 
life. To the assertion that " it was opposed to the 
moral sense," no reply can be needful but the fol- 
lowing words extracted from the discourse itself: 
"lam apt to suspect that reason and sentiment 
concur in almost all moral determinations and 
conclusions. The final sentence which pronounces 
characters and actions amiablfi or odious, probably 
depends on some internal sense or feeling, which 
.nature has made universal in the whole species." — 
Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, sect. 
i. The phrase " made universal," which is here 
used instead of the more obvious and common 
word " implanted," shows the anxious and perfect 
precision of language, by which a philosopher 
avoids the needless decision of a controversy not 
at the moment before him. 

[Dr. Whewell puts the case against the present 
mis-denomination assumed by the disciples of Mr. 
Bentham thus neatly: — " If the word from which 
Deontology is derived had borrowed its meaning 
from the notion of utility alone, it is not likely that 
it would have become more intelligible by being 
translated out of Latin into Greek. But the term 
' Deontology' expresses moral science (and ex- 
presses it well), precisely because it signifies the 
science of duty, and contains no reference to Utility. 
Mackintosh, who held that to ikv, — what men 
ought to do — was the fundamental notion of mo- 
rality, might very probably have termed the 
science " Deontology." The system of which 
Mr. Bentham is the representative, — that of those 
who make morality dependent on the production 
of happiness, — has long been designated in Ger- 
many by the term ' Etidemonisin,' derived from 
the Greek word for happiness {wSxi/uov)*.). If we 
were to adopt this term we should have to oppose 
the Deontological to the Eudemonist school; and 
we must necessarily place those who hold a pecu- 
liar moral faculty, — Butler, Stewart, Brown, and 



Mackintosh, — in the former, and those who are 
usually called Utilitarian philosophers in the latter 
class." — Preface to this Dissertation. 8vo, Edin- 
burg, 1337. Ed.] 



Note W. page 160. 

A writer of consummate ability, who has failed 
in little but the respect due to the abilities and 
character of his opponents, has given too much 
countenance to the abuse and confusion of lan- 
guage exemplified in the well-known verse of 
Pope, 

Modes of self-love the Passions we may call. 

" We know," says he, "no universal proposition 
respecting human nature which is true but one, — 
that men always act from self-interest." — Edin- 
burgh Review, vol. xlix. p. 185. It is manifest 
from the sequel, that the writer is not the dupe of 
the confusion ; but many of his readers may be so. 
If, indeed, the word ' self-interest' could with pro- 
priety be used for the gratification of every preva- 
lent desire, he has clearly shown that this change 
in the signification of terms would be of no ad- 
vantage to the doctrine which he controverts. It 
would make as many sorts of self-interest as there 
are appetites, and it is irreconcilably at variance 
with the system of association embraced by Mr. 
Mill. To the word ' self-love' Hartley properly 
assigns two significations: — 1. gross self-love, 
which consists in the pursuit of the greatest plea- 
sures, from all those desires which look to indi- 
vidual gratification ; or, 2. refined self-love, which 
seeks the greatest pleasure which can arise from 
all the desires of human nature, — the latter of 
which is an invaluable, though inferior principle. 
The admirable writer whose language has occa- 
sioned this illustration, — who at an early age has 
mastered every species of composition, — will 
doubtless hold fast to simplicity, which survives 
all the fashions of deviation from it, and which a 
man of a genius so fertile has few temptations to 
forsake. 



AN ACCOUNT 



OF 



THE PARTITION OF POLAND; 



Little more than fifty years have passed 
•since Poland occupied a high place among 
the Powers of Europe. Her natural means 
of wealth and force were inferior to those of 
few states of the second order. The surface 
of the country exceeded that of France ; and 
the number of its inhabitants was estimated 
at fourteen millions, — a population probably 
exceeding that of the British Islands, or of 
the Spanish. Peninsula, at that time. The 
climate was nowhere unfriendly to health, 
or unfavourable to labour; the soil was fer- 



.t63. 



From the Edinburgh Review, vol. xxxvii., p. 



tile, the produce redundant : a large portion 
of the country, still uncleared, afforded am- 
ple scope for agricultural enterprise. Great 
rivers afforded easy means of opening an in- 
ternal navigation from the Baltic to the 
Mediterranean. In addition to these natural 
advantages, there were many of those cir- 
cumstances in the history and situation of 
Poland which render a people fond and proud 
of their country, and foster that national 
spirit which is the most effectual instrument 
either of defence or aggrandisement. Till 
the middle of the seventeenth century, she 
had been the predominating power of the 
North. With Hungary, and the maritime 



AN ACCOUNT OF THE PARTITION OF POLAND. 



199 



strength of Venice, she had formed the east- 
ern defence of Christendom against the Turk- 
ish tyrants of Greece ; and, on the north-east, 
she had been long its sole barrier against the 
more obscure barbarians of Muscovy. A 
nation which thus constituted a part of the 
vanguard of civilization, necessarily became 
martial, and gained all the renown in arms 
which could be acquired before war had be- 
come a science. The wars of the Poles, 
irregular, romantic, full of personal adven- 
ture, depending on individual courage and 
peculiar character, proceeding little from the 
policy of Cabinets, but deeply imbued by 
those sentiments of chivalry which may 
pervade a nation, chequered by extraordi- 
nary vicissitudes, and carried on against bar- 
barous enemies in remote and wild provinces, 
were calculated to leave a deep impression 
on the feelings of the people, and to give 
every man the liveliest interest in the glories 
and dangers of his country. Whatever ren- 
ders the members of a community more like 
each other, and unlike their neighbours, 
usually strengthens the bonds of attachment 
between them. The Poles were the only 
representatives of the Sarmatian race in the 
assembly of civilized nations. Their lan- 
guage and their national literature — those 
great sources of sympathy and objects of 
national pride — were cultivated with no small 
success. They contributed, in one instance, 
signally to the progress of science ; and they 
took no ignoble part in those classical studies 
which composed the common literature of 
Europe. They were bound to their country 
by the peculiarities of its institutions and 
usages, — perhaps, also, by those dangerous 
privileges, and by that tumultuary indepen- 
dence which rendered their condition as 
much above that of the slaves of an absolute 
monarchy, as it was below the lot of those 
who inherit the blessings of legal and moral 
freedom. They had once another singu- 
larity, of which they might justly have been 
proud, if they had not abandoned it in times 
which ought to have been more enlightened. 
Soon after the Reformation, they had set the 
first example of that true religious liberty 
which equally admits the members of all 
sects to the privileges, the offices, and dig- 
nities of the commonwealth. For nearly a 
century they had afforded a secure asylum 
to those obnoxious sects of Anabaptists and 
Unitarians, whom all other states excluded 
from toleration ; and the Hebrew nation, 
.proscribed every where else, found a second 
country, with protection for their learned and 
religious establishments, in this hospitable 
and tolerant land. A body, amounting to 
about half a million, professing the equality 
of gentlemen amidst the utmost extremes of 
affluence and poverty, forming at once the 
legislature and the army, or rather constitut- 
ing the commonwealth, were reproached, 
perhaps justly, with the parade, dissipation, 
and levity, which generally characterise the 
masters of slaves : but their faculties were 
roused by ambition ; they felt the dignity of 



conscious independence; and they joined to 
the brilliant valour of their ancestors, an un- 
common proportion of the accomplishments 
and manners of a polished age. Even in the 
days of her decline, Poland had still a part 
allotted to her in the European system. By 
her mere situation, without any activity on 
her own part, she in some measure prevent- 
ed the collision, and preserved the balance, 
of the three greatest military powers of the 
Continent. She constituted an essential mem- 
ber of the federative system of France ; and, 
by her vicinity to Turkey, and influence on 
the commerce of the Baltic, directly affected 
the general interest of Europe. Her pre- 
servation was one of the few parts of conti- 
nental policy in which both France and Eng- 
land were concerned ; and all Governments 
dreaded the aggrandisement of her neigh- 
bours. In these circumstances, it might 
have been thought that the dismemberment 
of the territory of a numerous, brave, an- 
cient, and renowned people, passionately 
devoted to their native land, without colour 
of right or pretext of defence, in a period of 
profound peace, in defiance of the law of 
nations, and of the common interest of all 
states, was an event not much more proba- 
ble, than that it should have been swallowed 
up by a convulsion of nature. Before that 
dismemberment, nations, though exposed to 
the evils of war and the chance of conquest, 
in peace placed some reliance on each other's 
faith. The crime has, however, been tri- 
umphantly consummated. The principle of 
th<^ balance of power has perished in the 
Partition of Poland. 

The succession to the crown of Poland 
appears, in ancient times, to have been go- 
verned by that rude combination of inherit- 
ance and election which originally prevailed 
in most European monarchies, where there 
was a general inclination to respect heredi- 
tary claims, and even the occasional elec- 
tions were confined to the members of the 
reigning family. Had not the male heirs of 
the House of Jagellon been extinct, or had 
the rule of female succession been intro- 
duced, it is probable that the Polish mon- 
archy would have become strictly heredi- 
tary. The inconveniences of the elective 
principle were chiefly felt in the admission 
of powerful foreign princes as candidates for 
the crown : but that form of government 
proved rather injurious to the independence, 
than to the internal peace of the country. 
More than a century, indeed, elapsed before 
the mischief was felt. In spite of the as- 
cendant acquired by Sweden in the affairs 
of the North, Poland still maintained her 
high rank. Her last great exertion, when 
John Sobieski, in 1683, drove the Turks 
from the gates of Vienna, was worthy of her 
ancient character as the guardian of Chris- 
tendom. 

His death, in 1696, first showed that the 
admission of such competition might lead 
to the introduction of foreign influence, and 
even arms. The contest which then oc- 



200 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



curred between the Prince of Conti and Au- 
gustus. Elector of Saxony, had been decided 
in favour of the latter by his own army, and 
by Russian influence, when Charles XII.'. 
before he had reached the age of twenty, 
having already compelled Denmark to sub- 
mit, and defeated a great Russian army, en- 
tered Warsaw in triumph, deposed him as 
an usurper raised to the royal dignity by 
foreign force, and obliged him, by express 
treaty, to renounce his pretensions to the 
crown. Charles was doubtless impelled to 
these measures by the insolence of a youth- 
ful conqueror, and by resentment against the 
Elector ; but he was also influenced by those 
rude conceptions of justice, sometimes de- 
generating into cruelty, which were blended 
with his irregular ambition. He had the 
generosity, however, to spare the territory 
of the republic, and the good sense to pro- 
pose the son of the great Sobieski to fill the 
vacant throne ; — a proposal which, had it 
been successful, might have banished for- 
eign factions, by gradually conferring on a 
Polish family an hereditary claim to the 
crown. But the Saxons, foreseeing such a 
measure, carried away young Sobieski a 
prisoner. Charles then bestowed it on Sta- 
nislaus Leczinski, a Polish gentleman of 
worth and talent, but destitute of the genius 
and boldness which the public dangers re- 
quired, and by the example of a second king 
enthroned by a foreign army, struck another 
blow at the independence of Poland. The 
treaty of Alt-Ranstadt was soon after an- 
nulled by the battle of Pultowa; and- Au- 
gustus, renewing the pretensions which he 
had solemnly renounced, returned triumph- 
antly to Warsaw. The ascendant of the 
Czar was for a moment suspended by the 
treaty of Pruth. in 1711, where the Turks 
compelled Peter to swear that he would 
withdraw his troops from Poland, and never 
to interfere in its internal affairs; but as soon 
as the Porte were engaged in a war with 
Austria, he marched an army into it; and 
the first example of a compromise between 
the King and the Diet, under the mediation 
of a Russian ambassador, and surrounded by 
Russian troops, was exhibited in 1717. 

The death of Augustus, in 1733, had near- 
ly occasioned a general war throughout Eu- 
rope. The interest of Stanislaus, the deposed 
king, was espoused by France, partly per- 
haps because Louis XV. had married his 
daughter, but chiefly because the cause of 
the new Elector of Saxony, who was his 
competitor, was supported by Austria, the 
ally of England, and by Russia, then closely 
connected with Austria. The court of Pe- 
tersburgh then set up the fatal pretext of a 
guarantee of the Polish constitution, found- 
ed on the transactions of 1717. Aguarantee 
of the territories and rights of one indepen- 
dent .state against others, is perfectly com- 
patible with justice: but a guarantee of the 
institutions of a people against themselves, 
is but another name for its dependence on the 
foreign power which enforces it. In pursu- 



ance of this pretence, the country was invad- 
ed by sixty thousand Russians, who ravaged 
with fire and sword every district which 
opposed their progress ; and a handful of 
gentlemen, some of them in chains, whom 
they brought together in a forest near War- 
saw, were compelled to elect Augustus III. 
Henceforward Russia treated Poland as a 
vassal. She indeed disappeared from the 
European system, — was the subject of wars 
and negotiations, but no longer a party en- 
gaged in them. Under Augustus III., she 
was almost as much without government at 
home as without influence abroad, slumber- 
ing for thirty years in a state of pacific anar- 
chy, which is almost without- example in 
history. The Diets were regularly assem- 
bled, conformably to the laws ; but each one 
was dissolved, without adopting a single 
measure of legislation or government. This 
extraordinary suspension of public authority 
arose from the privilege which each nuncio 
possessed, of stopping any public measure, 
by declaring his dissent from it, in the well 
known form of the Liberum Veto. To give a 
satisfactory account of the origin and pro- 
gress of this anomalous privilege, would 
probably require more industrious and criti- 
cal research than were applied to the subject 
when Polish antiquaries and lawyers exist- 
ed.* The absolute negative enjoyed by each 
member seems to have arisen from the prin- 
ciple, that the nuncios were not representa- 
tives, but ministers; that their power was 
limited by the imperative instructions of the 
provinces ; that the constitution was rather 
a confederacy than a commonwealth; and 
that the Diet was not so much a deliberative 
assembly, as a meeting of delegates, whose 
whole duty consisted in declaring the deter- 
mination of their respective constituents. 
Of such a state of things, unanimity seemed 
the natural consequence. But, as the sove- 
reign power was really vested in the gentry, 
they were authorised, by the law, to inter- 
fere in public affairs, in a manner most in- 
convenient and hazardous, though rendered 
in some measure necessary by the unreason- 
able institution of unanimity. This interfer- 
ence was effected by that species of legal 
insurrection called a "confederation," in 
which any number of gentlemen subscribing 
the alliance bound themselves to pursue, by 
force of arms, its avowed object, either of 
defending the country, or preserving the 
laws, or maintaining the privileges of any 
class of citizens. It was equally lawful fon 
another body to associate themselves against' 
the former; and the war between them was 
legitimate. In these confederations, the so- 
vereign power released itself from the re- 
straint of unanimity; and in order to obtain 
that liberty, the Diet sometimes resolved 
itself into a confederation, and lost little by 
being obliged to rely on the zeal of voluntary 



* The information on this subject in Lengnich 
(Jus Publicum Polonise) is vague and unsatisfac- 
tory. 



AN ACCOUNT OF THE PARTITION OF POLAND. 



201 



adherents, rather than on the legal obedience 
of citizens. 

On the death of Augustus III., it pleased 
the Empress Catharine to appoint Stanislaus 
Poniatowski, a discarded lover, to the vacant 
throne, — a man who possessed many of the 
qualities and accomplishments which are 
attractive in private life ; but who, when he 
was exposed to the tests of elevated station 
and public danger, proved to be utterly void 
of all dignity and energy. Several circum- 
stances in the state of Europe enabled her 
to bestow the crown on him without resist- 
ance from foreign powers. France was un- 
willing to expose herself so early to the 
hazard of a new war, and was farther re- 
strained by her recent alliance with Austria; 
and the unexpected death of the Elector of 
Saxony deprived the Courts of Versailles and 
Vienna of the competitor whom they could 
have supported with most hope of success 
against the influence of the Czarina. Fred- 
eric II., abandoned, or (as he himself with 
reason thought) betrayed by England,* found 
himself, at the general peace, without an 
ally, exposed to the deserved resentment of 
Austria, and no longer with any hope of aid 
from France, which had become the friend 
of his natural enemy. In this situation, he 
thought it necessary to court the friendship 
of Catharine, and in the beginning of the 
year 1764, concluded a defensive alliance 
with her, the- stipulations of which with re- 
spect to Poland were, that they were to op- 
pose every attempt either to make that crown 
hereditary or to strengthen the royal power; 
that they were to unite in securing the elec- 
tion of Stanislaus; and that they were to 
protect the Dissidents of the Greek and Pro- 
testant communions, who, since the year 
1717, had been deprived of that equal admis- 
sibility to public office which was bestowed 
on them by the liberality of the ancient laws. 
The first of these stipulations was intended 
to perpetuate the confusions of Poland, and 
to insure her dependence on her neighbours ; 
while the last would afford a specious pre- 
text for constant interference. In a declara- 
tion delivered at Warsaw, Catharine assert- 
ed, (i that she did nothing but in virtue of the 
right of vicinage, acknowledged by all na- 
tions ;"t and, on another occasion, observed, 
(( that justice and humanity were the sole 
rules of her conduct; and that her virtues 
fclone had placed her on the throne :"t while 
Frederic declared, that " he should con- 
stantly labour to defend the states of the 
republic in their integrity ;" and Maria The- 
resa, a sovereign celebrated for piety and 
justice, assured the Polish Government of 

* Memoiresde Frederic II. 1763 — 1775. Intro- 
duction. Frederick charges the new Administra- 
tion of Geo. III., not with breach of treaty in 
making peace without him, but with secretly 
offering to regain Silesia for Maria Theresa, and 
with labouring to embroil Peter III. with Prussia. 

t Rulhiere, Histoire de l'Anarchie de Pologne, 
vol. ii. p. 41. 

t Ibid. p. 151. 

26 



'■'her resolution to maintain the republic in 
all her rights, prerogatives, and possessions." 
Catharine again, when Poland, for the first 
time, acknowledged her title of Empress of 
all the Russias, granted to the republic a 
solemn guarantee of all its possessions!* 

Though abandoned by their allies and dis- 
tracted by divisions, the Poles made a gallant 
stand against the appointment of the dis- 
carded lover of a foreign princess to be their 
King. One part}-, at the head of which was 
the illustrious house of Czartorinski, by sup- 
porting the influence of Russia, and the elec- 
tion of Stanislaus, hoped to obtain the power 
of reforming the constitution, of abolishing the 
veto, and giving due strength to the crown. 
The other, more generous though less en- 
lightened, spurned at foreign interference, 
and made the most vigorous efforts to assert 
independence, but were unhappily averse to 
reforms of the constitution, wedded to ancient 
abuses, and resolutely determined to exclude 
their fellow-citizens of different religions 
from equal privileges. The leaders of the 
latter party were General Branicki, a veteran 
of Roman dignity and intrepidity, and Prince 
Radzivil, a youth of almost regal revenue and 
dignity, who, by a singular combination of 
valour and generosity with violence and 
wildness, exhibited a striking picture of a 
Sarmatian grandee. The events which pass- 
ed in the interregnum, as they are related 
by Rulhiere, form one of the most interest- 
ing parts of modern history. The variety of 
character, the elevation of mind, and the 
vigour of talent exhibited in the fatal strug- 
gle which then began, afford a memorable 
proof of the superiority of the worst aristo- 
cracy over the best administered absolute 
monarchy. The most turbulent aristocracy, 
with all its disorders and insecurity, must 
contain a certain number of men who re- 
spect themselves, and who have some scope 
for the free exercise of genius and virtue. 

In spite of all the efforts of generous pa- 
triotism, the Diet, surrounded by a Russian 
army, were compelled to elect Stanislaus. 
The Princes Czartorinski expected to reign 
under the name of their nephew. They had 
carried through their reforms so dexterously 
as to be almost unobserved; but Catharine 
had too deep an interest in the anarchy of 
Poland not to watch over its preservation. 
She availed herself of the prejudices of the 
party most adverse to her, and obliged the 
Diet toabrogate the reforms. Her ambassa- 
dors were her viceroys. Keyserling. a crafty 
and smooth German jurist, Saldern, a des- 
perate adventurer, banished from Holstein 
for forgery, and Repnin, a haughty and brutal 
Muscovite, were selected, perhaps from the 
variety of their character, to suit the fluctu- 
ating circumstances of the country : but all 
of them spoke in that tone of authority which 
has ever since continued to distinguish Rus- 
sian diplomacy. Prince Czartorinski was 



* Ferrand, Histoire des trois Demembrements 
de la Pologne (Paris, 1820), p. 1. 



202 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



desirous not to be present in the Diet when 
his measures were repealed : but Repnin told 
him, that if he was not, his palaces should 
be burnt, and his estates laid waste. Under- 
standing this system of Muscovite canvass, he 
submitted to the humiliation of proposing to 
abrogate those reformations which he thought 
essential to the existence of the republic. 

In September of the same year, the Rus- 
sian and Prussian ministers presented notes 
in favour of the Dissidents,* and afterwards 
urged the claims of that body more fully to 
the Diet of 1766, when they were seconded 
with honest intentions, though perhaps with 
a doubtful right of interference, by Great 
Britain, Denmark, and Sweden, as parties to, 
or as guarantees of, the Treaty of Oliva, the 
foundation of the political system of the north 
of Europe. The Diet, influenced by the un- 
natural union of an intolerant spirit with a 
generous indignation against foreign interfer- 
ence, rejected all these solicitations, though 
undoubtedly agreeable to the principle of 
the treaty, and though some of them pro- 
ceeded from powers which could not be sus- 
pected of unfriendly intentions. The Dissi- 
dents were unhappily prevailed upon to enter 
into confederations for the recovery of their 
ancient rights, and thus furnished a pretext 
for the armed interference of Russia. Catha- 
rine now affected to espouse the cause of 
the Republicans, who had resisted the elec- 
tion of Stanislaus. A general confederation 
of malcontents was formed under the au- 
spices of Prince Radzivil at Radom, but sur- 
rounded by Russian troops, and subject to 
the orders of the brutal Repnin. This ca- 
pricious barbarian used his power with such 
insolence as soon to provoke general resist- 
ance. He prepared measures for assembling 
.a more subservient Diet by the utmost ex- 
cesses of military violence at the elections, 
and by threats of banishment to Siberia 
held out to every one whose opposition he 
dreaded. 

This Diet, which met on the 4th of Octo- 
ber, 1767, showed at first strong symptoms 
of independence,! but was at length intimi- 
dated ; and Repnin obtained its consent to a 
treaty! stipulating for the equal admission 
of all religious sectaries to civil offices, con- 
taininga reciprocal guarantee u of the integri- 
ty of the territories of both powers in the most 
solemn and sacred manner" confirming the 
constitution of Poland, especially the fatal 
law of unanimity, with a few alterations re- 
cently made by the Diet, and placing this 
" constitution, with the government, liberty, 
and rights of Poland, under the guarantee of 
her Imperial Majesty, who most solemnly 
promises to preserve the republic for ever 
entire." Thus, again, under the pretence 
of enforcing religious liberty, were the dis- 
order and feebleness of Poland perpetuated ; 
*ind by the principle of the foreign guarantee 

* Martens, Recueil de Traites, vol. i. p. 340. 
t Rulhiere, vol. ii. pp. 466. 470. 
t Martens, vol. iv. p. 582. 



was her independence destroyed. Frederick 
II., an accomplice in these crimes, describes 
their immediate effect with the truth and 
coolness of an unconcerned spectator. "So 
many acts of sovereignty,"' says he, "exer- 
cised by a foreign power on the territory of 
the repubfic. at length excited universal in- 
dignation : the offensive measures were not 
softened by the arrogance of Prince Repnin : 
enthusiasm seized the minds of all, and the 
grandees availed themselves of the fanati- 
cism of their followers and serfs, to throw off 
a yoke which had become insupportable." 
In this temper of the nation, the Diet rose on 
the 6th of March following, and with it ex- 
pired the Confederation of Radom, which 
furnished the second example, within five 
years, of a Polish party so blind to experi- 
ence as to become the dupes of Russia. 

Another confederation was immediately 
formed at Bar, in Podolia. for the preserva- 
tion of religion and liberty,* which, in a mo- 
ment, spread over the whole kingdom. The 
Russian officers hesitated for a moment 
whether they could take a part in this intes- 
tine war. Repnin, by pronouncing the word 
"Siberia," compelled those members of the 
Senate who were at Warsaw to claim the 
aid of Russia, notwithstanding the dissent of 
the Czartonnskis and their friends, who pro- 
tested against that inglorious and ruinous 
determination. The war that followed pre- 
sented, on the part of Russia, a series of acts 
of treachery, falsehood, rapacity, and cruelty, 
not unworthy of Caesar Borgia. The resist- 
ance of the Poles, an undisciplined and al- 
most unarmed people, betrayed by their 
King and Senate, in a country without fast- 
nesses or fortifications, and in which the 
enemy had already established themselves 
at every important point, forms one of the 
most glorious, though the most unfortunate, 
of the struggles of mankind for their rights. 
The council of the confederation established 
themselves at Eperies, within the frontier 
of Hungary, with the connivance and secret 
favour of Austria. Some French officers, and 
aid in money from Versailles and Constan- 
tinople, added something to their strength, 
and more to their credit. Repnin enter- 
ed into a negotiation with them, and pro- 
posed an armistice, till he could procure re- 
inforcements. Old Pulaski, the first leader 
of the confederation, objected : — " There is 
no word," said he, "in the Russian language 
for honour." Repnin, as soon as he was re- 
inforced, laughed at the armistice, fell upon 
the confederates, and laid waste the lands of 
all true Poles with fire and sword. The 
Cossacks brought to his house at Warsaw, 
Polish gentlemen tied to the tails of their 
horses, and dragged in this manner along 
the ground. t A Russian colonel, named 
Drewitz, seems to have surpassed all his 
comrades in ferocity. Not content with mas- 
sacring the gentlemen to whom quarter had 



* See their Manifesto, Martens, vol. i. p. 456. 
t Rulhiere, vol. iii. p. 55. 



AN ACCOUNT OF THE PARTITION OF POLAND. 



203 



been given, he inflicted on them the punish- 
ments invented ia Russia for slaves; some- 
times tying them to trees as a mark for his 
soldiers to fire at; sometimes scorching cer- 
tain parts of their skin, so as to represent 
the national dress of Poland ; sometimes dis- 
persing them over the provinces, after he had 
cut off their hands, arms, noses, or ears, as 
living examples of the punishment to be suf- 
fered by those who should love their coun- 
try.* It is remarkable, that this ferocious 
monster, then the hero of the Muscovite 
army, was deficient in the common quality 
of military courage. Peter had not civilized 
the Russians ; that was an undertaking be- 
yond his genius, and inconsistent with his fe- 
rocious character : he had only armed a bar- 
barous people with the arts of civilized war. 
But no valour could have enabled the 
Confederates of Bar to resist the power of 
Russia for four years, if they had not been 
seconded by certain important, changes in 
the political system of Europe, which at first 
raised a powerful diversion in their favour, 
but at length proved the immediate cause 
of the dismemberment of their country. 
These changes may be dated from the al- 
liance of France with Austria in 1756, and 
still more certainly from the peace of 1762. 
On the day on which the Duke de Choiseul 
signed the preliminaries of peace at Fontaine- 
bleau, he entered into a secret convention 
with Spain, by which it was agreed, that the 
war should be renewed against England in 
eight years, — a time which was thought suf- 
ficient to repair the exhausted strength of 
the two Bourbon monarchies.! The hostility 
of the French Minister to England was at 
that time extreme. " If I was master," said 
he, " we should act towards England as Spain 
did to the Moors. If we really adopted that 
system, England would, in thirty years, be 
reduced and destroyed. "J Soon after, how- 
ever, his vigilance was directed to other 
quarters by projects which threatened to 
deprive France of her accustomed and due 
influence in the North and East of Europe. 
He was incensed with Catharine for not re- 
suming the alliance with Austria, and the 
war which had been abruptly suspended by 
the caprice of her unfortunate husband. 
, She. on the other hand, soon after she was 
seated on the throne, had formed one of 
those vast and apparently chimerical plans 
to which absolute power and immense terri- 
tory have familiarised the minds of Russian 
sovereigns. She laboured to counteract the 
influence of France, which she considered 
as the chief obstacle to her ambition, on all 
the frontiers of her empire, in Sweden, Po- 



* Rulhiere, vol. iii. p. 124. 

t Ferrand, vol. i. p. 76. The failure of this 
perfidious project is to be ascribed to the decline 
of Choiseul's influence. The affair of the Falk- 
land Islands was a fragment of the design. 

t Despatch from M. de Choiseul to M. D'Os- 
sun at Madrid, 5th April. Flassan. Histoire de 
la Diplomatic Franchise, vol. vi. p. 466. About 
thirty years afterwards, the French monarchy 
was destroyed ! 



land, and Turkey, by the formation of a 
great alliance of the North, to consist of 
England, Prussia, Sweden. Denmark, and 
Poland, — Russia being of course the head 
of the league.* Choiseul exerted himself in 
every quarter to defeat this project, or rather 
to be revenged on Catharine for attempts 
which were already defeated by their own 
extravagance. In Sweden his plan for reduc- 
ing the Russian influence was successfully 
resisted; but the revolution accomplished 
by Gustavua III. in 1772, re-established the 
French ascendant in that kingdom. The 
Count de Vergennes, ambassador at Con- 
stantinople, opened the eyes of the Sultan to 
the ambitious projects of Catharine in Swe- 
den, in Poland, and in the Crimea, and held 
out the strongest assurances of powerful aid, 
which, had Choiseul remained in power, 
would probably have been carried into ef- 
fect. By all these means, Vergennes per- 
suaded the Porte to declare war against 
Russia on the 30lh of October, 1768. t 

The Confederates of Bar, who had esta- 
blished themselves in the neighbourhood of 
the Turkish, as well as of the Austrian pro- 
vinces, now received open assistance from 
the Turks. The Russian arms were fully 
occupied in the Turkish war; a Russian fleet 
entered the Mediterranean ; and the agents 
of the Court of St. Petersburgh excited a 
revolt among the Greeks, whom they after- 
wards treacherously and cruelly abandoned 
to the vengeance of their Turkish tyrants. 
These events suspended the fate of Poland. 
French officers of distinguished merit and 
gallantry guided the valour of the undis- 
ciplined Confederates: Austria seemed to 
countenance, if not openly to support them. 
Supplies and reinforcements from France 
passed openly through Vienna into Poland ; 
and Maria Theresa herself publicly declared, 
that there was no principle or honour in that 
country, but among the Confederates. But 
the Turkish war. which had raised up an 
important ally for the struggling Poles, was 
in the end destined to be the cause of their 
destruction. 

The course of events had brought the Rus- 
sian armies into the neighbourhood of the 
Austrian dominions, and began to fill the 
Court of Vienna with apprehensions for the 
security of Hungary. Frederic had no desire 
that his ally should become stronger; while 
both the great powers of Germany were 
averse to the extension of the Russian terri- 
tories at the expense of Turkey. Frederic 
was restrained from opposing it forcibly by 
his treaty with Catharine, who continued to 
be his sole ally ; but Kaunitz, who ruled the 
councils at Vienna, still adhered to the French 
alliance, seconding the French negotiations 



* Rulhiere, vol. ii. p. 310. Ferrand, vol. i. p. 75. 

t Flassan, vol. iii. p. 83. Vergennes was im- 
mediately recalled, notwithstanding this success, 
for having lowered (deconsidere) himself by mar- 
rying the daughter of a physician. He brought 
back with him the three millions which had been 
remitted to him to bribe the Divan. Catharine 
called him " 3Iustapha's Prompter" 



204 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



at Constantinople. Even so late as the month 
of July, 1771, he entered into a secret treaty 
with Turkey, by which Austria bound her- 
self to recover from Russia, by negotiation 
or by force, all the conquests made by the 
latter from the Porte. But there is reason 
to think that Kaunitz, distrusting the power 
and the inclination of France under the fee- 
ble government of Louis XV., and still less 
disposed to rely on the councils of Versailles 
after the downfal of Choiseul in December, 
1770, though he did not wish to dissolve the 
alliance, was desirous of loosening its ties, 
and became gradually disposed to adopt any 
expedient against the danger of Russian ag- 
grandisement, which might relieve him from 
the necessity of engaging in a war, in which 
his chief confidence must necessarily have 
rested on so weak a stay as the French Go- 
vernment. Maria Theresa still entertained 
a rooted aversion for Frederic, wdiom she 
never forgave for robbing her of Silesia; 
and openly professed her abhorrence of the 
vices and crimes of Catharine, whom she 
never spoke of but in a tone of disgust, as 
"that woman." Her son Joseph, however, 
affected to admire, and, as far as he had 
power, to imitate the King of Prussia; and 
in spite of his mother's repugnance, found 
means to begin a personal intercourse with 
him. Their first interview occurred at Neiss, 
in Silesia, in August. 1769, where they en- 
tered into a secret engagement to prevent 
the Russians from retaining Moldavia and 
Wallachia. In September, 1770, a second 
took place at Neustadt in Moravia, where 
the principal subject seems also to have 
been the means of staying the progress of 
Russian conquest, and where despatches 
were received from Constantinople, desiring 
the mediation of both Courts in the nego- 
tiations for peace.* But these interviews, 
though lessening mutual jealousies, do not 
appear to have directly influenced their sys- 
tem respecting Poland. f The mediation, 
however, then solicited, ultimately gave rise 
to that fatal proposition. 

* Memoires de Frederic II. 

tit was at one lime believed, that the project 
of Partiiion was first suggested to Joseph by 
Frederic at Neustadt, if not at Neiss. Goertz's 
papers (Memoires et Actes Authentiques relatifs 
aux Negotiations qui out precedees le Parlage de 
la Pologne, Weimar, 1810) demonstrate the con- 
trary. These papers are supported by Viomenil 
(Lettres), by the testimony of Prince Henry, 
by Rullnere, and by the narrative of Frederic. 
Dohm (Denkwiirdigkeiten meiner Zeit) and 
Schoell (Histoire Abregee des Traites des Paix) 
have also shown the impossibility of this supposi- 
tion. Mr. Coxe (History of the House of Austria, 
vol. iii. p. 499) has indeed adopted it, and endea- 
vours to support it by the declarations of Hertz- 
berg to himself: but when he examines the 
above authorities, the greater part of which have 
appeared since his work, he will probably be 
satisfied that he must have misunderstood the 
Prussian minister ; and he may perhaps follow 
the example of the excellent abbreviator Koch, 
who, in the last edition of his useful work, has 
altered that part of his narrative which ascribed 
the first plan of partition to Frederic. 



Frederic had proposed a plan for the paci- 
fication of Poland, on condition of reasonable 
terms being made with the Confederates, 
and of the Dissidents being induced to mo- 
derate their demands. Austria had assented 
to this plan, and was willing that Russia 
should make an honourable peace, but insist- 
ed on the restitution of Moldavia and Walla- 
chia, and declared, that if her mediation were 
slighted, she must at length yield to the 
instances of France, and take an active part 
for Poland and Turkey. These declarations 
Frederic communicated to the Court of Pe- 
tersburgh ;* and they alone seem sufficient 
to demonstrate that no plan of partition was 
then contemplated by that monarch. To 
these communications Catharine answ-eiKd, 
in a confidential letter to the King, by a plan 
of peace, in which she insisted on the inde- 
pendence of the Crimea, the acquisition of 
a Greek island, and of a pretended indepen- 
dence for Moldavia and Wallachia, which 
should make her the mistress of these pro- 
vinces. She spoke of Austria with great 
distrust and alienation ; but, on the other 
hand, intimated her readiness to enter into a 
closer intimacy with that Court, if it were 
possible to disengage her from her present 
absurd system, and to make her enter into 
their views; by which means Germany 
would be restored to its natural state, and 
the House of Austria would be diverted, by 
other prospects, from those views on his 
Majesty's possessions, which her present con- 
nections kept up.t This correspondence con- 
tinued during January and February, 1771 ; 
Frederic objecting, in very friendly language, 
to the Russian demands, and Catharine ad- 
hering to them.t In January, Panin notified 
to the Court of Vienna his mistress' accept- 
ance of the good offices of Austria towards 
the pacification, though she declined a for- 
mal mediation. This despatch is chiefly 
remarkable for a declaration, § "that the Em- 
press had adopted, as an invariable maxim, 
never to desire any aggrandisement of her 
states." When the Empress communicated 
her plan of peace to Kaunilz in May, that 
minister declared that his Court could not 
propose conditions of peace, which must be 
attended with ruin to the Porte, and with 
great danger to the Austrian monarchy. 

In the summer of the year 1770, Maria 
Theresa had caused her troops to take pos- 
session of the county of Zipps, a district an- 
ciently appertaining to Hungary, but which 
had been enjoyed by Poland for about three 
hundred and sixty years, under a mortgage 
made by Sigismond, king of Hungary, on the 
strange condition that if it was not redeemed 
by a fixed time, it could only be so by pay- 
ment of as many times the original sum as 
there had years elapsed since the appointed 



* Frederic to Count Solms, his Minister at Pe- 
tersburgh, 12th Sept. and 13th Oct. 1770. Goertz, 
pp. 100—105. 

t Ibid. pp. 107. 128. The French alliance ia 
evidently meant. 

X Ibid. pp. 129—146. § Ibid. p. 9. 



AN ACCOUNT OF THE PARTITION OF POLAND. 



205 



term. So unceremonious an adjudication to 
herself of this territory, in defiance of such 
an ancient possession, naturally produced a 
remonstrance even from the timid Stanis- 
laus, which, however, she coolly overruled. 
In the critical state of Poland, it was impos- 
sible that such a measure should not excite 
observation; and an occasion soon occurred, 
when it seems to have contributed to pro- 
duce the most important effects. 

Frederic, embarrassed and alarmed by the 
difficulties of the pacification, resolved to 
send his brother Henry to Petersburgh. with 
no other instructions than to employ all his 
talents and address in bringing Catharine to 
such a temper as might preserve Prussia 
from a new war. Henry arrived in that 
capital on the 9th December; and it seems 
now to be certain, that the first open pro- 
posal of a dismemberment of Poland arose 
in his conversations with the Empress, 
and appeared to be suggested by the diffi- 
culty of making peace on such terms as 
would be adequate to the successes of Rus- 
sia, without endangering the safety of her 
neighbours.* It would be difficult to guess 
who first spoke out in a conversation about 
such a matter between two persons of great 
adroitness, and who were, doubtless, both 
equally anxious to throw the blame on each 
other. Unscrupulous as both were, they 
were not so utterly shameless that each party 
would not use the utmost address to bring 
the dishonest plan out of the mouth of the 
other. A look, a smile, a hint, or a question 
were sufficiently intelligible. The best ac- 
counts agree, that in speaking of the entrance 
of the Austrian troops into Poland, and of a 
report that they had occupied the fortress of 
Czentokow, Catharine smiling, and casting 
down her eyes, said to Henry, " It seems 
that in Poland you have only to stoop and 
take;" that he seized on the expression ; and 
that she then, resuming an air of indiffer- 
ence, turned the conversation to other sub- 
jects. At another time, speaking of the sub- 
sidy which Frederic paid to her by treaty, 
she said, " I fear he will be weary of this 
burden, and will leave me. I wish I could 
secure him by some equivalent advantage." 
"Nothing," replied Henry, "will be more 
easy. You have only to give him some ter- 
ritory to which he has pretensions, and which 
will facilitate the communication between 
his dominions." Catharine, without appear- 
ing to understand a remark, the meaning of 
which could not be mistaken, adroitly re- 
joined, " that she would willingly consent, if 
the balance of Europe was not disturbed ; 
and that she wishecl for nothing. "f In a 
conversation with Baron Saldern on the terms 
of peace, Henry suggested that a plan must 
be contrived which would detach Austria 
from Turkey, and by which the three powers 
would gain. "Very well," replied the for- 
mer, " provided that it is not at the expense 



* Rulhiere, vol. iv. p. 209. 
t Ferrand, vol. i. p. 140. 



of Poland ;" — "as if," said Henry afterwards, 
when he told the story, " there were any 
other country about which such plans could 
be formed." Catharine, in one of the con- 
ferences in which she said to the Prince, "I 
will frighten Turkey and flatter England ; it 
is your business to gain Austria, that she 
may lull France- to sleep," became so eager, 
that she dipped her finger into ink, and drew 
with it the lines of partition on a map of Po- 
land which lay before them. "The Em- 
press," says Frederic, " indignant that any 
other troops than her own should give law to 
Poland, said to Prince Henry, that if the 
Court of Vienna wished to dismember Po- 
land, the other neighbours had a right to do 
as much."* Henry said that there were no 
other means of preventing a general war; — 
" Pour prevenir ce malheur il n l y a qu'un 
moye7i, — de mettre trots tetes dans un bonnet ; 
et cela ne pent pas se faire qu J aux depens d'un 
quart." It is hard to settle the order and 
time of these fragments of conversation, 
which, in a more or less imperfect state, have 
found their way to the public. The proba- 
bility seems to be, that Henry, who was not 
inferior in address, and who represented the 
weaker party, would avoid the first proposal 
in a case where, if it was rejected, the at- 
tempt might prove fatal to the objects of his 
mission. However that may be, it cannot 
be doubted that before he left Petersburg on 
the 30th of January, 1771, Catharine and he 
had agreed on the general outline to be pro- 
posed to his brother. 

On his return to Berlin, he accordingly dis- 
closed it to the King, who received it at first 
with displeasure, and even with indignation, 
as either an extravagant chimera, or a snare 
held out to him by his artful and dangerous 
ally. For twenty-four hours this anger lasted. 
It is natural to believe that a ray of con- 
science shot across so great a mind, during 
one honest day ; or. if then too deeply tainted 
by habitual king-craft for sentiments worthy 
of his native superiority, that he shrunk for 
a moment from disgrace, and felt a transient, 
but bitter, foretaste of the lasting execration 
of mankind. On the next day, however, he 
embraced his brother, as if inspired, and de- 
clared that he was a second time the saviour 
of the monarchy. t He Mas still, however, 
not without apprehensions from the incon- 
stant councils of a despotic government, in- 
fluenced by so many various sorts of favour- 
ites, as that of Russia. Orlow, who still held 
the office of Catharine's lover, was desirous 
of continuing the war. Panin desired peace, 
but opposed the Partition, which he probably 



* Memoires. This account is very much con- 
firmed by the well-informed writer who has pre- 
fixed his Recollections to the Letters of Viomenii, 
who probably was General Grimouard. His ac- 
count is from Prince Henry, who told it to him at 
Paris in 1788, calling the news of the Austrian 
proceedings in Poland, and Catharine's observa- 
tions on it, a fortunate accident, which suggested 
the plan of partition. 

t Ferrand, vol. i. p. 149. 



206 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



considered as the division of a Russian pro- 
vince. But the great body of lovers and 
courtiers who had been enriched by grants 
of forfeited estates in Poland, were favoura- 
ble to a project which would secure their for- 
mer booty, and, by exciting civil war, lead 
to new and richer forfeitures. The Czernit- 
cheffs were supposed not to confine their 
hopes to confiscation, but to aspire to a prin- 
cipality to be formed out of the ruins of the 
republic. It appears that Frederic, in his 
correspondence with Catharine, urged, per- 
haps sincerely, his apprehension of general 
censure: her reply was, — "I take all the 
blame upon myself."* 

The consent of the Court of Vienna, how- 
ever, was still to be obtained ; where the 
most formidable and insuperable obstacles 
were still to be expected in the French alli- 
ance, in resentment towards Prussia, and in 
the conscientious character of Maria Theresa. 
Prince Henry, on the day of his return to 
Berlin, in a conversation with Van Swieten 
the Austrian minister, assured him, on the 
part of Catharine, "that if Austria would fa- 
vour her negotiations with Turkey, she would 
consent to a considerable augmentation of 
the Austrian territory." On Van Swieten 
asking " where ?" Henry replied. "You know 
as well as I do what your Court might take, 
and what it is in the power of Russia and 
Prussia to cede to her." The cautious min- 
ister was silent ; but it was impossible that 
he should either have mistaken the meaning 
of Henry, or have failed to impart such a de- 
claration to his Court. t As soon as the Court 
of Petersburgh had vanquished the scruples 
or fears of Frederic, they required that he 
should sound that of Vienna, which he im- 
mediately did through Van Swieten. j The 
state of parties there was such, that Kaunitz 
thought it necessary to give an ambiguous 
answer. That celebrated coxcomb, who had 
grown old in the ceremonial of courts and 
the intrigues of cabinets, and of whom we 
are told that the death of his dearest friend 
never shortened his toilet nor retarded his 
dinner, still felt some regard to the treaty 
with France, which was his own work ; and 
was divided between his habitual submis- 
sion to the Empress Queen and the court 
which he paid to the young Emperor. It 
was a difficult task to minister to the ambi- 
tion of Joseph, without alarming the con- 
science of Maria Theresa. That Princess 
had, since the death of her husband, " passed 
several hours of every day in a funeral apart- 

* This fact was communicated by Sabatier, the 
French resident at Petersburgh, to his Court in a 
despatch of the 11th February, 1774. (Ferrand, 
vol. i. p. 152.) It transpired at that time, on occa- 
sion of an angry correspondence between the two 
Sovereigns, in which the King reproached the 
Empress with having desired the Partition, and 
quoted the letter in which she had offered to take 
on herself the whole blame. • 

t Ferrand, vol. i. p. 149. 

t Memoires de Frederic TI. The King does 
not give the dates of this communication. It pro- 
bably was in April. 1771. 



ment, adorned by crucifixes and death's 
heads, and by a portrait of the late Empe- 
ror, painted when he had breathed his last, 
and by a picture of herself, as it was sup- 
posed she would appear, when the paleness 
and cold of death should take from her coun- 
tenance the remains of that beauty which 
made her one of the finest women of her 
age."* Had it been possible, in any case, to 
rely on the influence of the conscience of a 
sovereign over measures of slate, it might 
be supposed that a princess, occupied in the 
practice of religious austerities, and in the 
exercise of domestic affections, advanced 
in years, loving peace, beloved by her sub- 
jects, respected in other countries, professing 
remorse for the bloodshed which her wars 
had occasioned, and with her children about 
to ascend the greatest thrones of Europe, 
would not have tarnished her name by co- 
operating with one monarch whom she de- 
tested, and another whom she scorned and 
disdained, in the most faithless and shame- 
less measures which had ever dishonoured 
the Christian world. Unhappily, she was des- 
tined to be a signal example of the insecu- 
rity of such a reliance. But she could not 
instantly yield ; and Kaunitz was obliged to 
temporize. On the one hand, he sent Prince 
Lobkowitz on an embassy to Petersburgh, 
where no minister of rank had of late repre- 
sented Austria' while, on the other, he con- 
tinued his negotiation for a defensive alliance 
with Turkey. After having first duly noti- 
fied to Frederic that his Court disapproved 
the impracticable projects of Partition, and 
was ready to withdraw their troops from the 
district which they had occupied in virtue of 
an ancient claim,! he soon after proposed 
neutrality to him, in the event of a war be- 
tween Austria and Russia. Frederic an- 
swered, that he was bound by treaty to sup- 
port Russia : but intimated that Russia might 
probably recede from her demand of Molda- 
via and Wallachia. Both parts of the an- 
swer seemed to have produced the expected 
effect on Kaunitz, who now saw his country 
placed between a formidable war and a profit- 
able peace. Even then, probably, if he could 
have hoped for effectual aid from France, he 
might have chosen the road of honour. But 
the fall of the Due de Choiseul, and the pu- 
sillanimous rather than pacific policy of his 
successors, destroyed all hope of French suc- 
cour, and disposed Kaunitz to receive more 
favourably the advances of the Courts of Ber- 
lin and Petersburgh. He seems to have em- 
ployed the time, from June to October, in 
surmounting the repugnance of his Court to 
the new system. 

The first certain evidence of a favourable 
disposition at Vienna towards the plan of the 



* Rulhiere, vol. iv. p. 167. 

t The want of dates in the King of Prussia's 
narrative is the more unfortunate, because the 
Count de Goertz has not published the papers re- 
lating to the negotiations between Austria and 
Prussia, — an omission which must be owned to 
be somewhat suspicious. 



AN ACCOUNT OF THE PARTITION OF POLAND. 



207 



two Powers, is in a despatch of Prince Galit- 
zin at Vienna to Count Panin, on the 25lhof 
October,* in which he gives an account of a 
conversation with Kaunitz on the day before. 
The manner of the Austrian minister was 
more gracious and cordial than formerly ; 
and, after the usual discussions about the 
difficulties of the terms of peace, Galitzin at 
last asked him — '-'What equivalent do you 
propose for all that you refuse to allow us .' 
It seems to me that there can be none/' 
Kaunitz, suddenly assuming an air of cheer- 
fulness, pressed his hand, and said {: Sir, 
since you point out the road, I will tell you, 
— but in such strict confidence, that it must 
be kept a profound secret at your Court : for 
if it were to transpire and be known even 
to the ally and friend of Russia, my Court 
would solemnly retract and disavow this 
communication.' 1 He then proposed a mo- 
derate plan of peace, but added, that the 
Court of Vienna could not use its good offices 
to cause it to be adopted, unless the Court 
of Petersburgh would give the most positive 
assurances that she would not subject Poland 
to dismemberment for her own advantage, 
or for that of any other ; provided always, 
that their Imperial Majesties were to retain 
the county of Zipps, but to evacuate every 
other part of the Polish territory which the 
Austrian troops might have occupied. Galit- 
zin observed, that the occupation of Zipps 
had much the air of a dismemberment. This 
Kaunitz denied; but said, that his Court 
would co-operate with Russia in forcing the 
Poles to put an end to their dissensions. The 
former observed, that the plan of pacification 
showed the perfect disinterestedness of her 
Imperial Majesty towards Poland, and that 
no idea of dismemberment had ever entered 
into her mind, or into that of her ministers. 
"I am happy," said Kaunitz, "to hear you 
say so." Pan in, in his answer, on the 16th 
of December,! to Galitzin, seems to have 
perfectly well understood the extraordinary 
artifice of the Austrian minister. " The 
Court of Vienna," says he, li claims the thir- 
teen towns, and disclaims dismemberment : 
but there is no state which does not keep 
claims open against its neighbours, and the 
right to enforce them when there is an op- 
portunity ; and there is none which does not 
feel the necessity of the balance of power to 
secure the possession of each. To be sincere, 
we must not conceal that Russia is also in a 
condition to produce well-grounded claims 
against Poland, and that we can with con- 
fidence say the same of our ally the King 
of Prussia ; and if the Court of Vienna finds 
it expedient to enter into measures with us 
and our ally to compare and arrange our 
claims, we are ready to agree." The fears 
of Kaunitz for the union of France and Eng- 
land were unhappily needless. These great 
Powers, alike deserters of the rights of na- 
tions, and betrayers of the liberties of Europe, 



* Goertz, p. 75. 



t Ibid.p. 153. 



saw the crime consummated without stretch- 
ing forth an arm to prevent it. 

In the midst of the conspiracy, a magnifi- 
cent embassy from Fiance arrived at Vienna 
early in January, 1772.* At the head of it 
was the Prince de Rohan, then appointed to 
grace the embassy by his high birth; while 
the business continued to be in the hands of 
M. Durand, a diplomatist of experience and 
ability. Contrary to all reasonable expecta- 
tion, the young prince discovered the secret 
which had escaped the sagacity of the vete- 
ran minister. Durand. completely duped by 
Kaunitz, warned Rohan to hint no suspicions 
of Austria in his despatches to Versailles. 
About the end of February. Rohan received 
information of the treachery of the Austrian 
court so secretly,! that he was almost obliged 
to represent it as a discovery made by his 
own penetration. He complained to Kaunitz, 
that no assistance was given to the Polish 
confederates, who had at that moment bril- 
liantly distinguished themselves by the 
capture of the Castle of Cracow. Kaunitz 
assured him, that i( the Empress Queen 
never would suffer the balance of power to 
be disturbed by a dismemberment which 
would give too much preponderance to neigh- 
bouring and rival Courts." The ambassador 
suspected the intentions that lurked beneath 
this equivocal and perfidious answer, and 
communicated them to his Court, in a des- 
patch on the 2d of March, giving an account 
of the conference. But the Due dAiguillon, 
either deceived, or unwilling to appear so, 
rebuked the Prince for his officiousness, ob- 
serving, that " the ambassador's conjectures 
being incompatible with the positive assur- 
ances of the Court of Vienna, constantly 
repeated by Count Mercy, the ambassador 
at Paris, and with the promises recently 
made to M. Durand, the thread which could 
only deceive must be quitted." In a private 
letter to M. d'Aiguillon, to be shown only to 
the King, referring to a private audience 
with the Empress, he says : — " I have indeed 
seen Maria Theresa weep over the misfor- 
tunes of oppressed Poland ; but that Princess, 
practised in the art of concealing her designs, 
has tears at command. With one hand she 
lifts her handkerchief to her eyes to wipe 
away tears ; with the other she wields the 
sword for the Partition of Poland."! 



* Memoires de l'Abbe Georgel, vol. i. p. 219. 

t The Abbe Georgel ascribes the detection to 
his master the ambassador; but it is more pro- 
bably ascribed by M. Shoell (Histoire de Traites, 
vol. xiv. p 76,) to a young native of Strasburg, 
named Barth, the second secretary of the French 
Legation, who, by his knowledge of German, and 
intimacy with, persons in inferior office, detected 
the project, but required the ambassador to con- 
ceal it even from Georgel. Schoell quotes a 
passage of a letter from Barth to a friend at Stras- 
burg, which puts his early knowledge of it beyond 
dispute. 

t Georgel, vol. i. p. 264. The letter produced 
some remarkable effects. Madame du Barri got 
possession of it, and read the above passage aloud 
at one of her supper parties. An enemy of Rohan, 



208 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



In February and March, 1772, the three 
Powers exchanged declarations, binding 
themselves to adhere to the principle of 
equality in the Partition. In August follow- 
ing, the treaties of dismemberment were 
executed at Pelersburgh; and in September, 
the demands and determinations of the com- 
bined Courts were made known at Warsaw. 
It is needless to characterize papers which 
have been universally regarded as carried to 
the extremity of human injustice and effront- 
ery. An undisputed possession of centu- 
ries, a succession of treaties, to which all 
the European states were either parties 
or guarantees, — nay, the recent, solemn, and 
repeated engagements of the three Govern- 
ments themselves, were considered as form- 
ing no title of dominion. In answer, the 
Empress Queen and the King of Prussia 
appealed to some pretensions of their pre- 
decessors in the thirteenth century : the 
Empress of Russia alleged only the evils 
suffered by neighbouring states from the 
anarchy of Poland.* The remonstrances 
of the Polish Government, and their appeals, 
to all those states who were bound to protect 
them as guarantees of the Treaty of Olivia, 
were equally vain. When the Austrian am- 
bassador announced the Partition at Ver- 
sailles, the old King said, (( If the other man 
(Choiseul) had been here, this would not 
have happened."! But in truth, both France 
and Great Britain had, at that time, lost all 



who was present, immediately told the Dauphiness 
of this attack on her mother. The young Princess 
was naturally incensed at such language, espe- 
cially as she had been given to understand that the 
letter was written to Madame du Barri. She 
became the irreconcilable enemy of the Prince, 
afterwards Cardinal de Rohan, who, in hopes of 
conquering her hostility, engaged in the strange 
adventure of the Diamond Necklace, one of the 
secondary agents in promoting the French Revo- 
lution, and not the least considerable source of 
the popular prejudices against the Queen. 

* Martens, vol. i. p. 461. 

t It has been said that Austria did not accede to 
the Partition till France had refused to co-operate 
against it. Of this M. de Segur tells us, that he 
was assured by Kaunitz, Cobentzel, and Vergen- 
nes. The only circumstance which approaches to 
a confirmation of his statement is, that there are 
traces in Ferrand of secret intimations conveyed 
by D'Aiguillon to Frederic, that there was no 
likelihood of France proceeding to extremities in 
favour of Poland. This clandestine treachery is, 
however, very different from a public refusal. It 
has, on the other hand, been stated (Coxe, vol. ii. 
p. 516-) that the Due d'Aiguillon proposed to 
Lord Rochfort, that an English or French fleet 
should be sent to the Baltic to prevent the dis- 
memberment. But such a proposal, if it occurred 
at all, must have related to transactions long an- 
tecedent to the Partition, and to the administration 
of D'Aiguillon, for Lord Rochfort was recalled 
from the French embassy in 1768, to be made 
Secretary of Stale, on the resignation of Lord 
Shelburne. Neither can the application have 
been to him as Secretary of State ; for France 
was not in his department. It is to be regretted 
thai Mr. Coxe should, in the same place, have 
quoted a writer so discredited as the Abbe Soulavie 
(Memoires de Louis XVI.), from whom he quotes 
a memorial, without doubt altogether imaginary, 
of D'Aiguillon to Louis XV. 



influence in the affairs of Europe : — France, 
from the imbecility of her Government, and 
partly, in the case of Poland, from reliance 
on the Court of "Vienna; Great Britain, in 
consequence of her own treachery to Ptus- 
sia, but in a still greater degree from the 
unpopularity of her Government at home, 
and the approaches of a revolt in the noblest 
part of her colonies. Had there been a 
spark of spirit, or a ray of wise policy in the 
councils of England and Fiance, they would 
have been immediately followed by all the 
secondary powers whose very existence de- 
pended on the general reverence for justice. 

The Poles made a gallant stand. The Go- 
vernment was compelled to call a Diet; and 
the three Powers insisted on its unanimity 
in the most trivial act. In spite, however, 
of every species of corruption and violence, 
the Diet, surrounded as it was by foreign 
bayonets, gave powers to deputies to negoti- 
ate with the three Powers, by a majority of 
only one; and it was not till September, 
1773, that it was compelled to cede, by a 
pretended treaty, some of her finest provin- 
ces, with nearly five millions of her popula- 
tion. The conspirators were resolved to de- 
prive the remains of the Polish nation of all 
hope of re-establishing a vigorous govern- 
ment, or attaining domestic tranquillity; 
and the Liberum Veto, the elective monar- 
chy, and all the other institutions which 
tended to perpetuate disorder, were again 
imposed. 

Maria Theresa had the merit of confessing 
her fault. On the 19th of February, 1775, 
when M. de Breteuil, the ambassador of 
Louis XVI., had his first audience, after some 
embarrassed remarks on the subject of Po- 
land, she at length exclaimed, in a tone of 
sorrow, " I know. Sir. that I have brought a 
deep stain on my reign, by what has been 
done in Poland ; but I am sure that I should 
be forgiven, if it could be known what re- 
pugnance I had to it, and how many circum- 
stances combined against my principles."* 
The guilt of the three parties to the Partition 
was very unequal. Frederic, the weakest, 
had most to apprehend, both from a rupture 
with his ally, and from the accidents of a 
general war ; while, on the other hand, some 
enlargement seemed requisite to the defence 
of his dominions. The House of Austria en- 
tered late and reluctantly into the conspira- 
cy, which she probably might have escaped, 
if France had been under a more vigorous 
Government. Catharine was the great crimi- 
nal. She had for eight years oppressed, be- 
trayed, and ravaged Poland, — had imposed 
on her King, — had prevented all reformation 
of the government, — had fomented divisions 
among the nobility, — in a word, had created 
and maintained that anarchy, which she at 
length used as a pretence for the dismem- 
berment. Her vast empire needed no acces- 
sion of territory for defence, or, it might 
have been hoped, even for ambition. Yet, 
by her insatiable avidity, was occasioned the 



* Flassan. vol. vii. p. 125. 



AN ACCOUNT OF THE PARTITION OF POLAND. 



209 



pretended necessity for the Partition. To 
prevent her from acquiring the Crimea, Mol- 
davia, and Wallachia, the Courts of Vienna 
and Berlin agreed to allow her to commit an 
equivalent robbery on Poland. Whoever 
first proposed it, Catharine was the real cause 
and author of the whole monstrous transac- 
tion ; and, should any historian, — dazzled by 
the splendour of her reign, or more excusa- 
bly seduced by her genius, her love of letters, 
her efforts in legislation, and her real servi- 
ces to her subjects, — labour to palliate this 
great offence, he will only share her infamy 
in the vain attempt to extenuate her guilt. 

The defects of the Polish government pro- 
bably contributed to the loss of independ- 
ence most directly by their influence on the 
military system. The body of the gentry 
retaining the power of the sword, as well as 
the authority of the state in their own hands, 
were too jealous of the Crown to strengthen 
the regular army; though even that body 
was more in the power of the great officers 
named by the Diet, than in that of the King. 
They continued to serve on horseback as in 
ancient times, and to regard the Pospolite, or 
general armament of the gentry, as the im- 
penetrable bulwark of the commonwealth. 
Nor, indeed, unless they had armed their 
slaves, would it have been possible to have 
established a formidable native infantry. 
Their armed force was adequate to the short 
irruptions or sudden enterprises of ancient 
war; but a body of noble cavalry was alto- 
gether incapable of the discipline, which is 
of the essence of modern armies; and their 
military system was irreconcilable with the 
acquisition of the science of war. In war 
alone, the Polish nobility were barbarians ; 
while war was the only part of civilization 
which the Russians had obtained. In one 
country, the sovereign nobility of half a mil- 
lion durst neither arm their slaves, nor trust 
a mercenary army : in the other, the Czar 
naturally employed a standing army, re- 
cruited, without fear, from the enslaved pea- 
santry. To these military conscription was 
a reward, and the station of a private soldier 
a preferment ; and they were fitted by their 
previous condition to be rendered, by mili- 
tary discipline, the most patient and obedient 
of soldiers, — without enterprise, but without 
fear, and equally inaccessible to discontent 
and attachment, passive and almost insensi- 
ble members of the great military machine. 
There are many circumstances in the insti- 
tutions and destiny of a people, which seem 
to arise from original peculiarities of national 
character, of which it is often impossible to 
explain the origin, or even to show the nature. 
Denmark and Sweden are countries situated 
in the same region of the globe, inhabited 
by nations of the same descent, language, 
and religion, and very similar in their man- 
ners, their ancient institutions, and modern 
civilization : yet he would be a bold specu- 
lator who should attempt to account for the 
talent, fame, turbulence, and revolutions of 
the former ; and for the quiet prosperity and 
27 



obscure mediocrity, which have formed the 
character of the latter. 

There is no political doctrine more false or 
more pernicious than that which represents 
vices in its internal government as an ex- 
tenuation of unjust aggression against a coun- 
try, and a consolation to mankind for the 
destruction of its independence. As no go- 
vernment is without great faults, such a doc- 
trine multiplies the grounds of war, gives an 
unbounded scope to ambition, and furnishes 
benevolent pretexts for every sort of rapine. 
However bad the government of Poland may 
have been, its bad qualities do not in the 
least degree abate the evil consequence of 
the Partition, in weakening, by its example, 
the security of all other nations. An act of 
robbery on the hoards of a worthless miser, 
though they be bestowed on the needy and 
the deserving, does not the less shake the 
common basis of property. The greater 
number of nations live under governments 
which are indisputably bad ; but it is a less 
evil that they should continue in that state, 
than that they should be gathered under a 
single conqueror, even with a chance of im- 
provement in their internal administration. 
Conquest and extensive empire are among 
the greatest evils, and the division of man- 
kind into independent communities is among 
the greatest advantages, which fall to the lot 
of men. The multiplication of such com- 
munities increases the reciprocal control of 
opinion, strengthens the principles of gene- 
rous rivalship, makes every man love his 
own ancient and separate country with a 
warmer affection, brings nearer to all man- 
kind the objects of noble ambition, and adds 
to the incentives to which we owe works of 
genius and acts of virtue. There are some 
peculiarities in the condition of every civili- 
zed country which are peculiarly favourable 
to some talents or good qualities. To de- 
stroy the independence of a people, is to an- 
nihilate a great assemblage of intellectual 
and moral qualities, forming the character 
of a nation, and distinguishing it from other 
communities, which no human skill can bring 
together. As long as national spirit exists, 
there is always reason to hope that it will 
work real reformation : when it is destroyed, 
though better forms may be imposed by a 
conqueror, there is no farther hope of those 
only valuable reformations which represent 
the sentiments, and issue from the heart of 
a people. The barons at Runnymede con- 
tinued to be the masters of slaves ; but the 
noble principles of the charter shortly began 
to release these slaves from bondage. Those 
who conquered at Marathon and Plata?a were 
the masters of slaves ; yet. by the defeat of 
Eastern tyrants, they preserved knowledge, 
liberty, and civilization itself, and contributed 
to, that progress of the human mind which 
will one day banish slavery from the world. 
Had the people of Scotland been conquered 
by Edward II. or by Henry VIII., a common 
observer would have seen nothing in thu 
event but that a race of turbulent barbarian 4 
s2 



210 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



was reduced to subjection by a more civili- 
zed state. 

After this first Partition was completed in 
1776, Poland was suffered for sixteen years 
to enjoy an interval of more undisturbed 
tranquillity than it had known for a century. 
Russian armies ceased to vex it : the dispo- 
sitions of other foreign powers became more 
favourable. Frederic 11. now entered on that 
honourable portion of his reign, in which he 
made a just war for the defence of the in- 
tegrity of Bavaria, and of the independence 
of Germany. Still attempts were not want- 
ing to seduce him into new enterprises 
against Poland. When, in the year 1782, 
reports were current that Potemkin was to 
be made King of Poland, that haughty and 
profligate barbarian told the Count de Goertz, 
then Prussian ambassador at Petersburgh, 
thai he despised the Polish nation too much 
to be ambitious of reigning over them.* He 
desired the ambassador to communicate to 
hts master a plan for a new Partition, ob- 
serving u that the first was only child's play, 
and that if they had taken all, the outcry 
would not have been greater/' Every man 
who feels for the dignity of human nature, 
will rejoice that the illustrious monarch 
firmly rejected the proposal. Potemkin read 
over his refusal three times before he could 
believe his eyes, and at length exclaimed, 
in language very common among certain 
politicians, "I never could have believed 
that King Frederic was capable of romantic 
ideas."! As soon as Frederic returned to 
counsels worthy of himself, he became unfit 
for the purposes of the Empress, who, in 
1780, refused to renew her alliance with 
him. and found more suitable instruments in 
the restless character, and shallow under- 
standing, of Joseph II.. whose unprincipled 
ambition was now released from the restraint 
which his mother's scruples had imposed on 
it. The project of re-establishing an Eastern 
empire now occupied the Court of Peters- 
burgh, and a portion of the spoils of Turkey 
was a sufficient lure to Joseph. The state 
of Europe tended daily more and more to 
restore some degree of independence to the 
remains of Poland. Though France, her 
most ancient and constant ally, was then ab- 
sorbed in the approach of those tremendous 
convulsions which have for more than thirty 
years agitated Europe, other Powers now 
adopted a policy, the influence of which was 
favourable to the Poles. Prussia, as she re- 
ceded from Russia, became gradually con- 
nected with England, Holland, and Sweden : 
and her honest policy in the case of Bavaria 
placed her at the head of all the independent 
members of the Germanic Confederacy . Tur- 

* Dohm. vol. ii. p. 45. 

t It was about this time that Goertz gave an ac-, 
count of the Court of Russia to the Prince Royal of 
Prussia, who was about to visit Petersbugh, of 
•which the following passage is a curious speci- 
men : — " Le Prince Bariatinski est reconnuscele- 
rat, et meme comme tel employe encore de terns 
en terns." — Dohm, vol. ii. p. 32. 



key declared war against Russia. The Aus- 
trian Government was disturbed by the dis- 
content and revolts which the precipitate in- 
novations of Joseph had excited in various 
provinces of the monarchy. A formidable 
combination against the power of Russia was 
in time formed. In the treaty between 
Prussia and the Porte, concluded at Constan- 
tinople in January. 1790. the contracting par- 
ties bound themselves to endeavour to obtain 
from Austria the restitution of those Polish 
provinces, to which she had given the name 
of Galicia.* 

During the progress of these auspicious 
changes, the Poles began to entertain the 
hope that they might at length be suffered 
to reform their institutions, to provide for 
their own quiet and safety, and to adopt that 
policy which might one day enable them to 
resume their ancient station among European 
nations. From 1778 to 1788, no great mea- 
sures had been adopted, but no tumults dis- 
turbed the country; while reasonable opi- 
nions made some progress, and a national 
spirit was slowly reviving. The nobility pa- 
tiently listened to plans for the establishment 
of a productive revenue and a regular army j 
a disposition to renounce their dangerous 
right of electing a king made perceptible 
advances; and the fatal law r of unanimity 
had been so branded as an instrument of 
Russian policy, that in the Diets of these ten 
years, no nuncio was found bold enough to 
employ his negative. At the breaking out 
of the Turkish war, the Poles ventured to 
refuse not only an alliance offered by Catha- 
rine, but even permission to her to raise a 
bod)- of cavalry in the territories of the re- 
public. t 

In the midst of these excellent symptoms 
of public sense and temper, a Diet assem- 
bled at Warsaw in October, 1788, from whom 
the restoration of the republic was hoped, 
and by whom it would have been accom- 
plished, if their prudent and honest mea- 
sures had not been defeated by one of the 
blackest acts of treachery recorded in the 
annals of mankind. Perhaps the four years 
which followed present more signal examples 
than any other part of history, — of patience, 
moderation, wisdom, and integrity, in a po- 
pular assembly, — of spirit and unanimity 
among a turbulent people, — of inveterate 
malignity in an old oppressor, — and of the 
most execrable perfidy in a pretended friend. 
The Diet applied itself with the utmost dili- 
gence and caution to reform the state, watch- 
ing the progress of popular opinion, and pro- 
posing no reformation till the public seemed 
ripe for its reception. While the spirit of 
the French Revolution was every where pre- 
valent, these reformers had the courageous 
prudence to avoid whatever was visionary 
in its principles, or violent in their execu- 
tion. They refused the powerful but peri- 
lous aid of the enthusiasm which it excited 



* Schoell, vol. xiv. p. 473. 
t Ferrand. vol. ii. p. 336. 



AN ACCOUNT OF THE PARTITION OF POLAND. 



211 



long before its excesses and atrocities had 
rendered it odious. They were content to 
be reproached by their friends for the slow- 
ness of their reformatory measures; and to 
be despised for the limited extent of these 
by many of those generous minds who then 
aspired to bestow a new and more perfect 
liberty on mankind. After having taken 
measures for the re-establishment of the 
finances and the army, they employed the 
greater part of the year 1789 in the discus- 
sion of constitutional reforms.* A committee 
appointed in September, before the conclu- 
sion of the year, made a report which con- 
tained an outline of the most necessary alte- 
rations. No immediate decision was made 
on these propositions; but the sense of the 
Diet was, in the course of repeated discus- 
sions, more decisively manifested. It was 
resolved, without a division, that the Elector 
of Saxony should be named successor to the 
crown; which determination, — the prelude 
to the establishment of hereditary monar- 
chy, — was confirmed by the Dietines, or 
electoral assemblies. The elective franchise, 
formerly exercised by all the nobility, was 
limited to landed proprietors. Many other 
fundamental principles of a new constitution 
were perfectly understood to be generally 
approved, though they were not formally 
established. In the mean time, as the Diets 
were biennial, the assembly approached to 
the close of its legal duration ; and as it was 
deemed dangerous to intrust the work of re- 
formation to an entirely new one, and equally 
so to establish the precedent of an existence 
prolonged beyond the legal period, an expe- 
dient was accordingly adopted, not indeed 
sanctioned by law. but founded in constitu- 
tional principles, the success of which afford- 
ed a signal proof of the unanimity of the 
Polish nation. New writs were issued to all 
the Dietines requiring them to choose the 
same number of nuncios as usual. These 
elections proceeded regularly; and the new 
members being received by the old, formed 
with them a double Diet. Almost all the 
Dietines instructed their new representatives 
to vote for hereditary monarchy, and de- 
clared their approbation of the past conduct 
of the Diet. 

On the 16th of December, 1790, this double 
Diet assembled with a more direct, deliber- 
ate, formal, and complete authority, from the 

* Schoell, vol. xiv. p. 117. On the 12th of 
October, 1788, the King of Prussia had offered, 
by Buckholz, his minister at Warsaw, to guaran- 
tee the integrity of the Polish territory. — Ferrand, 
vol. ii. p. 452. On the 19th of November, he ad- 
vises them not to be diverted from " ameliorating 
their form of government;" and declares, " that 
he will guarantee their independence without 
mixing in their internal affairs, or restraining the 
liberty of their discussions, which, on the contrary, 
he will guarantee." — Ibid. p. 457. The negotia- 
tions of Prince Czartorinski at Berlin, and the 
other notes of Buckholz, seconded by Mr. Hailes, 
the English minister, agree entirely in language 
and principles with the passages which have been 
cited. 



great majority of the freemen, to reform the 
abuses of the government, than perhaps any 
other representative assembly in Europe 
ever possessed. They declared the pretend- 
ed guarantee of Russia in 1776 to be '-'null, 
an invasion of national independence, incom- 
patible with the natural rights of every civi- 
lized society, and with the political privileges 
of ever}- free nation.'"* They felt the ne- 
cessity of incorporating, in one law. all the 
reforms which had passed, and all those 
which had received the unequivocal sanction 
of public approbation, The state of foreign 
affairs, as well as the general voice at home, 
loudly called for the immediate adoption of 
such a measure ; and the new Constitution 
was presented to the Diet on the 3d of May 
following,f after being read and received the 
night before with unanimous and enthusias- 
tic applause by far the greater part of the 
members of both Houses, at the palace of 
Prince Radzivil. Only twelve dissentient 
voices opposed it in the Diet. Never were 
debates and votes more free : these men. the 
most hateful of apostates, were neither at- 
tacked, nor threatened, nor insulted. The 
people, on this great and sacred occasion, 
seemed to have lost all the levity and turbu- 
lence of their character, and to have already 
learnt those virtues which are usually the 
slow fruit of that liberty which they were 
then only about to plant. 

This constitution confirmed the rights of 
the Established Church, together with reli- 
gious liberty, as dictated by the charity which 
religion inculcates and inspires. It establish- 
ed an hereditary monarchy in the Electoral 
House of Saxony ; reserving to the nation the 
right of choosing a new race of Kings, in 
case of the extinction of that family. The 
executive power was vested in the King, 
whose ministers were responsible for its ex- 
ercise. The Legislature was divided into 
two Houses. — the Senate and the House of 
Nuncios, with respect to whom the ancient 
constitutional language and forms were pre- 
served. The necessity of unanimity was 
taken away, and, with it, those dangerous 
remedies of confederation and confederate 
Diets which it had rendered necessary. Each 
considerable town received new rights, with 
a restoration of all their ancient privileges. 
The burgesses recovered the right of elect- 
ing their own magistrates. All their pro- 
perty within their towns were declared to 
be inheritable and inviolable. They were 
empowered to acquire land in Poland, as 
they always had done in Lithuania. All the 
offices of the state, the law, the church, and 
the army, were thrown open to them. The 
larger towns were empowered to send depu- 
ties to the Diet, with a right to vote on all 

* Ferrand, vol. iii. p. 55. The absence of dates 
in this writer obliges us to fix the time of this de- 
cree by conjecture. 

t The particular events of the 3d of May are 
related fully by Ferrand, and shortly in the An- 
nual Register of 1791, — a valuable narrative 
though not without considerable mistakes. 



212 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



local and commercial subjects, and to speak 
on all questions whatsoever. All these depu- 
ties became noble, as did every officer of the 
rank of captain, and every lawyer who filled 
the humblest office of magistracy, and every 
burgess who acquired a property in land, 
paying 51. of yearly taxes. Two hundred 
burgesses were ennobled at the moment, and 
a provision was made for ennobling thirty at 
every future Diet. Industry was perfectly 
unfettered. Immunity from arrest till after 
conviction was extended to the burgesses ; — 
the extension of which most inconvenient 
privilege was well adapted to raise traders 
to a level with the gentry. The same object 
was promoted by a provision, that no noble- 
man, by becoming a merchant, a shopkeeper, 
or artisan, should forfeit his privileges, or be 
deemed to derogate from his rank. Nume- 
rous paths to nobility were thus thrown open : 
and every art was employed to make the 
ascent easy. The wisdom and liberality of 
the Polish gentry, if they had not been de- 
feated by flagitious enemies, would, by a 
single act of legislation, have accomplished 
that fusion of the various orders of society, 
which it has required the most propitious 
circumstances, in a long course of ages, to 
effect, in the freest and most happy of the Eu- 
ropean nations. Having thus communicated 
political privileges to hitherto disregarded 
freemen, the new constitution extended to 
all serfs the full protection of law, which be- 
fore was enjoyed only by those of the royal 
demesnes ; while it facilitated and encour- 
aged voluntary manumission, by ratifying all 
contracts relating to it. — the first step to be 
taken in every country towards the accom- 
plishment of the highest of all the objects of 
human legislation. 

The course of this glorious revolution was 
not dishonoured by popular tumult, by san- 
guinary excesses, or by political executions. 
So far did the excellent Diet carry its wise 
regard to the sacredness of property, that, 
though it was in urgent need of financial re- 
sources, it postponed, till after the death of 
present incumbents, the application to the 
relief of the state of the income of those 
ecclesiastical offices which were no longer 
deemed necessary. History will one day do 
justice to that illustrious body, and hold out 
to posterity their work, as the perfect model 
of a most arduous reformation. 

The storm which demolished this noble 
edifice came from abroad. On the 29th of 
March, of the preceding year, a treaty of alli- 
ance had been concluded at Warsaw between 
the King of Prussia and the Republic, con- 
taining, among others, the following stipula- 
tion : — '■'■ If any foreign Power, in virtue of 
any preceding acts and stipulations whatso- 
ever, should claim the right of Interfering in 
the internal affairs of the republic of Poland, 
at what time or in what manner soever, his 
Majesty the King of Prussia will first employ 
his good offices to prevent hostilities in con- 
sequence of such pretension ; but, if his good 
offices should be ineffectual, and that hostili- 



ties against Poland should ensue, his Majesty 
the King of Prussia, considering such an 
event as a case provided for in this treaty, 
will assist the republic according to the tenor 
of the fourth article of the present treaty."* 
The aid here referred to was, on the part of 
Prussia, twenty-two thousand or thirty thou- 
sand men, or, in case of necessity, all its dis- 
posable force. The undisputed purpose of 
the article had been to guard Poland against 
an interference in her affairs by Russia, un- 
der pretence of the guarantee of the Polish 
constitution in 1775. 

Though the King of Prussia had, after the 
conclusion of the treaty, urgently pressed the 
Diet for the cession of the cities of Dantzick 
and Thorn, his claim had been afterwards 
withdrawn and disavowed. On the 13th of 
May, in the present year, Goltz. then Prus- 
sian Charge d'Affaires at Warsaw, in a con- 
ference with the Deputation of the Diet for 
Foreign Affairs, said, " that he had received 
orders from his Prussian Majesty to express 
to them his satisfaction at the happy revolu- 
tion which had at length given to Poland a 
wise and regular constitution. "t On the 23d 
of May, in his answer to the letter of Stanis- 
laus, announcing the adoption of the consti- 
tution, the same Prince, after applauding the 
establishment of hereditary monarchy in the 
House of Saxony, (which, it must be particu- 
larly borne in mind, was a positive breach 
of the constitution guaranteed by Russia in 
1775,) proceeds to say, (: I congratulate my- 
self on having contributed to the liberty 
and independence of Poland ; and my most 
agreeable care will be, to preserve and 
strengthen the ties which unite us." On the 
21st of June, the Prussian minister, on occa- 
sion of alarm expressed by the Poles that 
the peace with Turkey might prove danger- 
ous to them, declares, that if such dangers 
were to arise, " the king of Prussia, faithful 
to all his obligations, will have it particularly 
at heart to fulfil those which were last year 
contracted by him." If there was any reli- 
ance in the faith of treaties, or on the honour 
of kings, Poland might have confidently 
hoped, that, if she was attacked by Russia, 
in virtue of the guarantee of 1775, her inde- 
pendence and her constitution would be de- 
fended by the whole force of the Prussian 
monarchy. 

The remaining part of the year 1791 passed 
in quiet, but not without apprehension. On 
the 9th of January, 1792, Catharine conclud- 
ed a peace with Turkey at Jassy ; and being 
thus delivered from all foreign enemies, be- 
gan once more to manifest intentions of inter- 
fering in the affairs of Poland. Emboldened 
by the removal of Herztberg from the coun- 
cils of Prussia, and by the death of the Em- 
peror Leopold, a prince of experience and 



* Martens, vol. iii. pp. 161 — 165. 

t Ferrand, vol. iii. p. 121. See the letter of the 
King of Prussia to Goltz, expressing his admira- 
tion and applause of the new constitution. Segur, 
vol. iii. p. 252. 



AN ACCOUNT OF THE PARTITION OF POLAND. 



213 



prudence, she resolved to avail herself of the 
disposition then arising in all European Go- 
vernments, to sacrifice every other object to 
a preparation for a contest with the princi- 
ples of the French Revolution. A small 
number of Polish nobles furnished her with 
that very slender pretext, with which she 
was always content. Their chiefs were Rze- 
wuski, who. in 1768, had been exiled to Si- 
beria, and Felix Potocki, a member of a po- 
tent and illustrious family, which was invio- 
lably attached to the cause of the republic. 
These unnatural apostates deserting their 
long-suffering country at the moment when, 
for the first time, hope dawned on her, were 
received by Catharine with the honours due 
from her to aggravated treason in tb^e per- 
sons of the Confederates of Targowitz. On 
the 18th of May the Russian minister at 
Warsaw declared, that the Empress, "called 
on by many distinguished Poles who had con- 
federated against the pretended constitution 
of 1791, would, in virtue of her guarantee, 
march an army into Poland to restore the 
liberties of the republic." The hope, mean- 
time, of help from Prussia was speedily and 
cruelly deceived. Lucchesini, the Prussian 
minister at Warsaw, in an evasive answer to 
a communication made to him respecting the 
preparations for defence against Russia, said 
coldly, " that his master received the com- 
munication as a proof of the esteem of the 
King and Republic of Poland; but that he 
could take no cognisance of the affairs which 
occupied the Diet." On Stanislaus himself 
claiming his aid, Frederic on the 8th of June 
answered: — "In considering the new consti- 
tution which the republic adopted, without 
my knowledge and without my concurrence, 
I never thought of supporting or protecting 
it." So signal a breach of faith is not to be 
found in the modern history of great states. 
It resembles rather the vulgar frauds and 
low artifices, which, under the name of 
"reason of state," made up the policy of 
the petty tyrants of Italy in the fourteenth 
century. 

Assured of the connivance of Prussia, Ca- 
tharine now poured an immense army into 
Poland, along the whole line of frontier, from 
the Baltic to the neighbourhood of the Eux- 
ine. But the spirit of the Polish nation was 
unbroken. A series of brilliant actions occu- 
pied the summer of 1792, in which the Po- 
lish army, under Poniatowski and Kosciusko, 
alternately victorious and vanquished, gave 
equal proofs of unavailing gallantry. 

Meantime Stanislaus, who had remained 
in his capital, willing to be duped by the 
Russian ami Prussian ambassadors, whom he 
still suffered to continue there, made a vain 
attempt to disarm the anger of the Empress, 
by proposing that her grandson Constantine 
should be the stock of the new constitutional 
dynasty ; to which she haughtily replied, that 
he must re-establish the old constitution, and 
accede to the Confederation of Targowitz ; — 
"perhaps," says M. Ferrand, "because a 
throne acquired without guilt or perfidy might 



have few attractions for her.''* Having on 
the 4th of July published a proclamation, 
declaring " that he would not survive his 
country/' on the 22d of the same month, 
as soon as he received the commands of Ca- 
tharine, this dastard prince declared his ac- 
cession to the Confederation of Targowitz. and 
thus threw the legal authority of the republic 
into the hands of that band of conspirators. 
The gallant army, over whom the Diet had 
intrusted their unworthy King with absolute 
authority, were now compelled, by his trea- 
cherous orders, to lay down their arms amidst 
the tears of their countrymen, and the inso- 
lent exultation of their barbarous enemies. t 
The traitors of Targowitz were, for a mo- 
ment, permitted by Russia to rule over the 
country which they had betrayed, to prose- 
cute the persons and lay waste the property 
of all good citizens, and to re-establish every 
ancient abuse. 

Such was the unhappy state of Poland du- 
ring the remainder of the year 1792, a period 
which will be always memorable for the in- 
vasion of Fiance by a German army, their 
ignominious retreat, the eruption of the 
French forces into Germany and Flanders, 
the dreadful scenes which passed in the in- 
terior of France, and the apprehension pro- 
fessed by all Governments of the progress of 
the opinions to which these events were 
ascribed. The Empress of Russia, among 
the rest, professed the utmost abhorrence of 
the French Revolution, made war against it 
by the most vehement manifestoes, stimula- 
ted every other power to resist it, but never 
contributed a battalion or a ship to the con- 
federacy against it. Frederic-William also 
plunged headlong into the coalition against 
the advice of his wisest counsellors.}: At the 
moment of the Duke of Brunswick's entry 
into France, in July, — if we may believe M. 
Ferrand, himself a zealous royalist, who had 
evidently more than ordinary means of in- 
formation, — the ministers of* the principal 
European powers met at Luxemburg, pro- 
vided with various projects for new arrange- 
ments of territory, in the event which they 

* Ferrand, vol. iii. p. 217. 

t A curious passage of De Thou shows the ap- 
prehension early entertained of ihe Russian power. 
"Livonia prudente et reipublicas Christianas utili 
consilio navigatio illuc interdicta fuerat, ne com- 
mercio nostrorum Barbari varias artes ipsis ignotas, 
et quae ad rem navalem et mihiarem pertinent, edo- 
cerentur. Sic enim eximistabant Moscos, qui 
maximam Septentrionis partem tenerent, Narvas 
condito emporio, et constructo armamentario, non 
solum in Livoniam, sed etiam in Germaniam effuso 
exercitu penetraturos." — Lib. xxxix. cap. 8. 

t Prince Henry and Count Hertzberg, who 
agree perhaps in nothing else. — Vie du Prince 
Henri, p. 297. In the same place, we have a very 
curious extract from a letter of Prince Henry, of 
the 1st of November, 1792, in which he says, 
that " every year of war will make the conditions 
of peace worse for the Allies." Henry was not 
a Democrat, nor even a Whig. His opinions 
were confirmed by all the events of the first war, 
and are certainly not contradicted by occurrences 
towards the close of a second war, twenty years 
afterwards, and in totally new circumstances. 



m 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



thought inevitable, of the success of the in- 
vasion. The Austrian ministers betrayed 
the intention of their Court, to renew its at- 
tempt to compel the Elector of Bavaria to 
exchange his dominions for the Low Coun- 
ties; which, by the dissolution of their trea- 
ties with France, they deemed themselves 
entitled again to propose. The King of 
Prussia, on this alarming disclosure, showed 
symptoms of an inclination to abandon an 
enterprise, which many other circumstances 
combined to prove was impracticable, at 
least with the number of troops with which 
he had presumptuously undertaken it. These 
dangerous projects of the Court of Vienna 
made him also feel the necessity of a closer 
connection with Russia; and in an interview 
with the Austrian and Russian ministers at 
Verdun, he gave them to understand, that 
Prussia could not continue the war without 
being assured of an indemnity. Russia 
eagerly adopted a suggestion which engaged 
Prussia more completely in her Polish 
schemes; and Austria willingly listened to 
a proposal which would furnish a precedent 
and a justification for similar enlargements 
of her own dominions : while both the Impe- 
rial Courts declared, that they would acqui- 
esce in the occupation of another portion of 
Poland by the Prussian armies.* 

Whether in consequence of the supposed 
agreement at Verdun or not, the fact at least 
is certain, that Frederic-William returned 
from his French disgraces to seek consola- 
tion in the plunder of Poland. Nothing is 
more characteristic of a monarch without 
ability, without knowledge, without resolu- 
tion, whose life had been divided between 
gross libertinism and abject superstition, than 
that, after flying before the armies of a pow- 
erful nation, he should instantly proceed to 
attack an oppressed, and, as he thought, de- 
fenceless people. In January, 1793, he en- 
tered Poland ; and, while Russia was charg- 
ing the Poles with the extreme of royalism, 
he chose the very opposite pretext, that they 
propagated anarchical principles, and had 
established Jacobin clubs. Even the crimi- 
nal Confederates of Targowitz were indig- 
nant at these falsehoods, and remonstrated, 
at Berlin and Petersburg!!, against the entry 
of the Prussian troops. But the complaints 
of such apostates against the natural results 
of their own crimes were heard with con- 
tempt. The Empress of Russia, in a Decla- 
ration of the 9th of April, informed the world 
that, acting in concert with Prussia, and 
with the consent of Austria, the only means 
of controlling the Jacobinism of Poland was 
il by confining it within more narrow limits, 
and by giving it proportions which better 
suited an intermediate power." The King 
of Prussia, accordingly, seized Great Poland ; 
and the Russian army occupied all the other 
provinces of the republic. It was easy, 
therefore, for Catharine to determine the ex- 
tent of her new robbery. 

* Ferrand, vol. iii. pp. 252 — 255 



In order, however, to give it some shadow 
of legality, the King was compelled to call a 
Diet, from which every one was excluded 
who was not a partisan of Russia, and an ac- 
complice of the Confederates of Targowitz. 
The unhappy assembly met at Grodno in 
June; and, in spite of its bad composition, 
showed still many sparks of Polish spirit. 
Sievers, the Russian ambassador, a man ap- 
parently worthy of his mission, had recourse 
to threats, insults, brutal violence, military 
imprisonment, arbitrary exile, and every 
other species of outrage and intimidation 
which, for near thirty years, had constituted 
the whole system of Russia towards the 
Polish legislature. In one note, he tells 
them that, unless they proceed more rapidly, 
■"he*shall be under the painful necessity of 
removing all incendiaries, disturbers of the 
public peace, and partisans of the 3d of May, 
from the Diet."* In another, he apprises 
them, that he must consider any longer de- 
lay " as a declaration of hostility ; in which 
case, the lands, possessions, and dwellings 
of the malcontent members, must be subject 
to military execution." "If the King ad- 
heres to the Opposition, the military execu- 
tion must extend to his demesnes, the pay 
of the Russian troops will be stopped., and 
they will live at the expense of the unhappy 
peasants. "t Grodno was surrounded by 
Russian troops; loaded cannon were pointed 
at the palace of the King and the hall of the 
Diet; four nuncios were carried away pri- 
soners by violence in the night ; and all the 
members were threatened with Siberia. In 
these circumstances, the captive Diet was 
compelled, in July and September, to sign 
two treaties with Russia and Prussia, stipu- 
lating such cessions as the plunderers were 
pleased to dictate, and containing a repeti- 
tion of the same insulting mockery which 
had closed every former act of rapine, — a 
guarantee of the remaining possessions of 
the republic. t It had the consolation of 
being allowed to perform one act of justice, 
—that of depriving the leaders of the Con- 
federation of Targowitz, Felix Potocki, Rze- 
wuski, and Braneki, of the great offices 
which they dishonoured. It may hereafter 
be discovered, whether it be actually true 
that Alsace and Lorraine were to have been 
the compensation to Austria for forbearing 
to claim her share of the spoils of Poland at 
this period of the second Partition. It is al- 
ready well known that the allied army re- 
fused to receive the surrender of Strasburgh 
in the name of Louis XVII., and that Valen- 
ciennes and Conde were taken in the name 
of Austria. 

In the beginning of 1794, a young officer 
named Madalinski, who had kept together, 
at the disbanding of the army, eighty gentle- 
men, gradually increased his adherents, till 
they amounted to a force of about four thou- 
sand men, and began to harass the Russian 

* Ferrand, vol. iii. p. 369. t Ibid. p. 372. 

t Martens, vol. v. pp. 162. 202. 



AN ACCOUNT OF THE PARTITION OF POLAND. 



215 



posts. The people of Cracow expelled the 
Russian garrison ; and, on the night of the 
28th of March, the heroic Kosciusko, at the 
head of a small body of adherents, entered 
that city, and undertook its government and 
defence. Endowed with civil as well as 
military talents, he established order among 
the insurgents, and caused the legitimate 
constitution to be solemnly proclaimed in 
the cathedra], where it was once more hailed 
with genuine enthusiasm. He proclaimed a 
national confederation, and sent copies of 
his manifesto to Petersburgh, Berlin, and 
Vienna; treating the two first courts with 
deserved severity, but speaking amicably of 
the third, whose territory he enjoined his 
army to respect. These marks of friend- 
ship, the Austrian resident at Warsaw pub- 
licly disclaimed, imputing to Kosciusko and 
his friends "the monstrous principles of the 
French Convention.;" — a language which 
plainly showed that the Court of Vienna, 
which had only consented to the last Parti- 
tion, was willing to share in the next. Kos- 
ciusko was daily reinforced ; and on the 17th 
of April rose on the Russian garrison of War- 
saw, and compelled Igelstrom the com- 
mander, after an obstinate resistance of 
thirty-six hours, to evacuate the city with a 
loss of two thousand men wounded. The 
citizens of the capital, the whole body of a 
proud nobilit}', and all the friends of their 
country throughout Poland, submitted to the 
temporary dictatorship of Kosciusko, a pri- 
vate gentleman only recently known to the 
public, and without any influence but the 
reputation of his virtue. Order and tran- 
quillity generally prevailed; some of the 
burghers, perhaps excited by the agents of 
Russia, complained to Kosciusko of the in- 
adequacy of their privileges. But this ex- 
cellent chief, instead of courting popularity, 
repressed an attempt which might lead to 
dangerous divisions. Soon after, more crimi- 
nal excesses for the first time dishonoured 
the Polish revolution, but served to shed a 
brighter lustre on the humanity and intre- 
pidity of Kosciusko. The papers of the 
Russian embassy laid open proofs of the ve- 
nality of many of the Poles who had betray- 
ed their country. The populace of Warsaw, 
impatient of the slow forms of law, appre- 
hensive of the lenient spirit which prevailed 
among the revolutionary leaders, and instigat- 
ed by the incendiaries, who are always ready 
to flatter the passions of a multitude, put to 
death eight of these persons, and, by their 
clamours, extorted from the tribunal a pre- 
cipitate trial and execution of a somewhat 
smaller number. Kosciusko did not content 
himself with reprobating these atrocities. 
Though surrounded by danger, attacked by 
the most formidable enemies, betrayed by 
his own Government, and abandoned by all 
Europe, he flew from his camp to the capi- 
tal, brought the ringleaders of the massacre 
to justice, and caused them to be imme- 
diately executed. We learn, from very re- 
spectable authority, that during all the 



perils of his short administration, he per- 
suaded the nobility to take measures for a 
more rapid enfranchisement of the peasant- 
ry, than the cautious policy of the Diet had 
hazarded.* 

Harassed by the advance of Austrian, 
Prussian, and Russian armies, Kosciusko 
concentrated the greater part of his army 
around Warsaw, against which Frederic- 
William advanced at the head of forty thou- 
sand disciplined troops. With an irregular 
force of twelve thousand he made an obsti- 
nate resistance for several hours on the 8th 
of June, and retired to his entrenched camp 
before the city. The Prussians having taken 
possession of Cracow, summoned the capital 
to surrender, under pain of all the horrors of 
an assault. After two months employed in 
vain attempts to reduce it, the King of Prus- 
sia was compelled, by an insurrection in his 
lately acquired Polish province, to retire with 
precipitation and disgrace. But in the mean 
time, the Russians were advancing, in spite 
of the gallant resistance of General Count 
Joseph Sierakowski, one of the most faithful 
friends of his country; and on the 4th of 
October, Kosciusko, with only eighteen thou- 
sand men, thought it necessary to hazard a 
battle at Macciowice, to prevent the junction 
of the two Russian divisions of Suwarrow 
and Fersen. Success was long and valiantly 
contested. According to some narrations, 
the enthusiasm of the Poles would have pre- 
vailed, but for the treachery or incapacity 
of Count Poninski.t Kosciusko, after the 
most admirable exertions of judgment and 
courage, fell, covered with wounds; and the 
Polish army fled. The Russians and Cos- 
sacks were melted at the sight of their gal- 
lant enemy, who lay insensible on the field. 
When he opened his eyes, and learnt the 
full extent of the disaster, he vainly im- 
plored the enemy to put an end to his suf- 
ferings. The Russian officers, moved with 
admiration and compassion, treated him 
with tenderness, and sent him, with due 
respect, a prisoner of war to Petersburgh, 
where Catharine threw him into a dungeon; 
from which he was released by Paul on his 
succession, perhaps partly from hatred to his 
mother, and partly from one of those par- 
oxysms of transient generosity, of which that 
brutal lunatic was not incapable. 

From that moment the farther defence of 
Poland became hopeless. Suwarrow ad- 
vanced to the capita], and stimulated his 
army to the assault of the great suburb of 
Praga. by the barbarous promise of a license 
to pillage for forty-eight hours. A dreadful 
contest ensued on the 4th of November, in 
which the inhabitants performed prodigies of 
useless valour, making a stand in every street, 
and almost at every house. All the hor- 



* Segur, Regne de Frederic-Guillaume II., 
tome iii. p. 169. These important, measures are 
not mentioned in any other narration which I 
have read. 

t Segur, vol. iii. p. 171. 



216 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



rors of war, which the most civilized armies 
practised on such occasions, were here seen 
with tenfold violence. No age or sex, or 
condition, was spared; the murder of chil- 
dren forming a sort of barbarous sport for the 
assailants. The most unspeakable outrages 
were offered to the living and the dead. 
The mere infliction of death was an act of 
mercy. The streets streamed with blood. 
Eighteen thousand human carcasses were 
carried away after the massacre had ceased. 
Many were burnt to death in the flames 
which consumed the town. Multitudes 
were driven by the bayonet into the Vistula. 
A great body of fugitives perished by the 
fall of the great bridge over which they fled. 
These tremendous scenes closed the resist- 
ance of Poland, and completed the triumph 
of her oppressors. The Russian army en- 
tered Warsaw on the 9th of November, 1794. 
Stanislaus was suffered to amuse himself 
with the formalities of royalty for some 
months longer, till, in obedience to the order 
of Catharine, he abdicated on the 25th of 
November, 1795, — a day which, being the 
anniversary of his coronation, seemed t* be 
chosen to complete his humiliation. Quar- 
rels about the division of the booty retarded 
the complete execution of the formal and 
final Partition, till the beginning of the next 
year. 

Thus fell the Polish people, after a wise 
and virtuous attempt to establish liberty, 
and a heroic struggle to defend it, by the fla- 
gitious wickedness of Russia, by the foul 
treachery of Prussia, by the unprincipled ac- 
cession of Austria, and by the short-sighted, 
as well as mean-spirited, acquiescence of all 
the other nations of Europe. Till the first 
Partition, the right of every people to its 
own soil had been universally regarded as 
the guardian principle of European inde- 
pendence. But in the case of Poland, a na- 
tion was robbed of its ancient territory with- 
out the pretence of any wrong which could 
justify war, and without even those forms 
of war which could bestow on the acquisi- 
tion the name of conquest. It is a cruel 
and bitter aggravation of this calamity, that 
the crime was perpetrated, under the pre- 
tence of the wise and just principle of main- 
taining the balance of power; — as if that 
principle had any value but its tendency to 
prevent such crimes; — as if an equal divi- 
sion of the booty bore any resemblance to a 
joint exertion to prevent the robbery. In the 
case of private highwaymen and pirates, a 
fair division of the booty tends, no doubt, to 
the harmony of the gang and the safety of 
its members, but renders them more formi- 
dable to the honest and peaceable part of 
mankind.* 

For about eleven years the name of Po- 
land was erased from the map of Europe. 

* The sentiments of wise men on the first Par- 
tition are admirably stated in the Annual Register 
of 1772, in the Introduction to the History of Eu- 
rope, which could scarcely have been written by 
any man but Mr. Burke. 



By the Treaty of Tilsit, in 1807, the Prussian 
part of that unfortunate country was re- 
stored to as much independence as could 
then be enjoyed, under the name of the 
Grand Duchy of Warsaw ; and this revived 
state received a considerable enlargement 
in 1809, by the treaty of Shoenbrunn, at the 
expense of Austria. 

When Napoleon opened the decisive cam- 
paign of 1812, in what he called in his pro- 
clamations "the Second Polish War," he 
published a Declaration, addressed to the 
Poles, in which he announced that Poland 
would be greater than she had been under 
Stanislaus, and that the Archduke, who then 
governed Wurtsburg, was to be their sove- 
reign ; and when on the 12th of July in that 
year, Wybicki, at the head of a deputation 
of the Diet, told him, at Wilna, with truth, 
"The interest of your empire requires the 
re-establishment of Poland ; the honour of 
France is interested in it,'-* — he replied, 
" that he had done all that duty to his sub- 
jects allowed him to restore their country ; 
that he would second their exertions ; and 
that he authorized them to take up arms, 
every where but in the Austrian provinces, 
of which he had guaranteed the integrity, 
and which he should not suffer to be dis- 
turbed." In his answer, — too cold and 
guarded to inspire enthusiasm, — he pro- 
mised even less than he had acquired the 
the power of performing ; for, by the secret 
articles of his treaty with Austria, concluded 
in March, provision had been made for an 
exchange of the Illyrian provinces (which 
he had retained at his own disposal) for 
such a part of Austrian Poland as would be 
equivalent to them.* What his real designs 
respecting Poland were, it is not easy to con- 
jecture. That he was desirous of re-esta- 
blishing its independence, and that he looked 
forward to such an event as the result of his 
success, cannot be doubted. But he had 
probably grown too much of a politician and 
an emperor, to trust, or to love that national 
feeling and popular enthusiasm to which he 
had owed the splendid victories of his youth. 
He was now rather willing to owe every thing 
to his policy and his army. Had he thrown 
away the scabbard in this just cause, — had 
he solemnly pledged himself to the restora- 
tion of Poland, — had he obtained the ex- 
change of Galicia for Dalmatia, instead of 
secretly providing for it, — had he considered 
Polish independence, not merely as the con- 
sequence of victory, but as one of the most 
powerful means of securing it, — had he, in 
short, retained some part of his early faith 
in the attachment of nations, instead of rely- 
ing exclusively on the mechanism of armies, 
perhaps the success of that memorable cam-' 
paign might have been more equally ba- 
lanced. Seventy thousand Poles were then 
fighting under his banners. t Forty thousand 
are supposed to have fallen in the French 
armies from the destruction of Poland to the 

* Schoell, vol. x. p. 129. t Ibid. p. 139. 



AN ACCOUNT OF THE PARTITION OF POLAND. 



217 



battle of Waterloo.* There are few instances 
of the affection of men for their country more 
touching than that of these gallant Poles, 
who, in voluntary exile, amidst every priva- 
tion, without the hope of fame, and when 
all the world had become their enemies, 
daily sacrificed themselves in the battles of 
a foreign nation, in the faint hope of its one 
day delivering their own from bondage. 
Kosciusko had originally encouraged his 
countrymen to devote themselves to this 
chance ; but when he was himself offered a 
command in 1^07, this perfect hero refused 
to quit his humble retreat, unless Napoleon 
would pledge himself for the restoration of 
Poland. 

When Alexander entered France in 1814, 
as the avowed patron of liberal institutions, 
Kosciusko addressed a letter to him, t in which 
he makes three requests, — that the Emperor 
would grant an universal amnesty, a free con- 
stitution, resembling, as nearly as possible, 
that of England, with means of general edu- 
cation, and, after the expiration of ten years, 
an emancipation of the peasants. It is but 
justice to Alexander to add, that when Kos- 
ciusko died, in 1817, after a public and pri- 
vate life, worthy of the scholar of Washing- 
ton, the Emperor, on whom the Congress of 
Vienna had then bestowed the greater part 
of the duchy of Warsaw, with the title of 
King of Poland, allowed his Polish subjects 



* Julien, Notice Biographique sur Kosciusko, 
t Published in M. Julien's interesting little 
work. 



to pay due honours to the last of their heroes ; 
and that Prince Jablonowski was sent to 
attend his remains from Switzerland to Cra- 
cow, there to be interred in the only spot of 
the Polish territory which is now not dis- 
honoured by a foreign master. He might have 
paid a still more acceptable tribute to his 
memory, by executing his pure intentions, 
and acceding to his disinterested prayers. 

The Partition of Poland was the model of 
all those acts of rapine which have been com- 
mitted by monarchs or republicans during 
the wars excited by the French Revolution. 
No single cause has contributed so much to 
alienate mankind from ancient institutions, 
and loosen their respect for established go- 
vernments. When monarchs show so signal 
a disregard to immemorial possession and 
legal right, it is in vain for them to hope that 
subjects will not copy the precedent. The 
law of nations is a code without tribunals, 
without ministers, and without arms, which 
rests only on a general opinion of its useful- 
ness, and on the influence of that opinion in 
the councils of states, and most of all, per- 
haps, on a habitual reverence, produced by 
the constant appeal to its rules even by those 
who did not observe them, and strengthened 
by the elaborate artifice to which the proud- 
est tyrants deigned to submit, in their at- 
tempts to elude an authority which they did 
not dare to dispute. One signal triumph over 
such an authority was sufficient to destroy its 
power. Philip II. and Louis XIV. had often 
violated the law of nations ; but the spoilers- 
I of Poland overthrew it. 



SKETCH 



THE ADMINISTRATION AND FALL 



STRUENSEE.* 



On the arrival of Charles VII. of Sweden, 
at Altona, in need of a physician, — an atten- 
dant whom his prematurely broken constitu- 
tion made peculiarly essential to him even 
at the age of nineteen, — Struensee, the son 
of a Lutheran bishop in Holstein. had just 
begun to practise medicine, after having been 
for some time employed as the editor of a 
newspaper in that city. He was now ap- 
pointed physician to the King, at the moment 

* From the Edinburgh Review, vol. xliv. p. 
366.— Ed. 

28 



when he was projecting a professional esta- 
blishment at Malaga, or a voyage to India, 
which his imagination, excited by the peru- 
sal of the elder travellers, had covered with 
"barbaric pearl and gold." He was now 
twenty-nine years old, and appears to have 
been recommended to the royal favour by 
an agreeable exterior, pleasing manners, and 
some slight talents and superficial know- 
ledge, with the subserviency indispensable 
in a favourite, and the power of amusing 
his listless and exhausted master. His name 



218 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



appears in the publications of the time as 
".Doctor Struensee," among the attendants 
of his Danish Majesty in England; and he 

received, in that character, the honorary 
degree of Doctor of Medicine from the Uni- 
versity of Oxford. 

Like all other minions, his ascent was 
rapid, or rather his flight to the pinnacle of 
power was instantaneous; for the passion of 
an absolute prince on such occasions knows 
no bounds, and brooks no delay. Immedi- 
ately after the King's return to Copenhagen, 
Struensee was appointed a Cabinet Minister. 
While his brother was made a counsellor of 
justice, he appointed Brandt, another adven- 
turer, to superintend the palace and the im- 
becile King ; and intrusted Rantzau, a dis- 
graced Danish minister, who had been his 
colleague in the editorship of the Altona 
Journal, with the conduct of foreign affairs. 
He and his friend Brandt were created Earls. 
Stolk. his predecessor in favour, had fomented 
and kept up an animosity between the King 
and Queen: Struensee (unhappily for him- 
self as well as for her) gained the confidence 
of the Queen, by restoring her to the good 
graces of her husband. Caroline Matilda, 
sister of George III., who then had the mis- 
fortune to be Queen of Denmark, is described 
by Falkenskiold* as the handsomest woman 
of the Court, as of a mild and reserved cha- 
racter, and as one who was well qualified to 
enjoy and impart happiness, if it had been 
her lot to be united to an endurable husband. 
Brandt seems to have been a weak coxcomb, 
and Rantzau a turbulent and ungrateful in- 
triguer. 

The only foreign business which Struensee 
found pending on his entrance into office, 
was a negotiation with Russia, concerning 
the pretensions of that formidable competitor 
to a part of Holstein, which Denmark had 
unjustly acquired fifty years before. Peter 
III., the head of the house of Holstein. was 
proud of his German ancestry, and ambitious 
of recovering their ancient dominions. After 
his murder, Catharine claimed these posses- 
sions, as nominal Regent of Holstein, during 
the minority of her son. The last act of 
Bemstorff's administration had been a very 

* General Falkenskiold was a Danish gentle- 
man of respectable family, who, after having 
served in the French army during the Seven 
Years' War, and in the Russian army during the 
first war of Catharine II. against the Turks, was 
recalled to his country under the administration 
of Siruensec, to take a part in the reform of the 
•military establishment, and to conduct the nego- 
tiation at Petersburgh, respecting the claims of the 
Imperial family to the dutchy of Holstein. He 
was involved in the fall of Struensee, and was, 
without trial, doomed to imprisonment tor life at 
Munkholm, a fortress situated on a rock opposite 
to Drontheim. After five years' imprisonment he 
was released, and permitted to live, first at Mont- 
pellier, and afterwards at Lausanne, at which last 
city (with the exception of one journey to Copen- 
hagen) he past the latter part of his life, and where 
he died in September, 1820, in the eighty-third 
year of his age. He left his Memoirs for publica- 
.tion to his friend, M. Secretan, First Judge of the 
canton of Vaud. 



prudent accommodation, in which Russia 
agreed to relinquish her claims on Holstein, 
in consideration of the cession to her by Den- 
mark of the small principality of Oldenburg, 
the very ancient partimony of the Danish 
Royal P'amily. Rantzau. who in his exile 
had hail some quarrel with the Russian Go- 
vernment, prevailed on the inexperienced 
Struensee to delay the execution of this po- 
litic convention, and aimed at establishing 
the influence of France and Sweden at Co- 
penhagen instead of that of Russia, which 
was then supported by England. He even 
entertained the chimerical project of driving 
the Empress from Petersburgh. Falken- 
skiold, who had been sent on a mission to 
Petersburgh, endeavoured, after his return, 
to disabuse Struensee, and to show him the 
ruinous tendency of such rash counsels, pro- 
posing to him even to recall Bernstorff, to fa- 
cilitate the good understanding which could 
hardly be re-restored as long as Counts Osten 
and Rantzau, the avowed enemies of Russia, 
were in power. Struensee, like most of 
those who must be led by others, was ex- 
ceedingly fearful of being thought to be so. 
When Falkenskiold warned him against 
yielding to Rantzau, his plans were shaken : 
but when the same weapon was turned 
against Falkenskiold, Struensee returned to 
his obstinacy. Even after Rantzau had be- 
come his declared enemy, he adhered to the 
plans of that intriguer, lest he should be sus- 
pected of yielding to Falkenskiold. Where- 
ever there were only two roads, it was easy 
to lead Struensee, by exciting his fear of be- 
ing led by the opposite party. 

Struensee's measures of internal policy ap- 
pear to have been generally well-meant, but 
often ill-judged. Some of his reforms were 
in themselves excellent : but he showed, on 
the whole, a meddling and restless spirit, im- 
patient of the necessary delay, often employ- 
ed in petty change, choosing wrong means, 
braving prejudices that might have been sof- 
tened, and offending interests that might have 
been conciliated. He was a sort of inferior 
Joseph II. ; like him, rather a servile copyist 
than an enlightened follower of Frederic II. 
His dissolution of the Guards (in itself a pru- 
dent measure of economy) turned a numer- 
ous body of volunteers into the service of his 
enemies. The removal of Bernstorff was a 
very blamable means of strengthening him- 
self. The suppression of the Privy Council, 
the only feeble restraint on despotic power, 
was still more reprehensible in itself, and 
excited the just resentment of the Danish 
nobility. The repeal of a barbarous law, in- 
flicting capital punishment on adultery, was 
easily misrepresented to the people as a 
mark of approbation of that vice. 

Both Struensee and Brandt had embraced 
the infidelity at that time prevalent among 
men of the world, which consisted in little 
more than a careless transfer of implied faith 
from Luther to Voltaire. They had been ac- 
quainted with the leaders of the Philosophi- 
cal party at Paris, and they introduced the 



ADMINISTRATION AND FALL OF STRUENSEE. 



219 



conversation of their masters at Copenhagen. 
In the same school they were taught to see 
clearly enough the distempers of European 
society; but they were not taught (for their 
teachers did not know) which of these ma- 
ladies were 1 to be endured, which were to be 
palliated, and what were the remedies and 
regimen by which the remainder might, in 
due time, be effectually and yet safely re- 
moved. The dissolute manners of the Court 
contributed to their unpopularity; rather, per- 
haps, because the nobility resented the in- 
trusion of upstarts into the sphere of their 
priviledged vice, than because there was any 
real increase of licentiousness. 

It must not be forgotten that Struensee 
was the first minister of an absolute monar- 
chy who abolished the torture; and that he 
patronized those excellent plans for the 
emancipation of the enslaved husbandmen, 
which were first conceived by Reverdil, a 
Swiss, and the adoption of which by the se- 
cond Bernstorff has justly immortalized that 
statesman. He will be honoured by after 
ages for what offended the Lutheran clergy, 
— the free exercise of religious worship grant- 
ed to Calvinists, to Moravians, and even to 
Catholics ; for the Danish clergy were ambi- 
tious of retaining the right to persecute, not 
only long after it was impossible to exercise 
it, but even after they had lost the disposi- 
tion to do so ; — at first to overawe, afterwards 
to degrade non-conformists ; in both stages, 
as a badge of the privileges and honour of an 
established church. 

No part, however, of Struensee's private 
or public conduct can be justly considered 
as the cause of his downfall. His irreligion, 
his immoralities, his precipitate reforms, his 
parade of invidious favour, were only the in- 
struments or pretexts by which his competi- 
tors for office were able to effect his destruc- 
tion. Had he either purchased the good-will, 
or destroyed the power of his enemies at 
Court, he might long have governed Den- 
mark, and perhaps have been gratefully re- 
membered by posterity as a reformer of politi- 
cal abuses. He fell a victim to an intrigue for 
a change of ministers, which, under such a 
King, was really a struggle for the sceptre. 

His last act of political imprudence illus- 
trates both the character of his enemies, and 
the nature of absolute government. When 
'he was appointed Secretary of the Cabinet, 
he was empowered to execute such orders 
as were very urgent, without the signature 
of the King, on condition, however, that they 
should be weekly laid before him, to be con- 
firmed or annulled under his own hand. This 
liberty had been practised before his admin- 
istration; and it was repeated in many thou- 
sand instances after his downfall. Under 
any monarchy, the substantial fault would 
have consisted rather in assuming an inde- 
pendence of his colleagues, than in encroach- 
ing on any royal power which was real or 
practicable. Under so wretched a pageant 
as the King of Denmark, Struensee showed 
his folly in obtaining, by a formal order, the 



power which he might easily have continued 
to execute without it. But this order was 
the signal of a clamour against him, as an 
usurper of royal prerogative. The Guards 
showed symptoms of mutiny: the garrison 
of the capital adopted their resentment. The 
populace became riotous. Rantzau, partly 
stimulated by revenge against Struensee, for 
having refused a protection to him against his 
creditors, being secretly favoured by Count 
Osten, found means of gaining overGuldberg, 
an ecclesiastic of obscure birth, full of pro- 
fessions of piety, the preceptor of the King's 
brother, who prevailed on that prince and the 
Queen-Dowager to engage in the design ot 
subverting the Administration. Several of 
Struensee's friends warned him of his dan- 
ger; but, whether from levity or magnanimi- 
ty, he neglected their admonitions. Rant- 
zau himself, either jealous of the ascendant 
acquired by Guldberg among the conspira- 
tors, or visited by some compunctious remem- 
brances of friendship and gratitude, spoke 
to Faikenskiold confidentially of the preva- 
lent rumours, and tendered his services for 
the preservation of his former friend. Fai- 
kenskiold distrusted the advances of Rant- 
zau, and answered coldly, '■'• Speak to Stru- 
ensee:" Rantzau turned away, saying, "He 
will not listen to meP 

Two days afterwards, on the 16th of Janu- 
ary, 1772, there was a brilliant masked ball 
at Court, where the conspirators and their 
victims mingled in the festivities (as was 
observed by some foreign ministers present) 
with more than usual gaiety. At four o'clock 
in the morning, the Queen-Dowager, who 
was the King's step-mother, her son, and 
Count Rantzau, entered the King's bedcham- 
ber, compelled his valet to awaken him, and 
required him to sign an order to apprehend 
the Queen, the Counts Struensee and Brandt, 
who, with other conspirators, they pretended 
were then engaged in a plot to depose, if not 
to murder him. Christian is said to have 
hesitated, from fear or obstinacy, — perhaps 
from some remnant of humanity and moral 
restraint: but he soon yielded ; and his ver- 
bal assent, or perhaps a silence produced' by 
terror, was thought a sufficient warrant. 
Rantzau, with three officers, rushed with 
his sword drawn into the apartment of the 
Queen, compelled her to rise from her bed, 
and. in spite of her tears and threats, sent 
her, half-dressed, a prisoner to the fortress of 
Cronenbourg, together with her infant daugh- 
ter Louisa, whom she was then suckling, and 
Lady Mostyn, an English lady who attended 
her. Struensee and Brandt were in the same 
night thrown into prison, and loaded with 
irons. On the next day, the King was pa- 
raded through the streets in a carriage drawn 
by eight milk-white horses, as if triumphing 
after a glorious victory over his enemies, in 
which he had saved his country: the city 
was illuminated. The preachers of the Es- 
tablished Church are charged by several 
concurring witnesses with inhuman and un- 
christian invectives from the pulpit against 



220 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



the Queen and the fallen ministers ; the good, 
doubtless, believing too easily the tale of the 
victors, the base paying court to the dispen- 
sers of preferment, and the bigoted greedily 
swallowing the most incredible accusations 
against unbelievers. The populace, inflamed 
by these declamations, demolished or pil- 
laged from sixty to a hundred houses. 

Tin- conspirators distributed among them- 
selves the chief offices, The King was suf- 
fered to fall into his former nullity: the for- 
mality of his signature was dispensed with: 
and the affairs of the kingdom were conducted 
in his name, only till his son was of an age 
to assume the regency. Guldberg, under 
the modest title of "Secretary of the Cabi- 
net,"* became Prime Minister. Rantzau was 
appointed a Privy Councillor; and Osten re- 
tamed the department of Foreign Affairs: 
but it is consolatory to add, that, after a few 
months, both were discarded at the instance 
of the Court of Petersburgh, to complete the 
desired exchange of Holstein for Oldenburgh. 

The object of the conspiracy being thus 
accomplished, the conquerors proceeded, as 
usual, to those judicial proceedings against 
the prisoners, which are intended formally 
to justify the violence of a victorious faction, 
but substantially aggravate its guilt. A com- 
mission was appointed to try the accused : 
its leading members were the chiefs of the 
conspiracy. Guldberg, one of them, had to 
determine, by the sentence which he pro- 
nounced, whether he was himself a rebel. 
General Eichstedt, the president, had per- 
sonally arrested several of the prisoners, and 
"was, by his judgment on Struensee, who had 
been his benefactor, to decide, that the crimi- 
nality of that minister was of so deep a die 
as to cancel the obligations of gratitude. To 
secure his impartiality still more, he was ap- 
pointed a minister, and promised the office 
of preceptor of the hereditary prince, — the 
permanence of which appointments must 
nave partly depended on the general con- 
viction that the prisoners were guilty. 

The charges against Struensee and Brandt 
are dated on the 21st of April. The defence 
of Struensee was drawn up by his counsel 
on the 22d ; that of Brandt was prepared on 
the 23d. Sentence was pronounced against 
both on the 23d. On the 27th, it was ap- 
proved, and ordered to be executed by the 
King. On the 28th. after their right hands had 
been cut off on the scaffold, they were be- 
headed. For three months they had been 
closely and very cruelly imprisoned. The 
proceedings of the commission were secret : 
the prisoners were not confronted with each 
other; they heard no witnesses; they read 
no depositions; they did not appear to have 
seen any counsel till they had received the 
indictments. It is characteristic of this scene 
to add, that the King went to the Opeia on 
the 25th, after signifying his approbation of 
the sentence ; and that on the 27th, the day of 
its solemn confirmation, there was a masked 
ball at Court. On the day of the execution, 
the King again went to the Opera. The pas- 



sion which prompts an absolute monarch to 
raise an unworthy favourite to honour, is 
still less disgusting than the levity and hard- 
ness with which, on the first alarm, he always 
abandons the same favourite to destruction. 
It may be observed, that the very persons 
who had represented the patronage of operas 
and masquerades as one of the offences of 
Struensee, were the same who thus unsea- 
sonably paraded their unhappy Sovereign 
through a succession of such amusements. 

The Memoirs of Falkenskiold contain the 
written answers of Struensee to the prelimi- 
nary questions of the commission, the sub- 
stance of the charges against him, and the 
defence made by his counsel. The first 
were written on the 14th of April, when he 
was alone in a dungeon, with irons on his 
hands and feet, and an iron collar fastened 
to the wall round his neck. The Indictment 
is prefaced by a long declamatory invective 
against his general conduct and character, 
such as still dishonour the criminal proceed- 
ings of most nations, and from which Eng- 
land has probably been saved by the scho- 
lastic subtlety and dryness of her system 
of what is called "special pleading." Lay- 
ing aside his supposed connection with the 
Queen, which is reserved for a few separate 
remarks, the charges are either perfectly 
frivolous, or sufficiently answered by his 
counsel, in a defence which he was allowed 
only one day to prepare, and which bears 
evident marks of being written with the fear 
of the victorious faction before the eyes of 
the feeble advocate. One is, that he caused 
the young Prince to be trained so hardily as 
to endanger his life ; in answer to which, he 
refers to the judgment of physicians, appeals 
to the restored health of the young Prince, 
and observes, that even if he had been wrong, 
his fault could have been no more than an 
error of judgment. The truth is, that he was 
guilty of a ridiculous mimicry of the early 
education of Emile, at a time when all Eu- 
rope was intoxicated by the writings of 
Rousseau. To the second charge, that he 
had issued, on the 21st of December preced- 
ing, unknown to the King, an order for the 
incorporation of the Foot Guards with the 
troops of the line, and on their refusal to 
obey, had, on the 24th, obtained an order 
from him for their reduction, he answered,, 
that the draught of the order had been read 
and approved by the King on the 21st, signed 
and sealed by him on the 23d, and finally 
confirmed by the order for reducing the re- 
fractory Guards, as issued by his Majesty on 
the 24th ; so that he could scarcely be said to 
have been even in form guilty of a two days r 
usurpation. It might have been added, that 
it was immediately fully pardoned by the 
royal confirmation : that Rantzau, and others 
of his enemies, had taken an active share in 
it ; and that it was so recent, that the con- 
spirators must have resolved on their mea- 
sures before its occurrence. He was further 
charged with taking or granting exorbitant 
pensions ; and he answered, seemingly with, 



ADMINISTRATION AND FALL OF STRUENSEE. 



221 



truth, that they were not higher than those 
of his predecessors. He was accused also 
of having falsified the public accounts; to 
which his answer is necessarily too detailed 
for our purpose, but appears to be satisfac- 
tory. Both these last offences, if they had 
been committed, could not have been treated 
as high treason in any country not wholly 
barbarous; and the evidence on which the 
latter and more precise of the charges rested, 
was a declaration of the imbecile and im- 
prisoned King on an intricate matter of ac- 
count reported to him by an agent of the 
enemies of the prisoner. 

Thus stands the case of the unfortunate 
Struensee on all the charges but one, as it 
appears in the accusation which his enemies 
had such time and power to support, and on 
the defence made for him under such cruel 
disadvantages. That he was innocent of 
the political offences laid to his charge, is 
rendered highly probable by the Narrative 
of his Conversion, published soon after his 
execution by Dr. Munter, a divine of Copen- 
hagen, appointed by the Danish Government 
to attend him ;* a composition, which bears 
the strongest marks of the probity and sin- 
cerity of the writer, and is a perfect model 
of the manner in which a person, circum- 
stanced like Struensee, ought to be treated 
by a kind and considerate minister of religion. 
Men of all opinions, who peruse this narra- 
tive, must own that it is impossible, with 
more tenderness, to touch the wounds of a 
sufferer, to reconcile the agitated penitent to 
himself, to present religion as the consoler, 
not as the disturber of his dying moments, 
gently to dispose him to try his own actions 
by a higher test of morality, to fill his mind 
with indulgent benevolence towards his fel- 
low-men, and to exalt it to a reverential love 
of boundless perfection. Dr. Munter deserved 
the confidence of Struensee, and seems en- 
tirely to have won it. The unfortunate man 
freely owned his private licentiousness, his 
success in corrupting the principles of the 
victims of his desires, his rejection not only 
of religion, but also in theory, though not 
quite in feeling, of whatever ennobles and 
elevates the mind in morality, the impru- 
dence and rashness by which he brought 
ruin on his friends, and plunged his parents 
in deep affliction, and the ignoble and im- 
pure motives of all his public, actions, which, 
in the eye of reason, deprived them of that 
pretension to virtuous character, to which 
their outward appearance might seem to 
entitle them. He felt for his friends with 
unusual tenderness. Instead of undue con- 
cealment from Munter, he is, perhaps, charge- 
able with betraying to him secrets which 
were not exclusively his own : but he denies 
the truth of the political charges against him, 
— more especially those of peculation and 
falsification of accounts. 

The charges against Brandt would be alto- 



gether unworthy of consideration, were it 
not for the light which one of them throws 
on the whole of this atrocious procedure. 
The main accusation against him was, that 
he had beaten, flogged, and scratched the 
sacred person of the King. His answer was, 
that the King, who had a passion for wrest- 
ling ami boxing, had repeatedly challenged 
him to a match, and had severely beaten 
him five or six times; that he did not gratify 
his master's taste till after these provoca- 
tions; that two of the witnesses against him, 
servants of the King, had indulged their mas- 
ter in the same sport ; and that he received 
liberal gratifications, and continued to enjoy 
the royal favour for months after this pre- 
tended treason. The King inherited this 
perverse taste in amusements from his father, 
whose palace had been the theatre of the like 
kingly sports. It is impossible to entertain 
the least doubt of the truth of this defence : 
it affords a natural and probable explanation 
of a fact which would be otherwise incom- 
prehensible. 

A suit for divorce was commenced against 
the Queen, on the ground of criminal con- 
nection with Struensee, who was himself 
convicted of high treason for that connec- 
tion. This unhappy princess had been sac- 
rificed, at the age of seventeen, to the brutal 
caprices of a husband who, if he had been 
a private man, would have been deemed in- 
capable of the deliberate consent which is 
essential to marriage. She had early suf- 
fered from his violence, though she so far 
complied with his fancies as to ride with 
him in male apparel, — an indecorum for 
which she had been sharply reprehended by 
her mother, the Princess- Dowager of Wales, 
in a short interview between them, during a 
visit which the latter had paid to her brother 
at Gotha, after an uninterrupted residence 
of thirty-four years in England. The King 
had suffered the Russian minister at Copen- 
hagen to treat her with open rudeness; and 
had disgraced his favourite cousin, the Prince 
of Hesse, for taking her part. He had never 
treated her with common civility, till they 
were reconciled by Struensee, at that period 
of overflowing good-nature when that minis- 
ter obtained the recall from banishment of 
the ungrateful Rantzau. 

The evidence against her consisted of a 
number of circumstances (none of them in- 
capable of an innocent explanation) sworn to 
by attendants, who had been employed as 
spies on her conduct. She owned that she 
had been guilty of much imprudence; but 
in her dying moments she declared to M. 
Roques, pastor of the French church at Zell, 
that she never had been unfaithful to her 
husband.* It is true, that her own signature 
affixed to a confession was alleged against 
her : but if General Falkenskiold was rightly 
informed (for he has every mark of honest 
intention), that signature proves nothing but 



* Reprinted by the late learned and exemplary 
Mr. Rennell of Kensington. London, 1824. 



* Communicated by him to M. Secretan on the 
7th of March, 1780. 

T 2 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



the malice and cruelty of her enemies. 
Schack. the counsellor sent to interrogate 
her at Cronenbourg, was received by her 
with indignation when he spoke to her of 

connection with Struensee. When he showed 
Struensee"s confession to her, he artfully in- 
timated that the fallen minister would be 
subjected to a very cruel death if he was 
found to have falsely criminated the Queen. 
••What!"' she exclaimed; '-do you believe 
that if I was to confirm this declaration, I 
should save the life of that unfortunate 
man ?" Schack answered by a profound 
bow. The Queen took a pen, wrote the first 
syllable of her name, and fainted away. 
Schack completed the signature, and carried 
away the fatal document in triumph. 

Struensee himself, however, had confessed 
his intercourse to the Commissioners. It is 
saul that this confession was obtained by 
throats of torture, facilitated by some hope 
of life, and influenced by a knowledge that 
the proceeding against the Queen could not 
be carried beyond divorce. But his repeated 
and deliberate avowals to Dr. Munter do not 
(it must be owned) allow of such an expla- 
nation. Scarcely any supposition favourable 
to this unhappy princess remains, unless it 
should be thought likely, that as Dr. Milli- 
ter's Narrative was published under the eye 
of her oppressors, they might have caused 
the confessions of Struensee to be inserted 
in it by their own agents, without the con- 
sent — perhaps without the knowledge — of 
Munter; whose subsequent life is so little 
known, that we cannot determine whether 
he ever had the means of exposing the falsi- 
fication. It must be confessed, that internal 
evidence does not favour this hypothesis; 
for the passages of the Narrative, which con- 
tain the avowals of Struensee. have a striking 
appearance of genuineness. If Caroline be- 
trayed her sufferings to Struensee, — if she 
was led to a dangerous familiarity with a 
pleasing young man who had rendered es- 
sential services to her, — if mixed motives of 
confidence, gratitude, disgust, and indigna- 
tion, at last plunged her into an irretrievable 
fault, the reasonable and the virtuous will 
reserve their abhorrence for the conspirators 
who, for the purposes of their own ambition, 
punished her infirmity by ruin, endangered 
the succession to the crown, and disgraced 
their country in the eyes of Europe. It is 
difficult to contain the indignation which 
naturally arises from the reflection, that at 
this very time, and with a full knowledge of 
the fate of the Queen of Denmark, the Royal 
Marriage Act was passed in England, for the 
avowed purpose of preventing the only mar- 
riages of preference, which a princess, at 
least, has commonly the opportunity of form- 
ing. Of a monarch, who thought so much 
more of the pretended degradation of his 
i than of the cruel misfortunes of his 
sister, less cannot be said than that he must 
have had more pride than tenderness. Even 
the capital punishment of Struensee, for such 
an offence will be justly condemned by all 



but English lawyers, who ought to be silenced 
by the consciousness that the same barbar- 
ous disproportion of a penalty to an offence is 
sanctioned in tin' like case bytheirown law. 

Caroline Matilda died at Zell about three 
years after her imprisonment. The last 
tidings which reached the Princess-Dowa- 
ger of Wales on her death-bed, was the im- 
prisonment of this ill-fated daughter, which 
was announced to her in a letter dictated to 
the King of Denmark by his new masters, 
and subscribed with his own hand. Two 
days before her death, though in a state of 
agony, she herself wrote a letter to the nomi- 
nal sovereign, exhorting him to be at least 
indulgent and lenient towards her daughter. 
After hearing the news from Copenhagen she 
scarcely swallpwed any nourishment. The 
intelligence was said to have accelerated her 
death; but the dreadful malady* under 
which she suffered, neither needed the co- 
operation of sorrow, nor was of a nature to 
be much affected by it. 

What effects were produced by the inter- 
ference of the British Minister for the Queen ? 
— How far the conspirators were influenced 
by fear of the resentment of King George III.? 
— and, In what degree that monarch himself 
may have acquiesced in the measures finally 
adopted towards his sister? — are questions 
which must be answered by the historian 
from other sources than those from which we 
reason on the present occasion. The only 
legal proceeding ever commenced against 
the Queen was a suit for a divorce, which 
was in form perfectly regular : for in all 
Protestant countries but England, the offend- 
ed party is entitled to release from the bands 
of marriage by the ordinary tribunals. It 
is said that two legal questions were then 
agitated in Denmark, and "even occasioned 
great debates among the Commissioners : — 
1st. Whether the Queen, as a sovereign, 
could be legally tried by her subjects ; and, 
2dly, Whether, as a foreign princess, she 
was amenable to the law of Denmark?" 
But it is quite certain on general principles, 
(assuming thai no Danish law had made their 
Queen a partaker of the sovereign power, or 
otherwise expressly exempted her from legal 
responsibility.) that however high in dignity 
and honour, she was still a subject; and that 
as such, she, as well as every other person 
wherever born, resident in Denmark, was, 
during her residence at least, amenable to 
the laws of that country. 

It was certain that there was little proba- 
bility of hostility from England. Engaged 
in a contest with the people at home, and 
dreading the approach of a civil war with 
America, Lord North was not driven from an 
inflexible adherence to his pacific system by 
the Partition of Poland itself. An address 
for the production of the diplomatic corres- 
pondence respecting the French conquest, 
or purchase of Corsica, was moved in the 



* An affection of die throat which precluded 
the passage of all nourishment. — En. 



ADMINISTRATION AND FALL OF STRUENSEE. 



223 



House of Commons on the 17th of November. 
1768, for the purpose of condemning that 
unprincipled transaction, and with a view 
indirectly to blame the supineness of the 
English ministers respecting it. The motion 
was negatived by a majority of 230 to 84, on 
the same ground as that on which the like 
motions respecting Naples and Spain were 
resisted in 1822 and 1823 : — that such pro- 
posals were too little' if war was intended, 
and too much if it was not. The weight of 
authority, however, did not coincide with 
the power of numbers. Mr. Greenville, the 
most experienced statesman, and Mr. Burke, 
the man of greatest genius and wisdom in 
the House, voted in the minority, and argued 
in support of the motion. ' Such,' said the 
latter. ' was the general zeal for the Corsican, 
that if the Ministers would withdraw the 
Proclamation issued by Lord Bute's Govern- 
ment, forbidding British subjects to assist 
the Corsican c: rebels,"' (a measure similar 
to our Foreign Enlistment Act), ' private in- 
dividuals would supply the brave insurgents 
with sufficient means of defence.' The 
young Duke of Devonshire, then at Florence, 
had sent 400L to Corsica, and raised 2000/. 
more for the same purpose by a subscription 
among the English in Italy.* A Government 
which looked thus passively at such breaches 
of the system of Europe on occasions when 
the national feeling was favourable to a more 
generous, perhaps a more wise policy, would 
hardly have been diverted from its course by 
any indignities or outrages which a foreign 
Government could offer to an individual of 
however illustrious rank. Little, however, 
as the likelihood of armed interference by 
England was. the apprehension of it might 
have been sufficient to enable the more wary 
of the Danish conspirators to contain the rage 
of their most furious accomplices. The abi- 
lity and spirit displayed by Sir Robert Mur- 
ray Keith on behalf of the Queen was soon 
after rewarded by his promotion to the em- 
bassy at Vienna, always one of the highest 
places in English diplomacy. His vigorous 
remonstrances in some measure compensated 
for the timidity of his Government ; and he 
powerfully aided the cautious policy of Count 
Osten, who moderated the passions of his 
colleagues, though giving the most specious 
colour to their acts in his official correspon- 
dence with foreign Powers. 

Contemporary observers of enlarged minds 
considered these events in Denmark not so 
much as they affected individuals, or were 
connected with temporary policy, as in the 
higher light in which they indicated the 
character of nations, and betrayed the pre- 
valence of dispositions inauspicious to the 

* These particulars are not to be found in the 
printed debate, which copies the account of this 
discussion given in the Annual Register by Mr. 
Burke, written, like his other abstracts of Parlia- 
mentary proceedings, with the brevity and reserve, 
produced by his situation as one of the most im- 
portant parties in the argument, and by the severe 
notions then prevalent on such publications. 



prospects of mankind. None of the un- 
avowed writings of Mr. Burke, and perhaps 
few of his acknowledged ones, exhibit more 
visible marks of his hand than the History 
of Europe in the Annual Register of 1772, 
which opens with a philosophical and elo- 
quent vindication of the policy which watch- 
ed over the balance of power, and with a 
prophetic display of the evils which were to 
flow from the renunciation of that policy by 
France and England, in sufferinn; the parti- 
tion of Poland. The little transactions of 
Denmark, which were despised by many as 
a petty and obscure intrigue, and affected 
the majority only as a part of the romance 
or tragedy of real life, appeared to the phi- 
losophical statesman pregnant with melan- 
choly instruction. ''It has," says he, "been 
too hastily and too generally received as an 
opinion with the most eminent writers, and 
from them too carelessly received by the 
world, thai the Northern nations, at all times 
and without exception, have been passionate 
admirers of liberty, and tenacious to an ex- 
treme of their rights. A little attention will 
show that this opinion ought to be received 
with many restrictions. Sweden and Den- 
mark have, within little more than a century, 
given absolute demonstration to the contrary ; 
and the vast nation of the Russes, who over- 
spread so great a part of the North, have, 
at all times, so long as their name has been 
known, or their acts remembered by r history, 
been incapable of any other than a despotic 
government. And notwithstanding the con- 
tempt in which we hold the Eastern nations, 
and the slavish disposition we attribute to 
them, it may be found, if we make a due 
allowance for the figurative style and man- 
ner of the Orientals, that the official papers, 
public acts, and speeches, at the Courts of 
Petersburgh, Copenhagen, and Stockholm, 
are in as unmanly a strain of servility and 
adulation as those of the most despotic of the 
Asiatic governments." 

It was doubtless an error to class Russia 
with the Scandinavian nations, merely be- 
cause they were both comprehended within 
the same parallels of latitude. The Russians 
differ from them in race. — a circumstance 
always to be considered, though more liable 
to be exaggerated or underrated, than any 
other which contributes to determine the 
character of nations. No Sarmatian people 
has ever been free. The Russians profess a 
religion, founded on the blindest submission 
of the understanding, which is, in their mo- 
dern modification of it, directed to their 
temporal sovereign. They were for ages the 
slaves of Tartars : the larger part of their 
dominions is Asiatic ; and they were, till 
lately, with justice, more regarded as an 
Eastern than as a Western nation. But the 
nations of Scandinavia were of that Teutonic 
race, who were the founders of civil liberty : 
they early embraced the Reformation, which 
ought to have taught them the duty of exer- 
cising reason freely on every subject : and 
their spirit has never been broken by a 



224 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



foreign yoke. Writing in the year when 
despotism was established in Sweden, and 
its baneful effects so strikingly exhibited in 
Denmark, Mr. Burke may be excused for 
comparing these then unhappy countries 
with those vast regions of Asia which have 
been the immemorial seat of slavery. The 
revolution which we have been considering, 
shows the propriety of the parallel in all its 
Via its. It' it only proved that absolute power 
corrupts the tyrant, there are many too de- 
based to dread it on that account. But it 
shows him at Copenhagen, as at Ispahan, 
reduced to personal insignificance, a pageant 
occasionally exhibited by his ministers, or 
a tool in their hands, compelled to do what- 
ever suits their purpose, without power to 
save the life even of a minion, and without 
security, in cases of extreme violence, for 
his own. Nothing can more clearly prove 
that under absolute monarchy, good laws, 
if they could by a miracle be framed, must 
always prove utterly vain ; that civil cannot 
exist without political liberty; and that the 
detestable distinction, lately attempted in 
this country by the advocates of intolerance,* 
between freedom and political power, never 
can be allowed in practice without, in the 
first instance, destroying all securities for 
good government, and very soon introducing 
every species of corruption and oppression. 

The part of Mr. Burke's History, which 
we have quoted, is followed by a memorable 
passage which seems, in later times, to have 
escaped the notice both of his opponents and 
adherents, and was probably forgotten by 
himself. After speaking of the final victory 
of Louis XV. over the French Parliaments, 
of whom he says, l: that their fate seems to 
be finally decided,! and the few remains of 
public liberty that were preserved in these 
illustrious bodies are now no more," he pro- 
ceeds to general reflection on the condition 
and prospects of Europe. "In a word, if 
we seriously consider the mode of support- 
ing great standing armies, which becomes 
daily more prevalent, it will appear evident, 
that nothing less than a convulsion that will 
•shake the globe to its centre, can ever restore 
the European nations to that liberty by which 
they were once so much distinguished . The 
Western world was its seat until another 
more western was discovered : and that other 
will probably be its asylum when it is hunted 
down in every other part of the world. Happy 
it is that the worst of times may have one 
refuge left for humanity." 

This passage is not so much a prophecy 
of the French Revolution, as a declaration 
that without a convulsion as deep and dread- 
ful as that great event, the European nations 
had no chance of being restored to their an- 

* This was written in 1326. — Ed. 

t They were re-estahlished four years after- 
wards : tint as this arose, not from the spirit of 
the nation, hut from the advisers of the young 
King, who had full power to grant or withhold 
their lestoration, the want of foresight is rather 
apparent than substantial. 



cient dignity and their natural rights. Had 
it been written after, or at least soon after 
the event, it might have been blamed as in- 
dicating too little indignation against guilt, 
and compassion for suffering. Even when con- 
sidered as referring to the events of a distant 
futurity, it may be charged with a pernicious 
exaggeration, which seems to extenuate re- 
volutionary horrors by representing them as 
inevitable, and by laying it down falsely that 
Wisdom and Virtue can find no other road to 
Liberty. It would, however, be very unjust 
to charge such a purpose on Mr. Burke, or 
indeed to impute such a tendency to his de- 
sponding anticipations. He certainly appears 
to have foreseen that the progress of despo- 
tism would at length provoke a general and 
fearful resistance, the event of which, with 
a wise scepticism, he does not dare to foretel ; 
rather, however, as a fond, and therefore 
fearful, lover of European liberty, foreboding 
that she will be driven from her ancient 
seats, and leave the inhabitants of Europe 
to be numbered with Asiatic slaves. The 
fierceness of the struggle he clearly saw, 
and most distinctly predicts; for he knew 
that the most furious passions of human na- 
ture would be enlisted on both sides. He 
does not conclude, from this dreadful pros- 
pect, that the chance of liberty ought to be 
relinquished rather than expose a country to 
the probability or possibility of such a con- 
test; but, on the contrary, very intelligibly 
declares by the melancholy tone in which he 
adverts to the expulsion of Liberty, that 
every evil is to be hazarded for her preser- 
vation. It would be well if his professed 
adherents would bear in mind, that such is 
the true doctrine of most of those whom 
they dread and revile as incendiaries. The 
friends of freedom only profess that those 
who have recourse to the only remaining 
means of preserving or acquiring liberty, 
are not morally responsible for the evils 
which may arise in an inevitable combat. 

The Danish dominions continued to be 
administered in the name of Christian VII., 
for the long period of thirty-six years after 
the deposition of Struensee. The mental 
incapacity under which he always laboured, 
was not formally recognised till the associa- 
tion of his son, now King of Denmark, with 
him in the government. He did not cease 
to breathe till 1808, after a nominal reign of 
forty-three years, and an animal existence 
of near sixty. During the latter part of that 
period, the real rulers of the country were 
wise and honest men. It enjo3 - ed a consi- 
derable interval of prosperity under the ad- 
ministration of BernstorfT, whose merit in 
forbearing to join the coalition against France 
in 1793, is greatly enhanced by his personal 
abhorrence of the Revolution. His adoption 
of Reverdil's measures of enfranchisement, 
sheds the purest glory on his name. 

The fate of Denmark, after the ambition 
of Napoleon had penetrated into the North, — 
the iniquity with which she was stripped by- 
Russia of Norway, for adherence to an al- 



CASE OF DONNA MARIA. 



225 



liance which Russia had compelled her to 
join, and as a compensation to Sweden for 
Finland, of which Sweden had been robbed 
by Russia, are events too familiarly known 
to be recounted here. She is now no more 
than a principality, whose arms are still sur- 
mounted by a royal crown. A free and po- 
pular government, under the same wise ad- 
ministration, might have arrested many of 
these calamities, and afforded a new proof 
that the attachment of a people to a govern- 
ment in which they have a palpable interest 
and a direct share, is the most secure foun- 
dation of defensive strength. 

The political misfortunes of Denmark dis- 
prove the commonplace opinion, that all en- 
slaved nations deserve their fate : for the 
moral and intellectual qualities of the Danes 
seem to qualify them for the firm and pru- 
dent exercise of the privileges of freemen. 
All those by whom they are well known, 



commend their courage, honesty, and indus- 
try. The information of the labouring classes 
has made a considerable progress since their 
enfranchisement. Their literature, like that 
of the Northern nations, has generally been 
dependent on that of Germany, with which 
country they are closely connected in lan- 
guage and religion. In the last half century, 
they have made persevering efforts to build 
up a national literature. The resistance of 
their fleet in 1801. has been the theme of 
many Danish poets ; but we believe that 
they have been as unsuccessful in their bold 
competition with Campbell, as their mariners 
in their gallant contest with Nelson. How- 
ever, a poor and somewhat secluded country, 
with a small and dispersed population, which 
has produced Tycho Brahe, Oehlenschla:ger, 
and Thorwaldsen, must be owned to have 
contributed her full contingent to the intel- 
lectual greatness of Europe. 



STATEMENT OF THE CASE 

OF 

DONNA MARIA DA GLORIA, 

AS 

A CLAIMANT TO THE CROWN OF PORTUGAL.* 



Before the usurpation of Portugal by 
Philip II. of Spain in 1580, the Portuguese 
nation, though brilliantly distinguished in 
arts and arms, and as a commercial and 
maritime power, in some measure filling up 
the interval between the decline of Venice 
and the rise of Holland, had not yet taken a 
place in the political system of Europe. 
From the restoration of her independence 
under the House of Braganza in 1640, to the 
peace of Utrecht, Spain was her dangerous 
enemy, and France, the political opponent 
of Spain, was her natural protector. Her re- 
lation to France was reversed as soon as a 
Bourbon King was seated on the throne of 
Spain. From that moment the union of the 
two Bourbon monarchies gave her a neigh- 
bour far more formidable than the Austrian 
princes who had slumbered for near a cen- 
tury at the Escurial. It became absolutely 
necessary for her safety that she should 
strengthen herself against this constantly 
threatening danger by an alliance, which, 
being founded in a common and permanent 
interest, might be solid and durable. Eng- 
land, the political antagonist of France, 

* From the Edinburgh Review, vol. xlv. p. 
202.— Ed. 

29 



whose safety would be endangered by every 
aggrandizement of the House of Bourbon, 
and who had the power of rapidly succour- 
ing Portugal, without the means of oppress- 
ing her independence, was evidently the 
only state from which friendship and aid, at 
once effectual, safe, and lasting, could be 
expected : — hence the alliance between Eng- 
land and Portugal, and the union, closer than 
can be created by written stipulations, be- 
tween these two countries. 

The peril, however, was suspended during 
forty years of the dissolute and unambitious 
government of Louis XV. till the year 1761, 
when, by the treaty known under the name 
of the • Family Compact,' the Due de Choiseul 
may be justly said (to borrow the language 
of Roman ambition) to have reduced Spain 
to the form of a province. A separate and 
secret convention was executed on the same 
day ( 15th of August), by which it was agreed, 
that if England did not make peace with 
France by the 1st of May, 1762. Spain should 
then declare war against the former power. 
The sixth article fully disclosed the magni- 
tude of the danger which, from that moment 
to this, has hung over the head of Portugal. 
His Most Faithful Majesty was to be desired 
to accede to the convention ; M it not being 



226 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



just," in the judgment of these royal jurists, 
"that he should remain a tranquil spectator 
of the disputes of the two Courts with Eng- 
land, and continue to enrich ihe enemies of 
the two Sovereigns, by keeping his ports 
open to them." The King of Portugal re- 
fused to purchase a temporary exemption 
from attack by a surrender of his independ- 
ence. The French and Spanish Ministers 
declared, •• that the Portuguese alliance with 
England, though called 'defensive.' became 
in reality offensive, from the situation of the 
Portuguese dominions, and from the nature 
of the English power."'* A war ensued, — 
being probably the first ever waged against 
a country, on the avowed ground of its geo- 
graphical position. It was terminated by 
the Treaty of Paris in 1763, without, how- 
ever, any proposition on the part of France 
and Spain that Portugal should be cut away 
from the Continent, and towed into the 
neighbourhood of Madeira, — where perhaps 
she might re-enter on her right as an inde- 
pendent state to observe neutrality, and to 
provide for her security by defensive alli- 
ances. This most barefaced act of injustice 
might be passed over here in silence, if it 
did not so strongly illustrate the situation of 
Portugal, since Spain became a dependent 
ally of France ; and if we could resist the 
temptation of the occasion to ask whether 
the authors of such a war were as much less 
ambitious than Napoleon, as they were be- 
neath him in valour and genius. 

In the American war, it does not appear 
that any attempt was made, on principles of 
geography, to compel Portugal to make war 
on England. t The example of the Family 
Compact, however, was not long barren. As 
soon as the French Republic had re-esta- 
blished the ascendant of France at Madrid, 
they determined to show that they inherited 
the principles as well as the sceptre of their 
monarchs. Portugal, now overpowered, was 
compelled to cede Olivenza to Spain, and to 
shut her ports on English ships.! Thus ter- 
minated the second war made against her 
to oblige her to renounce the only ally capa- 
ble of assisting her, and constantly interested 
in her preservation. But these compulsory 
treaties were of little practical importance, 
being immediately followed by the Peace of 
Amiens. They only furnished a new proof 
that the insecurity of Portugal essentially 
arose from the dependence of Spain on France, 
and could not be lessened by any change in 
the government of the latter country. 

When the war, or rather wars, against 
universal monarchy broke out, the Regent 
of Portugal declared the neutrality of his do- 



* Note of Don Joseph Torrero and Don Jac- 
ques O'Dun, Lisbon, 1st April, 1762. — Annual 
Register. 

t Portugal did indeed accede to the Armed 
Neutrality ; but it was not till the 15th of July, 
1782, on the eve of a general peace. — Martens, 
Recuril de Train's, vol. ii. p. 208. 

t By the Treaty between France and Spain of 
the 19th August, 179C— Martens, vol. vi. p. 656. 



minions.* For four years he was indulged 
in the exercise of this right of an independ- 
ent prince, in spite of the geographical posi- 
tion of the kingdom. At the end of that 
period the 'geographical principle' was en- 
forced against him more fully and vigor- 
ous! v than on the former instances of its ap- 
plication. The Portuguese monarchy was 
confiscated and partitioned in a secret con- 
vention between France and Spain, executed 
at Fontainebleau on the 27th of October, 
1807, by which considerable parts of its con- 
tinental territory were granted to the Prince 
of the Peace, and to the Spanish Princess, 
then called Queen of Etruria, in sovereignty, 
but as feudatories of the crown of Spain. t 
A French army under Junot marched against 
Portugal, and the Royal Family were com- 
pelled, in November following, to embark for 
Brazil; a measure which was strongly sug- 
gested by the constant insecurity to which 
European Portugal was doomed by the Fa- 
mily Compact, and which had been seriously 
entertained by the Government since the 
treaty of Badajoz. 

The events which followed in the Spanish 
Peninsula are too memorable to be more 
than alluded to. Portugal was governed by 
a Regency nominated by the King. The 
people caught the generous spirit of the 
Spaniards, took up arms against the con- 
querors, and bravely aided the English army 
to expel them. The army, delivered from 
those unworthy leaders to whom the abuses 
of despotism had subjected them, took an 
ample share in the glorious march from 
Torres Vedras to Toulouse, which forms one 
of the most brilliant pages in history. 

The King opened the ports of his American 
territories to all nations ; — a measure in him 
of immediate necessity, but fraught with mo- 
mentous consequences. He cemented his 
ancient relations with Great Britain (which 
geography no longer forbade) by new trea- 
ties; and he bestowed on Brazil a separate 
administration, with the title of a kingdom. 
The course of events in the spring of 1814 
had been so rapid, that there was no minis- 
ter in Europe authorized to represent the 
Court of Rio Janeiro at the Treaty of Paris : 
but so close was the alliance with England 
then deemed, that Lord Castlereagh took it 
upon him, on the part of Portugal, to stipu- 
late for the restoration of French Guiana, 
which had been conquered by the Portuguese 
arms. At the Congress of Vienna in the fol- 
lowing year, the Portuguese plenipotentiaries 
protested against the validity of this restora- 
tion, and required the retrocession of Oliven- 
za, which had been wrested from them at 
Badajoz, in a war in which they had been 
the allies of England. The good offices of 
the European powers to obtain this last resto- 



* Treaties of Badajoz, 6th of June; of Madrid, 
20th of September, 1801.— Martens, Supplement, 
vol. ii. pp. 340, 539. 

t Schoell, Histoire Abregee des Traites de 
Paix, &c, vol. ix. p. 110. 



CASE OF DONNA MARIA. 



ration were then solemnly promised, but have 
hitherto been in vain. 

In 1816, John VI. refused to return to Lis- 
bon, though a squadron under Sir John Be- 
resford had been sent to convey him thither; 
partly because he was displeased at the dis- 
regard of his rights, shown by the Congress 
of Vienna; partly because the unpopularity 
of the Commercial Treaty had alienated him 
from England ; but probably still more ; be- 
cause he was influenced by the visible 
growth of a Brazilian party which now aimed 
at independence. Henceforward, indeed, the 
separation manifestly approached. The Por- 
tuguese of Europe began to despair of seeing 
the seat of the monarchy at Lisbon ; the Re- 
gency were without strength; all appoint- 
ments were obtained from the distant Court 
of Rio Janeiro ; men and money were drawn 
away for the Brazilian war on the Rio de la 
Plata ; the army left behind was unpaid : in 
fine, all the materials of formidable discon- 
tent were heaped up in Portugal, when, in 
the beginning of 1820, the Spanish Revolu- 
tion broke out. Six months elapsed without 
a spark having fallen in Portugal. Marshal 
Beresford went to Rio Janeiro to solicit the 
interference of the King : but that Prince 
made no effort to prevent the conflagration ; 
and perhaps no precaution would then have 
been effectual. 

In August, the garrison of Oporto declared 
for a revolution,; and being joined on their 
march to the Capital by all the troops on 
their line, were received with open arms by 
the garrison of Lisbon. It was destined to 
bestow on Portugal a still more popular con- 
stitution than that of Spain. With what 
prudence or justice the measures of the 
popular leaders in the south of Europe were 
conceived or conducted, it is happily no part 
of our present business to inquire. Those 
who openly remonstrated against their errors 
when they seemed to be triumphant, are 
under no temptation to join the vulgar cry 
against the fallen. The people of Portugal, 
indeed, unless guided by a wise and vigor- 
ous Government, were destined by the very 
nature of things, in any political change made 
at that moment, to follow the course of Spain. 
The Regency of Lisbon, by the advice of a 
Portuguese Minister,* at once faithful to his 
Sovereign, and friendly to the liberty of his 
country, made an attempt to stem the tor- 
rent, by summoning an assembly of the 
Cortes. The attempt was too late ; but it 
pointed to the only means of saving the 
monarchy. 

The same Minister, on his arrival in Bra- 
zil, at the end of the year, advised the King 
to send his eldest son to Portugal as Viceroy, 
with a constitutional charter; recommend- 
ing also the assembling of the most respect- 
able Brazilians at Rio Janeiro, to consider of 
the improvements which seemed practicable 
in Brazil. But while these honest, and not 
unpromising counsels, were the objects of 

* Count Palmella.— Ed. 



longer discussions than troublous times allow, 
a revolution broke out in Brazil, in the spring 
of 1821, the first professed object of which 
was, not the separation of that country, but 
the adoption of the Portuguese Constitution. 
It was acquiesced in by the King, and es- 
poused with the warmth of youth, by his 
eldest sou Don Pedro. But in April, the King, 
disquieted by the commotions which encom- 
passed him, determined to return to Lisbon, 
and to leave the conduct of the American 
revolution to his son. Even on the voyage 
he was advised to slop at the Azores, as a 
place where he might negotiate with more 
independence : but he rejected this counsel ; 
and on his arrival in the Tagus, on the 3d of 
July, nothing remained but a surrender at 
discretion. The revolutionary Cortes were 
as tenacious of the authority of the mother 
country, as the Royal Administration ; and 
they accordingly recalled the Heir-apparent 
to Lisbon. But the spirit of independence 
arose among the Brazilians, who, encouraged 
by the example of the Spanish-Americans, 
presented addresses to the Prince, beseech- 
ing him not to yield to the demands of the 
Portuguese Assembly, who desired to make 
him a prisoner, as they had made his father; 
but, by assuming the crown of Brazil, to pro- 
vide for his own safety, as well as for their 
liberty. In truth it is evident, that he neither 
could have continued in Brazil without ac- 
ceding to the popular desire, nor could have 
then left it without insuring the destruction 
of monarchy in that country. He acquiesced 
therefore in the prayer of these flattering 
petitions : the independence of Brazil was 
proclaimed; and the Portuguese monarchy 
was finally dismembered. 

In the summer of 1823, the advance of the 
French army into Spain, excited a revolt of 
the Portuguese Royalists. The infant Don 
Miguel, the King's second son. attracted 
notice, by appearing at the head of a bat- 
talion who declared against the Constitution; 
and the inconstant soldiery, equally ignorant 
of the object of their revolts against the King 
or the Cortes, were easily induced to over- 
throw the slight work of their own hands. 
Even in the moment of victory, however, 
John VI. solemnly promised a free govern- 
ment to the Portuguese nation.* A few 
weeks afterwards, he gave a more delibe- 
rate and decisive proof of what was then 
thought necessary for the security of the 
throne, and the well-being of the people, by 
a Royal Decree,! which, after pronouncing 
the nullity of the constitution of the Cortes, 
proceeds as follows: — "Conformably to my 
feelings, and the sincere promises of my 
Proclamations, and considering that the an- 
cient fundamental laws of the monarchy can- 
not entirely answer my paternal purposes, 
without being accommodated to the present 
state of civilization, to the mutual relation? 



* Proclamations from Villa Francha of the 31r. 
of May and 3d of June. 
t Of the 18th of June. 



228 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



)f the different parts which compose the 
monarchy, and to the form of representative 
governments established in Europe, I have 
appointed a Junta to prepare the plan of a 
charter of the fundamental laws of the Portu- 
guese monarchy, which shall be founded on 
the principles of public law. and open the 
way to a progressive reformation of the ad- 
ministration." 

Count Palmella was appointed President 
of this Junta, composed of the most dis- 
tinguished men in the kingdom. They com- 
pleted theirwork in a few months; and pre- 
sented to the King the plan of a Constitu- 
tional Charter, almost exactly the same with 
that granted in 1826 by Don Pedro. John 
VI. was favourable to it, considering it as 
an adaptation of the ancient fundamental 
laws to present circumstances. While the 
revolution was triumphant, the more reason- 
able Royalists regretted that no attempt had 
been made to avoid it by timely concession ; 
and in the first moment of escape, the re- 
mains of the same feelings disposed the 
Court to concede something. But after a 
short interval of quiet, the possessors of au- 
thority relapsed into the ancient and fatal 
error of their kind, — that of placing their 
security in maintaining the unbounded power 
which had proved their ruin. A resistance 
to the form of the constitution, which grew 
up in the interior of the Court, was fostered 
by foreign intiuence, and after a struggle of 
some months, prevented the promulgation 
of the charter. 

In April 1824, events occurred at Lisbon, 
on wdiich we shall touch as lightly as possi- 
ble. It is well known that part of the gar- 
rison of Lisbon surrounded the King's palace, 
and hindered the access of his servants to 
him ; that some of his ministers were im- 
prisoned ; that the diplomatic body, including 
the Papal Nuncio, the French Ambassador, 
and the Russian as well as English Ministers, 
were the means of restoring him to some 
degree of liberty, which was however so 
imperfect and insecure, that, by the advice 
of the French Ambassador, the King took 
refuge on board an English ship of war lying 
in the Tagus, from whence he was at length 
able to assert his dignity and re-establish his 
authority. Over the part in these transac- 
tions, into which evil counsellors betrayed 
the inexperience of Don Miguel, it is pecu- 
liarly proper to throw a veil, in imitation of 
his father, who forgave these youthful faults 
as -involuntary errors.' This proof of the 
unsettled state of the general opinion and 
feeling respecting the government, suggest- 
ed the necessity of a conciliatory measure, 
which might in some measure compensate 
for the defeat of the Constitutional Charter in 
the preceding year. The Minister who, 
both in Europe and in America, had attempt- 
ed to avert revolution by reform, was not 
wanting to his sovereign and his country at 
this crisis. Still counteracted by foreign in- 
fluence, and opposed by a colleague who 
was a personal favourite of the King, he 



could not again propose the Charter, nor 
even obtain so good a substitute for it as 
he desired : but he had the merit of being 
always ready to do the best practicable. By 
his counsel, the King issued a Proclamation 
on the 4th of June, for restoring the ancient 
constitution of the Portuguese monarchy, 
with assurances that an assembly of the 
Cortes, or Three Estates of the Realm, should 
be speedily held with all their legal rights, 
and especially with the privilege of laying 
before the King, for his consideration, the 
heads of such measures as they might deem 
necessary for the public good. To that as- 
sembly was referred the consideration of the 
periodical meetings of succeeding Cortes, 
and 'the means of progressively ameliorating 
the administration of the state.' The pro- 
clamation treats this re-establishment of the 
ancient constitution as being substantially 
the same with the Constitutional Charter 
drawn up by the Junta in the preceding 
year ; and it was accordingly followed by a 
Decree, dissolving that Junta, as having per- 
formed its office. Though these represen- 
tations were not scrupulously true, yet when 
we come to see what the rights of the Cortes 
were in ancient times, the language of the 
Proclamation will not be found to deviate 
more widely into falsehood than is usual in 
the preambles of Acts of State. Had the 
time for the convocation of the Cortes been 
fixed, the restoration of the ancient constitu- 
tion might, without much exaggeration, have 
been called the establishment of liberty. For 
this point the Marquis Palmella made a 
struggle : but the King thought that he had 
done enough, in granting such a pledge to 
the Constitutionalists, and was willing to 
soothe the Absolutists, by reserving to him- 
self the choice of a time. On the next day 
he created a Junta, to prepare, ' without loss 
of time,' the regulations necessary ' for the 
convocation of the Cortes, and for the elec- 
tion of the members.' As a new proof of 
the growing conviction that a free constitu- 
tion was necessary, and as a solemn promise 
that it should be established, the Declaration 
of the 4th of June is by no means inferior in 
force to its predecessors. Nay. in that light, 
it may be considered as deriving additional 
strength from those appearances of reserve 
and reluctance which distinguish it from the 
more ingenious, and really more politic De- 
clarations of 1823. But its grand defect was 
of a practical nature, and consisted in the 
opportunity which indefinite delay affords, 
for evading the performance of a promise. 

Immediately after the counter-revolution 
in 1823, John VI. had sent a mission to Rio 
Janeiro, requiring the submission of his son 
and his Brazilian subjects. But whatever 
might be the wishes of Don Pedro, he had 
no longer the power to transfer the allegiance 
of a people who had tasted independence, — 
who were full of the piide of their new ac- 
quisition, — who valued it as their only secu- 
rity against the old monopoly, and who may 
well be excused for thinking it more advan- 



CASE OF DONNA MARIA. 



229 



tageous to name at home the officers of their 
own government, than to receive rulers and 
magistrates from the intrigues of courtiers at 
Lisbon. Don Pedro could not restore to 
Portugal her American empire ; but he might 
easily lose Brazil in the attempt. A nego- 
tiation was opened at London, in the year 
1825, under the mediation of Austria and 
England. The differences between the two 
branches of the House of Braganza were, it 
must be admitted, peculiarly untractable. 
Portugal was to surrender her sovereignty, 
or Brazil to resign her independence. Union, 
on equal terms, was equally objected to by 
both. It was evident that no amicable issue 
of such a negotiation was possible, which did 
not involve acquiescence in the separation ; 
and the very act of undertaking the media- 
tion, sufficiently evinced that this event was 
contemplated by the mediating Powers. 
The Portuguese minister in London, Count 
Villa-Real, presented projects which seemed 
to contain every concession short of inde- 
pendence : but the Brazilian deputies who, 
though not admitted to the conference, had 
an unofficial intercourse with the British 
Ministers, declared, as might be expected, 
that nothing short of independence could be 
listened to. It was agreed, therefore, that 
Sir Charles Stuart, who was then about to 
go to Rio Janeiro to negotiate a treaty be- 
tween England and Brazil, should take Lis- 
bon on his way, and endeavour to dispose 
the Portuguese Government to consent to a 
sacrifice which could no longer be avoided. 
He was formally permitted by his own Go- 
vernment to accept the office of Minister 
Plenipotentiary from Portugal to Brazil, if it 
should be proposed to him at Lisbon. Cer- 
tainly no man could be more fitted for this 
delicate mediation, both by his extraordinary 
knowledge of the ancient constitution of 
Portugal, ami by the general confidence 
which he had gained while a minister of the 
Regency during the latter years of the war. 
After a series of conferences with the Count 
de Porto Santo, Minister for Foreign Affairs, 
which continued from the 5th of April to the 
23d of May, and in the course of which two 
points were considered as equally under- 
stood, — that John VI. should cede to Don 
Pedro the sovereignty of Brazil, and that 
Don Pedro should preserve his undisputed 
right as heir of Portugal, — he set sail for Rio 
Janeiro, furnished with full powers, as well 
as instructions, and more especially with 
Royal Letters- Patent of John VI., to be de- 
livered on the conclusion of an amicable ar- 
rangement, containing the following import- 
ant and decisive clause : — " And as the suc- 
cession of the Imperial and Royal Crowns 
belongs to my beloved son Don Pedro, I do, 
by these Letters-Patent, cede and transfer to 
him the full exercise of sovereignty in the 
empire of Brazil, which is to be governed by 
him ; nominating him Emperor of Brazil, 
and Prince Royal of Portugal and the Al- 
garves." 

A treaty was concluded on the 29th of 



August, by Sir Charles Stuart, recognising 
the independence and separation of Brazil ; 
acknowledging the sovereignty of that coun- 
try to be vested in Don Pedro ; allowing the 
King of Portugal also to assume the Imperial 
title; binding the Emperor of Brazil to reject 
the offer of any Portuguese colony to be in- 
corporated with his dominions j and contain- 
ing some other stipulations usual in treaties 
of peace. It was ratified at Lisbon, on the 5th 
of November following, by Letters- Patent,* 
from which, at the risk of some repetition, it 
is necessary to extract two clauses, the de- 
cisive importance of which will be shortly 
seen. " I have ceded and transferred to my 
beloved son Don Pedro de Alcantara, heir 
and successor of these kingdoms, all my 
rights over that country, recognising its in- 
dependence with the title of empire." "We 
recognise our said son Don Pedro de Alcan- 
tara, Prince of Portugal and the Algarves, as 
Emperor, and having the exercise of sove- 
reignty in the whole empire." 

The part of this proceeding which is in- 
tended to preserve the right of succession to 
the crown of Portugal to Don Pedro, is 
strictly conformable to diplomatic usage, and 
to the principles of the law of nations. 
Whatever relates to the cession of a claim is 
the proper subject of agreement between 
the parties, and is therefore inserted in the 
treaty. The King of Portugal, the former 
Sovereign of Brazil, cedes his rights or pre- 
tensions in that country to his son. He re- 
leases all his former subjects from their alle- 
giance. He abandons those claims which 
alone could give him any colour or pretext 
for interfering in the internal affairs of that 
vast region. Nothing could have done this 
effectually, solemnly, and notoriously, but 
the express stipulation of a treaty. Had Don 
Pedro therefore been at the same thne un- 
derstood to renounce his right of succession 
to the crown of Portugal, an explicit stipula- 
tion in the treaty to that effect would have 
been necessary : for such a renunciation 
would have been the cession of a right. Had 
it even been understood, that the recognition 
of his authority as an independent monarch 
implied the abdication of his rights as heir- 
apparent to the Portuguese crown, it would 
have been consonant to the general tenor of 
the treaty, explicitly to recognise this abdica- 
tion. The silence of the treaty is a proof 
that none of the parties to it considered these 
rights as taken away or impaired, by any- 
previous or concomitant circumstance. Sti- 
pulations were necessary when the state of 
regal rights was to be altered ; but they 
would be at least impertinent where it re- 
mained unchanged. Silence is in the latter 
case sufficient: since, where nothing is to 
be done, nothing needs be said. There is 
no stipulation in the treaty, by which Don 
Pedro acknowledges the sovereignty of his 
father in Portugal; because that sovereignty 
is left in the same condition in which it was 



Gazeta de Lisbon, of the 15th of Novembei 

u 



230 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



before. For the very same reason the treaty 
has no article for the preservation of Don 
Pedro's right of succession to Portugal. Had 
Don Pedro required a stipulation in the treaty 
for the maintenance of these rights, he would 
have done an act which would have tended 
more to bring them into question, than to 
Strengthen them. As they were rights which 
John VI. oould not take away, it was fit and 
wise to treat them also as rights which no 
act of his could bestow or confirm, 

But though a provision for the preservation 
of these rights in the treaty was needless, 
and would have been altogether misplaced, 
there were occasions on which the recogni- 
tion of them was fit, and, as a matter of 
abundant caution, expedient. These occa- 
sions are accordingly not passed over. The 
Kinii' of Portugal styles Don Pedro the heir 
of Portugal, both in the first Letters-Patent, 
addressed to his Brazilian subjects, in which 
he recognises the independence of Brazil, 
and in the second, addressed to his Portu- 
guese subjects, where he ratifies the treaty 
which definitively established that independ- 
ence. Acknowledged to be the monarch, 
and for the time the lawgiver of Portugal, 
and necessarily in these acts, claiming the 
same authority in Brazil, he announces to 
the people of both countries that the right 
of his eldest son to inherit the crown was, in 
November 1825, inviolate, unimpaired, un- 
questioned. 

The ratifications are, besides, a portion of 
the treaty ; and when they are exchanged, 
they become as much articles of agreement 
between the parties, as any part of it which 
bears that name. The recognition repeated 
in this Ratification proceeded from John VI., 
and was accepted by Don Pedro. Nothing 
but express words could have taken away 
so important a right as that of succession to 
the crown : in this case, there are express 
words which lecognise it. Though it has 
been shown that silence would have been 
sufficient, the same conclusion would un- 
answerably follow, if the premises were far 
more scanty. The law of nations has no 
established forms, a deviation from which is 
fatal to the validity of the trasactions to which 
they are appropriated. It admits no merely 
technical objections to conventions formed 
under its authority, and is bound by no posi- 
tive rules in the interpretation of them. 
Wherever the intention of contracting par- 
ties is plain, it is the sole interpreter of a 
contract. Now, it is needless to say that, in 
the Treaty of Rio Janeiro, taken with the 
preceding and following Letters-Patent, the 
manifest intention of John VI. was not to im- 
pair, but to recognise the rights of his eldest 
son to the inheritance of Portugal. 

On the 10th of March 1826, John VI. died 
at Lisbon. On his death-bed, however, he 
had made provision for the temporary admi- 
nistration of the government. By a Royal 
Decree, of the 6th,* he committed the go- 

* Gazeta de Lisbon, of the 7th of March. 



vernment to his daughter, the Infanta Donna 
Isabella Maria, assisted by a council during 
his illness, or. in the event of his death, till 
"the legitimate heir and successor to the crown 
should make other provision in this respect." 
These words have no ambiguity. In every 
hereditary monarchy they must naturally, 
and almost necessarily, denote the eldest son 
of the King, when he leaves a son. It would, 
in such a ease, require the strongest evidence 
1o Warrant the application of them to any 
other person. It is clear that the King must 
have had an individual in view, unless we 
adopt the most extravagant supposition that, 
as a dying bequest to his subjects, he meant 
to leave them a disputed succession and a 
civil war. Who could that individual be, 
but Don Pedro, his eldest son, whom, ac- 
cording to the ancient order of succession to 
the crown of Portugal, he had himself called 
u heir and successor," on the 13th of May and 
5th of November preceding. Such, accord- 
ingly, was the conviction, and the corres- 
pondent conduct of all whose rights or in- 
terests were concerned. The Regency was 
immediately installed, and universally obey- 
ed at home, as well as acknowledged, with- 
out hesitation or delay, by all the Powers of 
Europe. The Princess Regent acted in the 
name, and on the behalf of her brother, Don 
Pedro. It was impossible that the succession 
of any Prince to a throne could be more quiet 
and undisputed. 

The Regency, without delay, notified the 
demise of the late King to their new Sove- 
reign : and then the difficulties of that 
Prince's situation began to show themselves. 
Though the treaty had not weakened his 
hereditary right to Portugal, yet the main 
object of if was to provide, not only for the 
independence of Brazil, but for its "separa- 
tion" from Portugal, which undoubtedly im- 
ported a separation of the crowns. Possess- 
ing the government of Brazil, and inheriting 
that of Portugal, he became bound by all the 
obligations of the treaty between the two 
states. Though he inherited the crown of 
Portugal by the laws of that country, yet he 
was disabled by treaty from permanently 
continuing to hold it with that of Brazil. But 
if, laying aside unprofitable subtilties. we 
consult only conscience and common sense, 
we shall soon discover that these rights and 
duties are not repugnant, but that, on the 
contrary, the legal right is the only means 
of performing the federal duty. The treaty 
did not expressly determine which of the 
two crowns Don Pedro was bound to re- 
nounce ; it therefore left him to make an 
option between them. For the implied obli- 
gations of a contract extend only to those 
acts of the parties w r hich are necessary to 
the attainment of its professed object. If 
he chose, — as he has chosen, — to retain the 
crown of Brazil, it could not, by reasonable 
implication, require an instantaneous abdica- 
tion of that of Portugal; because such a 
limitation of time was not necessary, and 
might have been very injurious to the object. 



CASE OF DONNA MARIA. 



231 



It left the choice of time, manner, and con- 
ditions to himself, requiring only good faith, 
and interdicting nothing but fraudulent delay. 
Had he not (according to the principle of 
all hereditary monarchs) become King of 
Portugal at the instant of his father's demise, 
there would have been no person possessed 
of the legal and actual power in both coun- 
tries necessary to carry the treaty of separa- 
tion into effect. If the Portuguese had not 
acquiesced in his authority, they must have 
voluntarily chosen anarchy) for no one could 
have the power to discharge the duty im- 
posed by treaty, or to provide for any of the 
important changes which it might occasion. 
The most remarkable example of this latter 
sort, was the order of succession. The sepa- 
ration of the two crowns rendered it abso- 
lutely impossible to preserve that order in 
both monarchies; for both being hereditary, 
the legal order required that both crowns 
should descend to the same person, the eldest 
son of Don Pedro — the very union which it 
was the main or sole purpose of the treaty 
to prevent. A breach in the order of suc- 
cession became therefore inevitable, either 
in Portugal or Brazil. Necessity required 
the deviation. But the same necessity vested 
in Don Pedro, as a king and a father, the 
power of regulating in this respect, the rights 
of his family ; and the permanent policy of 
monarchies required that he should carry 
the deviation no farther than the necessity. 

As the nearer female would inherit before 
the more distant male, Don Miguel had no 
right which was immediately involved in 
the arrangement to be adopted. It is ac- 
knowledged, that the two daughters of John 
VI., married and domiciled in Spain, had 
lost their rights as members of the Royal 
Family. Neither the Queen, nor indeed any 
other person, had a legal title to the regency, 
which in Portugal, as in France and Eng- 
land, was a case omitted in the constitutional 
laws, and, as no Cortes had been assembled 
for a century, could only be provided for by 
the King, who, of necessity, was the tempo- 
rary lawgiver. The only parties who could 
be directly affected by the allotment of the 
two crowns, were the children of Don Pedro, 
the eldest of whom was in her sixth year. 
The more every minute part of this case is 
considered, the more obvious and indisputa- 
ble will appear to be the necessity, that Don 
Pedro should retain the powers of a King 
of Portugal, until he had employed them 
for the quiet and safety of both kingdoms, 
as far as these might be endangered by the 
separation. He held, and holds, that crown 
as a trustee for the execution of the treaty. 
To hold it after the trust is performed, would 
be usurpation : to renounce it before that 
period, would be treachery to the trust. 

That Don Pedro should have chosen Brazil, 
must have always been foreseen ; for his 
election was almost determined by his pre- 
ceding conduct. He preferred Brazil, where 
he had been the founder of a state, to Por- 
tugal, where the most conspicuous measures 



of his life could be viewed with no more 
than reluctant acquiescence. The next ques- 
tion which arose was, whether the inevitable 
breach in the order of succession was to be 
made in Portugal or Brazil; or, in other 
words, of which of these two disjointed king- 
doms, the Infant Don Sebastian should be 
the heir-apparent. The father made the 
same choice for his eldest son as for himself. 
As Don Sebastian preserved his right of suc- 
cession in Brazil, the principle of the least 
possible deviation from the legal order re- 
quired that the crown of Portugal should 
devolve on his sister Donna Maria, the next 
in succession of the Royal Family. 

After this exposition of the rights and du- 
ties of Don Pedro, founded on the principles 
of public law, and on the obligations of 
treaty, and of the motives of policy which 
have influenced him in a case where he was 
left free to follow the dictates of his own 
judgment, let us consider very shortly what 
a conscientious ruler would, in such a case, 
deem necessary to secure to both portions of 
his subjects all the advantages of their new 7 
position. He would be desirqus of softening 
the humiliation of one. of effacing the recent 
animosities between them, and of reviving 
their ancient friendship, by preserving every 
tie which reminded them of former union 
and common descent. He would therefore, 
even if he were impartial, desire that they 
should continue under the same Royal Family 
which had for centuries ruled both. He 
would labour, as far as the case allowed, to 
strengthen the connections of language, of 
traditions, of manners, and of religion, by 
the resemblance of laws and institutions. 
He would clearly see that his Brazilian sub- 
jects never could trust his fidelity to their 
limited monarchy, if he maintained an abso- 
lute government in Portugal : and that the 
Portuguese people would not long endure to 
be treated as slaves, while those whom they 
were not accustomed lo regard as their su- 
periors were thought worthy of the most 
popular constitution. However much a mon- 
arch was indifferent or adverse to liberty, 
these considerations would lose nothing of 
their political importance : for a single false 
step in this path might overthrow monarchy 
in Brazil, and either drive Portugal into a re- 
volution, or seat a foreign army in her pro- 
vinces, to prevent it. It is evident that po- 
pular institutions can alone preserve mon- 
archy in Brazil from falling before the prin- 
ciples of republican America ; and it will 
hardly be denied, that, though some have 
questioned the advantage of liberty, no peo- 
ple were ever so mean-spirited as not to be 
indignant at being thought unworthy of it, as 
a privilege. Viewing liberty with the same 
cold neutrality, a wise statesman would have 
thought it likely to give stability to a new 
government in Portugal, and to be received 
there as some consolation for loss of dominion. 
Portugal, like all the other countries between 
the Rhine and the Mediterranean, had been 
convulsed by conquest and revolution. Am- 



232 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



bition and rapacity, fear and revenge, politi- 
cal fanaticism and religious bigotry, — all the 
ungovernable passions which such scenes 
excite, still agitated the minds of those who 
had been actors or victims of them. Expe- 
rience has proved, that no expedient can ef- 
fectually allay these deep-seated disorders, 
but the institution of a government in which 
all interests and opinions are represented, — 
which keeps up a perpetual negotiation be- 
tween them, — which compels each in its 
turn to give up some part of its pretensions, — 
and which provides a safe field of contest in 
those cases where a treaty cannot be con- 
cluded. Of all the stages in the progress of 
human society, the period which succeeds 
the troubles of civil and foreign war is that 
which most requires this remedy: for it is 
that in which the minds of men are the most 
dissatisfied, the most active, and the most 
aspiring. The experiment has proved most 
eminently successful in the Netherlands, 
now beyond all doubt the best governed 
country of the Continent. It ought to be 
owned, that it has also in a great measure 
succeeded in France, Italy, and Spain. Of 
these countries we shall now say nothing 
but that, being occupied by foreign armies, 
they cannot be quoted. If any principle be 
now universally received in government, it 
seems to be, that the disorders of such a 
country must either be contained by foreign 
arms, or composed by a representative con- 
stitution. 

But there were two circumstances which 
rendered the use of this latter remedy pecu- 
liarly advisable in Portugal. The first is, 
that it was so explicitly, repeatedly, and 
solemnly promised by John VI. In the se- 
cond place, the establishment of a free con- 
stitution in Portugal, afforded an opportunity 
of sealing a definitive treaty of peace be- 
tween the most discordant parties, by open- 
ing (after a due period of probation) to the 
Prince whom the Ultra-Royalist faction had 
placed in their front, a prospect of being one 
day raised to a higher station, under the 
system of liberty, than he could have ex- 
pected to reach if both Portugal and Brazil 
had continued in slavery.* 

It is unworthy of a statesman, or of a phi- 
losopher, to waste time in childishly regret- 
ting the faults of a Prince's personal character. 
The rulers of Portugal can neither create 
circumstances, nor form men according to 
their wishes. They must take men and 
things as they find them; and their wisdom 
will be shown, by turning both to the best 
account. The occasional occurrence of great 
personal faults in princes, is an inconveni- 
ence of hereditary monarchy, which a wise 
limitation of royal power may abate and 
mitigate. Elective governments are not alto- 
gether exempt from the same evils, besides 

* This was written in the month of D.ecember, 
1826, before the plan for conciliating the two op- 
posite political parties by means of a matrimonial 
alliance between Donna Maria and her uncle was 
abandoned. — Ed. 



being liable to others. All comparison of 
the two systems is, in the present case, a 
mere exercise of ingenuity : for it is appa- 
parent, that liberty has at this time no chance 
of establishment in Portugal, in any other 
form than that of a limited monarchy. The 
situation of Don Miguel renders it possible to 
form the constitution on an union between 
him, as the representative of the Ultra-Roy- 
alists, and a young Princess, whose rights 
will be incorporated with the establishment 
of liberty. 

As soon as Don Pedro was informed of his 
father's death, he proceeded to the perform- 
ance of the task which had devolved on him. 
He began, on the 20th of April, by granting 
a Constitutional Charter to Portugal. On the 
26th, he confirmed the Regency appointed 
by his father, till the proclamation of the 
constitution. On the 2d of May he abdica- 
ted the crown in favour of his daughter, 
Donna Maria; on condition, however, <: that 
the abdication should not be valid, and the 
Princess should not quit Brazil, until it be 
made officially known to him, that the con- 
stitution had been sworn to. according to his 
orders; and that the espousals of the Prin- 
cess with Don Miguel should have been 
made, and the marriage concluded ; and that 
the abdidation and cession should not take 
place if either of these two conditions should 
fail."* On the 26th of April. Letters-Patent, 
or writs of summons, had issued, addressed 
to each of those who were to form the House 
of Peers, of which the Duke de Cadaval was 
named President, and the Patriarch Elect of 
Lisbon Vice-President. A Decree had also 
been issued on the same day, commanding 
the Regency of Portugal to take the neces- 
sary measures for the immediate election of 
members of the other House, according to 
the tenor of the constitutional law.t When 
these laws and decrees were received at 
Lisbon, the Regency proceeded instantly to 
put them into execution; in consequence of 
which, the Constitution was proclaimed, the 
Regency installed, the elections commenced, 
and the Cortes were finally assembled at 
Lisbon on the 30th of October. 

Whether the Emperor of Brazil had, by 
the laws of Portugal, the power to regulate 
the affairs of that kingdom, had hitherto 
given rise to no question. All parties with- 
in and without Portugal had treated his right 
of succession to his father in the throne of 
that kingdom as undisputed. But no sooner 
had he exercised that right, by the grant of > 
a free constitution, than it was discovered 
by some Ultra-Royalists, that he had for- 
feited the right itself; that his power over 
Portugal was an usurpation, and his constitu- 
tional law an absolute nullity ! Don Miguel^ 
whose name was perpetually in the mouth 
of these writers, continued at Vienna. The 
Spanish Government and its officers breathed 
menace and invective. Foreign agency 



* Diario Fluminense, of the 20th of May. 
t Ibid. 3d of May. 



CASE OF DONNA MAEIA. 



233 



manifested itself in Portugal; and some 
bodies of troops, both on the northern and 
southern frontier, were excited to a sedition 
for slavery. '•All foreigners," say the ob- 
jectors," are, by the fundamental laws of 
Portugal, excluded from the succession to 
the crown. This law passed at the foun- 
dation of the monarchy, by the celebrated 
Cortes of Lamego, in 1143, was confirmed, 
strengthened, and enlarged by the Cortes of 
1641 ; and under it, on the last occasion, the 
King of Spain was declared an usurper, and 
the House of Braganza were raised to the 
throne. Don Pedro had, by the treaty which 
recognised him as Emperor of Brazil, be- 
come a foreign sovereign, and was therefore, 
at the death of his father, disqualified from 
inheriting the crown of Portugal.'' 

A few years after the establishment of the 
Normans in England, Henry, a Burgundian 
Prince, who served under the King of Castile 
in his wars against the Moors, obtained from 
that monarch, as a fief, the newly conquer- 
ed territory between the rivers Douro and 
Minho. His son Alfonso threw off the su- 
periority of Castile, and, after defeating the 
Moors at the great battle of Campo Ouriquez, 
in 1139, was declared King by the Pope, and 
acknowledged in that character by an as- 
sembly of the principal persons of the com- 
munity, held at Lamego, in 1143. composed 
of bishops, nobles of the court, and. as it 
should seem, of procurators of the towns. 
The crown, after much altercation, was made 
hereditary, first in males and then in females ; 
but on condition " that the female should 
always marry a man of Portugal, that the 
kingdom might not fall to foreigners; and 
that if she should marry a foreign prince, 
she should not be Queen ;" — " because ice will 
that our kingdom shall go only to the Portu- 
guese , who, by their bravery, have made us 
King without foreign aid.' 7 On being asked 
whether the King should pay tribute to the 
King of Leon, they all rose up. and. with 
naked swords uplifted, and answered, "Our 
King is independent; ourarmshave delivered 
us; the King who consents to such things 
shall die." The King, with his drawn sword 
in his hand, said, "If any one consent to 
such, let him die. If he should be my son, 
let him not reign." 

The Cortes of 1641, renewing the laws of 
Lamego, determined that, according to these 
fundamental institutions, the Spanish Princes 
had been usurpers, and pronounced John. 
Duke of Braganza, who had already been 
seated on the throne by a revolt of the whole 
people, to be the rightful heir. This Prince, 
though he appears not to have had an)- pie- 
tensions as a male heir, yet seems to have 
been the representative of the eldest female 
who had not lost the right of succession by 
marriage to a foreigner ; and, consequently, 
he was entitled to the crown, according to 
the order of succession established at Lame- 
go. The Three Estates presented the Heads 
of laws to the King, praying that effectual 
means might be taken to enforce the exclu- 
30 



sion of foreigners from the throne, according 
to ihe laws passed at Lamego. But as the 
Estates, according to the old constitution of 
Portugal, presented their Chapters severally 
to the King, it was possible that they might 
differ; and they diet so, in some respects, on 
this important occasion, — not indeed as to 
the end, for which they were equally zeal- 
ous, but as to the choice of the best means 
of securing its constant attainment. The 
answer of the King to the Ecclesiastical Es- 
tate was as follows: — "'On this Chapter, for 
which I thank you, I have already answered 
to the Chapters of the States of the People 
and of the Nobles, in ordaining a law to be 
made in conformity to that ordained by Don 
John IV., with the declarations and modifi- 
cations which shall be most conducive to the 
conservation and common good of the king- 
dom." Lawyers were accordingly appointed 
to draw up the law ; but it is clear that the 
reserve of the King left him ample scope for 
the exercise of his own discretion, even if it 
had not been rendered necessary by the va- 
riation between the proposals of the three 
Orders, respecting the means of its execu- 
tion. But, in order to give our opponents 
every advantage, as we literally adopt their 
version, so we shall suppose (for the sake 
of argument) the royal assent to have been 
given to the Chapter of the Nobles without 
alteration, and in all its specific provisions; 
it being that on which the Absolutists have 
chosen to place their chief reliance. The 
Chapter stands thus in their editions : — " The 
State of the Nobility prays your Majesty to. 
enact a law, ordaining that the succession 
to the kingdom may never fall to a foreign 
Prince, nor to his children, though they may- 
be the next to the last in possession ; and 
that, in case the King of Portugal should be 
called to the succession of another crown, or 
of a greater empire, he be compelled to live 
always there ; and that, if he has two or more 
male children, the eldest son shall assume 
the reins in the foreign country, and the 
second in Portugal, and the latter shall be 
the only recognised heir and legitimate suc- 
cessor; and, in case there should be only 
one child to inherit these two kingdoms, 
these said kingdoms shall be divided be- 
tween the children of the latter, in the order 
and form above mentioned. In case there 
shall be daughters only, the eldest shall suc- 
ceed in this kingdom, with the declaration 
that she marry here with a native of the 
country, chosen and named by the Three 
Estates assembled in Cortes : should she 
marry without the consent of the States, she 
and her descendants shall be declared in- 
capable, and be ousted of the succession; 
and the Three Estates shall be at liberty to 
choose a King from among the natives, if 
there be no male relation of the Royal Fami- 
ly to whom the succession should devolve." 
Now the question is, whether Pedro IV. as 
the monarch of Brazil, a country separated 
from Portugal by treat) r , became a foreign 
prince, in the sense intended by these an- 
il 2 



234 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



cient Jaws, and was thereby disabled from 
inheriting the crown of Portugal on the de- 
cease of John VI. ? 

This question is not to be decided by ver- 
bal chicane. The mischief provided against 
3e laws was twofold:— the supposed 
probability of mal-administration through the 

>sion of a foreigner, ignorant of the 
country and not attached to it; and the loss 
of domestic government, if it fell by inheri- 
tance to the sovereign of another, especially 

iter country. The intention of the law- 
giver to guard against both these occurrences 
affords the only sure means of ascertaining 
the meaning of his words. But the present 
case has not even the slightest tendency to 
expose the country to either danger. Pedro 
IV. is a native Portuguese, presumed to have 
as much of the knowledge and feelings be- 
longing to that character as any of his pre- 
decessors. The danger to Portuguese inde- 
pendence arises from the inheritance of the 
crown devolving in perpetuity, and without 
qualification, to a foreign sovereign. Such 
was the evil actually experienced under 
Philip II. King of Spain, and hi's two succes- 
sors; and the most cursory glance over the 
law of 1641 shows that the Cortes had that 
case in view. Had the present resembled it 
in the important quality of a claim to un- 
conditional inheritance, the authority would 
have been strong. But, instead of being an- 
nexed to a foreign dominion, Pedro IV. takes 
it only for the express purpose of effectually 
and perpetually disannexing his other terri- 
tories from it: — a purpose which he imme- 
diately proceeds to carry into execution, by 
establishing a different line of succession 
for the crowns of both countries, and by an 
abdication, which is to take effect as soon as 
he has placed the new establishment in a 
state of security. The case provided against 
by the law is, that of permanent annexation 
to a foreign crown : the right exercised by 
Pedro IV. is, that of a guardian and adminis- 
trator of the kingdom, during an operation 
which is necessary to secure it against such 
annexation. The whole transaction is con- 
formable to the spirit of the two laws, and 
not repugnant, to their letter. 

That a temporary administration is per- 
fectly consistent with these laws, is evident 
from the passage : — " If the King of Portugal 
should be called to the succession of another 
crown, and there should be only one child to 
inherit the two kingdoms, these said king- 
doms shall be divided among the children 
of the latter" — meaning after his death, and 
if he should leave children. Here then is a 
case of temporary administration expressly 
provided for. The father is to rule both king- 
doms, till there should be at least two chil- 
dren to render the division practicable. He 
becomes, for an uncertain, and possibly a 
long period, the provisional sovereign of 
both ; merely because he is presumed to be 
the most proper regulator of territories which 
are to be divided between his posterity. 
Now, the principle of such an express excep- 



tion is, by the rules of fair construction, ap- 
plicable to every truly and evidently parallel 
case : and there is precisely the same reason 
for the tutelary power of Pedro IV, as there 
would be for that of a father, in the event 
contemplated by the law of 1641. 

The eflect of the Treaty of Rio Janeiro 
cannot be inconsistent with this temporary 
union. Even on the principle of our oppo- 
nents, it must exist for a shorter or longer 
time. The Treaty did not deprive Pedro of 
his option between Portugal and Brazil : he 
must have possessed both crowns, when he 
was called upon to determine which of them 
he would lay down. But if it be acknow- 
ledged that a short but actual union is ne- 
cessary, in order to effect the abdication, 
how can it be pretended that a longer union 
may not be equally justifiable, for the honest 
purpose of quiet and amicable separation ? 

The Treaty of Rio de Janeiro would have 
been self-destructive, if it had taken from 
Pedro the power of sovereignty in Portugal 
immediately on the death of his father : for 
in that case no authority would exist capable 
of carrying the Treaty into execution. It 
must have been left to civil war to determine 
who was to govern the kingdom ; while, if 
we adopt the principle of Pedro's hereditary 
succession by law, together with his obliga- 
tion by treaty to separate the kingdoms, the 
whole is consistent with itself, and every 
measure is quietly and regularly carried into 
effect. 

To these considerations we must add the 
recognition of Pedro "as heir and successor" 
in the Ratification. Either John VI. had 
power to decide this question, or he had not. 
If he had not. the Treaty is null ; for it is 
impossible to deny that the recognition is 
really a condition granted to Brazil, which is 
a security for its independence, and the 
breach of which would annul the whole 
contract. In that case, Portugal and Brazil 
are not legally separated. Pedro IV. cannot 
be called a "foreign prince;" and no law 
forbids him to reside in the American pro- 
vinces of the Portuguese dominions. In that 
case also, exercising all the power of his im- 
mediate predecessors, his authority in Por- 
tugal becomes absolute ; he may punish the 
Absolutists as rebels, according to their own 
principles; and it will be for them to show, 
that his rights, as supreme lawgiver, can 
be bounded by laws called 'fundamental.' 
But. — to take a more sober view, — can it be 
doubted, that, in a country where the mo- 
narch had exercised the whole legislative 
power for more than a century, his authori- 
tative interpretation of the ancient laws, es- 
pecially if it is part of a compact with another 
state, must be conclusive ? By repeatedly 
declaring in the introduction to the Treaty, 
and in the Ratification of it, that Pedro IV. 
was "heir and successor" of Portugal, and 
that he was not divested of that character by 
the Treaty, which recognised him as Sove- 
reign of Brazil, John VI. did most deliber- 
ately and solemnly determine, that his eldest 



CHARLES, FIRST MARQUIS CORNWALLIS. 



235 



son was not a "foreign prince" in the sense 
in which these words are used by the ancient 
laws. Such too seems to have been the 
sense of all parties, even of those the most 
bitterly adverse to Pedro IV.. and most deep- 
ly interested in disputing his succession, till 
he granted a Constitutional Charter to the 
people of Portugal. 

John VI., by his decree for the re-esta- 
blishment of the ancient constitution of Por- 
tugal, had really abolished the absolute mo- 
narchy, and in its stead established a govern- 
ment, which, with all its inconveniences and 
defects, was founded on principles of liberty. 
For let it not be supposed that the ancient 
constitution of Portugal had become forgot- 
ten or unknown by disuse for centuries, like 
those legendary systems, under cover of 
which any novelty may be called a restora- 
tion. It was perfectly well known; it was 
long practised ; and never legally abrogated. 
Indeed the same may be affirmed, with 
equal truth, of the ancient institutions of 
the other inhabitants of the Peninsula, who 
were among the oldest of free nations, but 
who have so fallen from their high estate as 
to be now publicly represented as delighting 
in their chains and glorying in their shame. 
In Portugal, however, the usurpation of ab- 
solute power was not much older than a cen- 
tury. We have already seen, that the Cortes 
of Lamego, the founders of the monarchy, 
proclaimed the right of the nation in a spirit 
as generous, and in a Latinity not much 
more barbarous, than that of the authors of 
Magna Charta about seventy years later. 

The Infant Don Miguel has sworn to ob- 



serve and maintain the constitution. In the 
act of his espousals he acknowledges the so- 
vereignty of the young Queen, and describes 
himself as onl} r her first subject. The muti- 
nies of the Portuguese soldiers have ceased , 
but the conduct of the Court of Madrid still 
continues to keep up agitation and alarm: 
for no change was ever effected which did 
not excite discontent and turbulence enough 
to serve the purposes of a neighbour strain- 
ing every nerve to vex and disturb a country. 
The submission of Don Miguel to his brother 
and sovereign are, we trust, sincere. He 
will observe his oath to maintain the consti- 
tution, and cheerfully take his place as the 
first subject of a limited monarchy. The 
station to which he is destined, and the in- 
fluence which must long, and may always 
belong to it, form together a more attractive 
object of ambition than any thing which he 
could otherwise have hoped peaceably and 
lawfully to attain. No man of common pru- 
dence, whatever may be his political opi- 
nions, will advise the young Prince to put 
such desirable prospects to hazard. He will 
be told by all such counsellors of every party 
that he must now adapt himself to occur- 
rences which he may learn to consider as 
fortunate; that loyalty to his brother and 
his country would now be his clearest inter- 
est, if they were not his highest duty; that 
he must forget all his enmities, renounce all 
his prejudices, and even sacrifice some of his 
partialities; and that he must leave full time 
to a great part of the people of Portugal to 
recover from those prepossessions and re- 
pugnances which they may have contracted. 



CHARACTER 



CHARLES, FIRST 'MARQUIS CORNWALLIS.* 



Charles, Marquis Cornwallis, the repre- 
sentative of a family of ancient distinction, 
and of no modern nobility, had embraced 
in early youth the profession of arms. The 
sentiments which have descended to us from 
ancient times have almost required the sa- 
crifice of personal ease, and the exposure 
of personal safety, from those who inherit 
distinction. All the superiority conferred 
by society must either be earned by pre- 
vious services, or at least justified by subse- 
quent merit. The most arduous exertions 



* This character formed the chief part of a dis- 
course delivered at Bombay soon after the de- 
cease of Lord Cornwallis. 



are therefore imposed on those who enjoy 
advantages which they have not earned. 
Noblemen are required to devote themselves 
to danger for the safety of their fellow-citi- 
zens, and to spill their blood more readily 
than others in the public cause. Their 
choice is almost limited to that profession 
which derives its dignity from the contempt 
of danger and death, and which is preserved 
from mercenary contamination by the severe 
but noble renunciation of every reward ex- 
cept honour. 

In the early stages of his life there were 
no remarkable events. His sober and well- 
regulated mind probably submitted to that 
industry which is the excellence of a subor- 



236 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



dinate station, and the basis of higher useful- 
ness in a more elevated sphere. The bril- 
liant irregularities which are the ambiguous 
distinctions of the youth of others found no 
place in his. He first appeared in the eye 
of the public during the unhappy civil war 
between Great Britain and her Colonies, 
which terminated in the division of the em- 
pire. His share in that contest was merely 
military : in that, as well as in every subse- 
quent part of his life, he was happily free 
from those conflicts of faction in which the 
hatred of one portion of our fellow-citizens is 
insured by those acts which are necessary 
to purchase the transient and capricious at- 
tachment of the other. A soldier, more for- 
tunate, deserves, and generally receives, the 
unanimous thanks of his country. 

It would be improper here to follow him 
through all the vicissitudes of that eventful 
war. There is one circumstance, however, 
which forms too important a part of his cha- 
racter to be omitted, — he was unfortunate. 
But the moment of misfortune was, perhaps, 
the most honourable moment of his life. 
So unshaken was the respect felt, that ca- 
lamity did not lower him in the eyes of that 
public which is so prone to estimate men 
merely by the effect of their councils. He 
was not received with those frowns which 
often undeservedly await the return of the 
unsuccessful general : his country welcomed 
him with as much honour as if fortune had 
attended his virtue, and his sovereign be- 
stowed on him new marks of confidence and 
favour. This was a most signal triumph. 
Chance mingles with genius and science in 
the most renowned victories; but merit and 
well-earned reputation alone can preserve 
an unfortunate general from sinking in popu- 
lar estimation. 

In 1786 his public life became more con- 
nected with that part of the British Empire 
which we now inhabit. This choice was 
made under circumstances which greatly 
increased the honour. No man can recollect 
the situation of India at that period, or the 
opinions concerning it in Great Britain, with- 
out remembering the necessity, universally 
felt and acknowledged, for committing the 
government of our Asiatic territories to a 
person peculiarly and conspicuously distin- 
guished for prudence, moderation, integrity, 
and humility. On these grounds he was 
undoubtedly selected ; and it will not be 
disputed by any one acquainted with the 
history of India that his administration justi- 
fied the choice. 

Among the many wise and honest mea- 
sures which did honour to his government, 
there are two which are of such importance 
that they cannot be passed over in silence. 
The first was, the establishment of a fixed 
land-rent throughout Bengal, instead of those 
annually varying, and often arbitrary, exac- 
tions to which the landholders of that great 
province had been for ages subject. This 
reformation, one of the greatest, perhaps, 
ever peaceably effected in an extensive and 



opulent country, has since been followed in 
the other British territories in the East ; and 
it is the first certain example in India of a 
secure private property in land, which the 
extensive and undefined territorial claims of 
Indian Princes had, in former times, render- 
ed a subject of great doubt and uncertainty. 
The other distinguishing measure of his go- 
vernment was that judicial system which 
was necessary to protect and secure the pro- 
perty thus ascertained, and the privileges 
thus bestowed. By the combined influence 
of these two great measures, he may confi- 
dently be said to have imparted to the sub- 
jects of Great Britain in the East a more 
perfect security of person and property, and 
a fuller measure of all the advantages of civil 
society, than had been enjoyed by the natives 
of India within the period of authentic histo- 
ry ; — a portion of these inestimable benefits 
larger than appears to have been ever pos- 
sessed by any people of Asia, and probably 
not much inferior to the share of many flour- 
ishing states of Europe in ancient and modern 
times. It has sometimes been objected to 
these arrangements, that the revenue of the 
sovereign was sacrificed to the comfort and 
prosperity of the subject. This would have 
been impossible : the interests of both are 
too closely and inseparably connected. The 
security of the subject will always enrich 
him ; and his wealth will always overflow 
into the coffers of his sovereign. But if the 
objection were just in point of policy, it 
would be the highest tribute to the virtue of 
the governor. To sacrifice revenue to the 
well-being of a people is a blame of which 
Marcus Aurelius would have been proud !* 

The war in which he was engaged during 
his Indian government it belongs to the his- 
torian to describe : in this place it is suffi- 
cient to say that it was founded in the just 
defence of an ally, that it was carried on 
with vigour, and closed with exemplary mo- 
deration. 

In 1793 Lord Cornwallis returned to Eu- 
rope, leaving behind him a greater and purer 
name than that of any foreigner who had 
ruled over India for centuries. 

It is one of the most remarkable circum- 
stances in the history of his life, that great 



* The facility with which he applied his sound 
and strong understanding to subjects the most dis- 
tant from those which usually employed it is prov- 
ed in a very striking manner by a tact which ought 
not to be forgotten by those who wish to form an 
accurate estimate of this venerable nobleman. The 
Company's extensive investment from Bengal de- 
pended in a great measure on manufactures, which 
bad fallen into such a state of decay as to be al- 
most hopeless. The Court, of Directors warmly 
recommended this very important part of their in- 
terest to Marquis Cornwallis. He applied his 
mind to the subject with that conscientious zeal 
which always distinguished him as a servant of the 
public. He became as familiarly acquainted with 
its most minute details as most of those who had 
made it the business of their lives ; and he has the 
undisputed merit of having retrieved these manu- 
factures from a condition in which they were 
thought desperate. 



CHARLES, FIRST MARQUIS CORNWALLIS. 



237 



offices were scarcely ever bestowed on him 
in times when they could be mere marks of 
favour, or very desirable objects of pursuit; 
but that he was always called upon to under- 
take them in those seasons of difficulty when 
the acceptance became a severe and painful 
duty. One of these unhappy occcasions 
arose in the year 1798. A most dangerous 
rebellion had been suppressed in Ireland, 
without extinguishing the disaffection that 
threatened future rebellions. The prudence, 
the vigilance, the unspotted humanity, the 
inflexible moderation of Marquis Cornwallis. 
pointed him out as the most proper person 
to compose the dissensions of that generous 
and unfortunate people. He was according- 
ly chosen for that mission of benevolence, 
and he most amply justified the choice. Be- 
sides the applause of all good men and all 
lovers of their country, he received the still 
more unequivocal honour of the censure of 
violent, and the clamours of those whose un- 
governable resentments he refused to gratify. 
He not only succeeded in allaying the ani- 
mosities of a divided nation, but he was hap- 
py enough to be instrumental in a measure 
which, if it be followed by moderate and 
healing counsels, promises permanent quiet 
and prosperity: under his administration 
Ireland was united to Great Britain. A pe- 
riod was at length put to the long misgovern- 
ment and misfortunes of that noble island, 
and a new era of justice, happiness, and se- 
curity opened for both the great members of 
the British Empire. 

The times were too full of difficulty to suf- 
fer him long to enjoy the retirement which 
followed his Irish administration. A war, 
fortunate and brilliant in many of its sepa- 
rate operations, but unsuccessful in its grand 
objects, was closed by a treaty of peace, 
which at first was joyfully hailed by the 
feelings of the public, but which has since 
given rise to great diversity of judgment. It 
may be observed, without descending into 
political contests, that if the terms of the 
treaty* were necessarily not flattering to na- 
tional pride, it was the more important to 
choose a negotiator who should inspire pub- 
lic confidence, and whose character might 
shield necessary concessions from unpopu- 
larity. Such was unquestionably the prin- 
ciple on which Lord Cornwallis was selected ; 
and such (whatever judgment may be form- 
ed of the treaty) is the honourable testimony 
■which it bears to his character. 

The offices bestowed on him were not 
matters of a;race : every preferment was a 
homage to his virtue. He was never invited 
to the luxuries of high station : he was always 
summoned to its most arduous and perilous 
duties. India once more needed, or was 
thought to need, the guardian care of him 
who had healed the wounds of conquest, and 
bestowed on her the blessings of equitable 
and paternal legislation. Whether the opi- 
nion held in England of the perils of our 

* Of Amiens. 



Eastern territories was correct or exaggera- 
ted, it is not for us in this place to inquire. 
It is enough to know that the alarm was 
great and extensive, and that the eyes of the 
nation were once more turned towards Lord 
Cornwallis. Whether the apprehensions were 
just or groundless, the tribute to his charac- 
ter was equal. He once more accepted the 
government of these extensive dominions, 
with a full knowledge of his danger, and 
with no obscure anticipation of the probabi- 
lity of his fate. He obeyed his sovereign, 
nobly declaring, :! that if he could render 
service to his country, it was of small mo- 
ment to him whether he died in India or in 
Europe ;" and no doubt thoroughly convinced 
that it was far better to die in the discharge 
of great duties than to add a few feeble in- 
active years to life. Great Britain, divided 
on most public questions, was unanimous in 
her admiration of this signal sacrifice ; and 
British India, however various might be the 
political opinions of her inhabitants, welcom- 
ed the Governor General with only one sen- 
timent of personal gratitude and reverence. 

Scarcely had he arrived when he felt the 
fatal influence of the climate which, with a 
a clear view of its terrors, he had resolved to 
brave. But he neither yielded to the lan- 
guor of disease, nor to the infirmity of age. 
With all the ardour of youth, he flew to the 
post where he was either to conclude an 
equitable peace, or, if that were refused, to 
prosecute necessary hostilities with rigour. 
His malady became more grievous, and for 
some time stopped his progress. On the 
slightest alleviation of his symptoms he re- 
sumed his journey, though little hope of re- 
covery remained, with an inflexible resolu- 
tion to employ what was left of life, in the 
performance of his duty to his country. He 
declared to his surrounding friends, -''that he 
knew no reason to fear death ; and that if he 
could remain in the world but a short time 
longer to complete the plans of public service 
in which he was engaged, he should then 
cheerfully resign his life to the Almighty 
Giver j" — a noble and memorable declara- 
tion, expressive of the union of every private, 
and civil, and religious excellence, in which 
the consciousness of a blameless and meri- 
torious life is combined with the affectionate 
zeal of a dying patriot, and the meek sub- 
mission of a pious Christian. But it pleased 
God, "whose ways are not as our ways," to 
withdraw him from this region of the uni- 
verse before his honest wishes of usefulness 
could be accomplished, though doubtless not 
before the purposes of Providence were ful- 
filled. He expired at Gazeepore, in the pro- 
vince of Benares, on the 5th of October, 1805, 
— supported by the remembrance of his vir- 
tue, and by the sentiments of piety which 
had actuated his whole life. 

His remains are interred on the spot where 
he died, on the banks of that famous river, 
which washes no country not either blessed 
by his government, or visited by his renown ; 
and in the heart of that province so long the 



238 



MACKINTOSH^ MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



chosen seat of religion and learning in India, 
which under the influence of his beneficent 
system, and under the administration of 
good men whom he had chosen, had risen 
from a Btate of decline and confusion to one 
of prosperity probably unrivalled in the hap- 
piest times of its ancient princes. -'His 
body is buried in peace, and his name liveth j 
for evermore." 

The Christian religion is no vain supersti- 
tion, which divides the worship of God from 
irvide of man. Every social duty is a 
Christian grace. Public and private virtue 
is considered by Christianity as the purest 
and most acceptable incense which can as- 
cend before the Divine Throne. Political 
duties are a most momentous part of morali- 
ty, and morality is the most momentous part 
of religion. When the political life of a 
great man has been guided by the rules of 
morality, and consecrated by the principles 
of religion, it may, and it ought to be com- 
memorated, that the survivors may admire 
and attempt to copy, not only as men and 
citizens, but as Christians. It is due to the 
honour of Religion and Virtue, — it is fit for 
the confusion of the impious and the de- 
praved, to show r that these sacred principles 
are not to be hid in the darkness of humble 
life to lead the prejudiced and amuse the 
superstitious, but that they appear with their 
proper lustre at the head of councils, of 
armies, and of empires, — the supports of va- 
lour. — the sources of active and enlightened 
beneficence, — the companions of all real 
policy, — and the guides to solid and durable 
glory. 

A distinction has been made in our times 
among' statesmen, between Public and Pri- 
vate Virtue : they have been supposed to be 
separable. The neglect of every private ob- 
ligation, has been supposed to be compatible 
with public virtue, and the violation of the 
most sacred public trust has been thought 



not inconsistent with private worth : — a de- 
plorable distinction, the creature of corrupt 
sophistry, disavowed by Reason and Morals, 
and condemned by all the authority of Reli- 
gion. No such disgraceful inconsistency, or 
flagrant hypocrisy, disgraced the character of 
the venerable person of whom I speak, — of 
whom we may, without suspicion of exagge- 
ration, say, that he performed with equal 
strictness every office of public or private 
life ) that his public virtue was not put on 
for parade, like a gaudy theatrical dress, but 
that it was the same integrity and benevo- 
lence which attended his most retired mo- 
ments; that with a simple and modest cha- 
racter, alien to ostentation, and abhorrent 
from artifice, — with no pursuit of popularity, 
and no sacrifice to court favour, — by no 
other means than an universal reputation for 
good sense, humanity, and honesty, he gain- 
ed universal confidence, and was summoned 
to the highest offices at every call of danger. 
He has left us an useful example of the 
true dignity of these invaluable qualities, 
and has given us new reason to thank God 
that we are the natives of a country yet so 
uncorrupted as to prize them thus highly. 
He has left us an example of the pure states- 
man, — of a paternal governor, — of a warrior 
who loved peace, — of a hero without ambi- 
tion, — of a conqueror who showed unfeigned 
moderation in the moment of victory, — and 
of a patriot who devoted himself to death for 
his country. May this example be as fruit- 
ful, as his memory will be immortal ! May 
the last generations of Britain aspire to copy 
and rival so pure a model ! And when the 
nations of India turn their eyes to his monu- 
ment, rising amidst fields which his paternal 
care has restored to their ancient fertility, 
may they who have long suffered from the 
violence of those who are unjustly called 
'Great,' at length learn to love and reve- 
rence the Good. 



CHARACTER 



OF THE 



RIGHT HONOURABLE GEORGE CANNING.* 



Without invidious comparison, it may be 
safely said that, from the circumstances in 
which he died, his death was more gene- 



ontributed to the " Keepsake of 1828. under 
the title of " Sketch of a Fragment of the History 
of the Nineteenth Century," in which, as the 
Author announces in a notice prefixed to it, the 
temper of the future historian of the present times 
is affected. — Ed. 



rally interesting among civilized nations than 
that of any other English statesman had ever 
been. It was an event in the internal his- 
tory of every country. From Lima to Athens, 
every nation struggling for independence or 
existence, was filled by it with sorrow and 
dismay. The Miguelites of Portugal, the 
Apostolicals of Spain, the Jesuit faction in 
France, and the Divan of Constantinople, 



CHARACTER OF MR. CANNING. 



/ 



239 



raised a shout of joy at the fall of their 
dreaded enemy. He was regretted by all 
who, heated by no personal or party resent- 
ment, felt for genius struck down in the act 
of attempting to heal the revolutionary dis- 
temper, and to render future improvements 
pacific, on the principle since successfully 
adopted by more fortunate, though not more 
deserving, ministers, — that of an honest 
compromise between the interests and the 
opinions, — the prejudices and the demands. 
— of the supporters of establishments, and 
the followers of reformation. 

# # # # # 

The family of Mr. Canning, which for 
more than a century had filled honourable 
stations in Ireland, was a younger branch of 
an ancient one among the English gentry. 
His father, a man of letters, had been disin- 
herited for an imprudent marriage ; and the 
inheritance went to a younger brother, whose 
son was afterwards created Lord Garvagh. 
Mr. Canning was educated at Eton and Ox- 
ford, according to that exclusively classical 
system, which, whatever may be its defects, 
must be owned, when taken with its con- 
stant appendages, to be eminently favourable 
to the cultivation of sense and taste, as well 
as to the development of wit and spirit. 
From his boyhood he was the foremost 
among very distinguished contemporaries, 
and continued to be regarded as the best 
specimen, and the most brilliant representa- 
tive, of that eminently national education. 
His youthful eye sparkled with quickness 
and arch pleasantry ; and his countenance 
early betrayed that jealousy of his own dig- 
nity, and sensibility to suspected disregard, 
which were afterwards softened, but never 
quite subdued. Neither the habits of a great 
school, nor those of a popular assembly, were 
calculated to weaken his love of praise and 
passion for distinction: but, as he advanced 
in years, his fine countenance was ennobled 
by the expression of thought and feeling; 
he more pursued that lasting praise, which 
is not to be earned without praiseworthiness ; 
and, if he continued to be a lover of fame, 
he also passionately loved the glory of his 
country. Even he who almost alone was 
entitled to look down on fame as 'that last 
infirmity of noble minds,' had not forgotten 
that it was — 

" The spur that the clear spirit doth raise, 
To scorn delights, and live laborious days."* 

The natural bent of character is, perhaps, 
better ascertained from the undisturbed and 
unconscious play of the mind in the common 
intercourse of society, than from its move- 
ments under the power of strong interest or 
warm passions in public life. In social in- 
tercourse Mr. Canning was delightful. Hap- 
pily for the true charm of his conversation 
he was too busy not to treat society as more 
fitted for relaxation than for display. It is 
but little to say, that he was neither disputa- 
tious, declamatory, nor sententious, — neither 

* Lycidas. 



a dictator nor a jester. His manner was 
simple and unobtrusive : his language always 
quite familiar. If a higher thought stole 
from his mind, it came in its conversational 
uridress. From this plain ground his plea- 
santry sprang with the happiest effect; and 
it was nearly exempt from that alloy of taunt 
and banter, which he sometimes mixed with 
more precious materials in public contest. 
He may be added to the list of those emi- 
nent persons who pleased most in their 
friendly circle. He had the agreeable quality 
of being more easily pleased in society than 
might have been expected from the keen- 
ness of his discernment, and the sensibility 
of his temper : still he was liable to be dis- 
composed, or even silenced, by the presence 
of any one whom he did not like. His man- 
ner in company betrayed the political vexa- 
tions or anxieties which preyed on his mind: 
nor could he conceal that sensitiveness to 
public attacks which their frequent recur- 
rence wears out in most English politicians. 
These last foibles may be thought interesting 
as the remains of natural character, not 
destroyed by refined society and political 
affairs. He was assailed by some adversa- 
ries so ignoble as to wound him through his 
filial affection, which preserved its respectful 
character through the whole course of his 
advancement. 

The ardent zeal for his memory, which 
appeared immediately after his death, attests 
the warmth of those domestic affections 
Avhich seldom prevail where they are not 
mutual. To his touching epitaph on his son, 
parental love has given a charm which is 
wanting in his other verses. It was said of 
him, at one time, that no man had so little 
popularity and such affectionate friends ; and 
the truth was certainly more sacrificed to 
point in the former than in the latter mem- 
ber of the contrast. Some of his friendships 
continued in spite of political differences 
(which, by rendering intercourse less un- 
constrained, often undermine friendship ;) 
and others were remarkable for a warmth, 
constancy, and disinterestedness, which, 
though chiefly honourable to those who 
were capable of so pure a kindness, yet re- 
dound to the credit of him who was the ob- 
ject of it. No man is thus beloved who is- 
not himself formed for friendship. 

Notwithstanding his disregard for money, 
he was not tempted in youth by the exam- 
ple or the kindness of affluent friends much 
to overstep his little patrimony. He never 
afterwards sacrificed to parade or personal 
indulgence : though his occupations scarcely 
allowed him to think enough of his private 
affairs. Even from his moderate fortune, his 
bounty was often liberal to suitors to whom 
official relief could not be granted. By a 
sort of generosity still harder for him to prac- 
tise, he endeavoured, in cases where the 
suffering was great, though the suit could 
not be granted, to satisfy the feelings of the 
suitor by a full explanation in writing of the 
| causes which rendered compliance impracti- 



240 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



cable. Wherever he took an interest, he 
showed it as much by delicacy to the feel- 
ings of those whom he served or relieved, as 
by substantial consideration for their claims; 
— a rare and most praiseworthy merit among 
men in power. 

In proportion as the opinion of a people 
acquires influence over public affairs, the 
faculty of persuading men to support or op- 
pose political measures acquires importance. 
The peculiar nature of Parliamentary debate 
contributes to render eminence in that pro- 
vince not so imperfect a test of political 
ability as it might appear to be. Recited 
speeches can seldom show more than powers 
of reasoning" and imagination ; which have 
little connection with a capacity for affairs. 
But the unforeseen events of debate, and the 
necessity of immediate answer in unpreme- 
ditated language, afford scope for the quick- 
ness, firmness, boldness, wariness, presence 
of mind, and address in the management of 
men, which are among the qualities most 
essential to a statesman. The most flour- 
ishing period of our Parliamentary eloquence 
extends for about half a century, — from the 
maturity of Lord Chatham's genius to the 
death of Mr. Fox. During the twenty years 
which succeeded, Mr. Canning was some- 
times the leader, and always the greatest 
orator, of the party who supported the Ad- 
ministration ; in which there were able men 
who supported, without rivalling him, against 
opponents also not thought by him inconsi- 
derable. Of these last, one, at least, was felt 
by every hearer, and acknowledged in pri- 
vate by himself, to have always forced his 
faculties to their very uttermost stretch.* 

Had he been a dry and meagre speaker, 
he would have been universally allowed to 
have been one of the greatest masters of 
argument ; but his hearers were so dazzled 
by the splendour of his diction, that they did 
not perceive the acuteness and the occasion- 
ally excessive refinement of his reasoning; 
a consequence which, as it shows the inju- 
rious influence of a seductive fault, can with 
the less justness be overlooked in the esti- 
mate of his understanding. Ornament, it 
must be owned, when it only pleases or 
amuses, without disposing the audience to 
adopt the sentiments of the speaker, is an 
offence against the first law of public speak- 
ing ; it obstructs instead of promoting its only 
reasonable purpose. But eloquence is a 
widely extended art, comprehending many 
sorts of excellence ; in some of which orna- 
mented diction is more liberally employed 
than in others; and in none of which the 
highest rank can be attained, without an ex- 
traordinary combination of mental powers. 
Among our own orators. Mr. Canning seems 
to have been the best model of the adorned 
style. The splendid and sublime descrip- 
tions of Mr. Burke, — his comprehensive and 
profound views of general principle, — though 



* Mr. (now Lord) Brougham is the person al- 
luded to. — Ed. 



they must ever delight and instruct the rea- 
der, must be owned to have been digressions 
which diverted the mind of the hearer from 
the object on which the speaker ought to have 
kept it steadily fixed. Sheridan, a man of 
admirable sense, anil matchless wit, laboured 
to follow Burke into the foreign regions of feel- 
ing and grandeur. The specimens preserved 
of his most celebrated speeches show too 
much of the exaggeration and excess to 
which those are peculiarly liable who seek 
by art and effort what nature has denied. 
By the constant part which Mr. Canning took 
in debate, he was called upon to show a 
knowledge which Sheridan did not possess, 
and a readiness which that accomplished 
man hadjro such means of strengthening and 
displaying. In some qualities of style, Mr. 
Canning surpassed Mr. Pitt. His diction was 
more various, — sometimes more simple, — 
more idiomatical, even in its more elevated 
parts. It sparkled with imagery, and was 
brightened by illustration ; in both of which 
Mr. Pitt, for so great an orator, was defec- 
tive. 

No English speaker used the keen and 
brilliant weapon of wit so long, so often, or 
so effectively, as Mr. Canning. He gained 
more triumphs, and incurred more enmity, 
by it than by any other. Those whose im- 
portance depends much on birth and for- 
tune are impatient of seeing their own arti- 
ficial dignity, or that of their order, broken 
down by derision; and perhaps few men 
heartily forgive a successful jest against 
themselves, but those who are conscious of 
being unhurt by it. Mr. Canning often used 
this talent imprudently. In sudden flashes 
of wit, and in the playful description of men 
or things, he was often distinguished by that 
natural felicity which is the charm of plea- 
santry ; to which the air of art and labour is 
more fatal than to any other talent. Sheri- 
dan was sometimes betrayed by an imitation 
of the dialogue of his master, Congreve, into 
a sort of laboured and finished jesting, so 
balanced and expanded, as sometimes to vie 
in tautology and monotony with the once 
applauded triads of Johnson ; and which, 
even in its most happy passages, is more 
sure of commanding serious admiration than 
hearty laughter. It cannot be denied that 
Mr. Canning's taste was, in this respect, 
somewhat influenced by the example of his 
early friend. The exuberance of fancy and 
wit lessened the gravity of his general man- 
ner, and perhaps also indisposed the audi- 
ence to feel his earnestness where it clearly 
showed itself. In that important quality he 
was inferior to Mr. Pitt, — 

" Deep on whose front engraven, 
Deliberation sat, and public care ;"* 

and no less inferior to Mr. Fox, whose fervid 
eloquence flowed from the love of his coun- 
try, the scorn of baseness, and the hatred of 
cruelty, which were the ruling passions of 
his nature. 

* Paradise Lost, Book II. — Ed. 



CHARACTER OF MR. CANNING. 



241 



On the whole, it may be observed, that 
the range of Mr. Canning's powers as an 
orator was wider than that in which he usu- 
ally exerted them. When mere statement 
only was allowable, no man of his age was 
more simple. When infirm health com- 
pelled him to be brief, no speaker could 
compress his matter with so little sacrifice 
of clearness, ease, and elegance. In his 
speech on Colonial Reformation, in 1823, he 
seemed to have brought down the philoso- 
phical principles and the moral sentiments of 
Mr. Burke to that precise level wdiere they 
could be happily blended with a grave and 
dignified speech, intended as an introduction 
to a new system of legislation. As his ora- 
torical faults were those of youthful genius, 
the progress of age seemed to purify his elo- 
quence, and every year appeared to remove 
some speck which hid, or, at least, dimmed, 
a beauty. He daily rose to larger views, 
and made, perhaps, as near approaches to 
philosophical principles as the great dif- 
ence between the objects of the philoso- 
pher and those of the orator will commonly 
allow. 

Mr. Canning possessed, in a high degree, 
the outward advantages of an orator. His 
expressive countenance varied with the 
changes of his eloquence : his voice, flexi- 
ble and articulate, had as much compass as 
his mode of speaking required. In the calm 
part of his speeches, his attitude and gesture 
might have been selected by a painter to 
represent grace rising towards dignity. 

When the memorials of his own time, — 
the composition of which he is said never to 
have interrupted in his busiest moments, — 
■are made known to the public, his abilities 
as a writer may be better estimated. His 
only known writings in prose are State Pa- 
pers, which, when considered as the compo- 
sition of a Minister for Foreign Affairs, in 
one of the most extraordinary periods of 
European history, are undoubtedly of no 
small importance. Such of these papers as 
were intended to be a direct appeal to the 
judgment of mankind combine so much 
precision, with such uniform circumspection 
and dignity, that they must ever be studied 
as models of that very difficult species of 
composition. His Instructions to ministers 
abroad, on occasions both perplexing and 
momentous, will be found to exhibit a rare 
union of comprehensive and elevated views, 
with singular ingenuity in devising means 
of execution; on which last faculty he some- 
times relied perhaps more confidently than 
the short and dim foresight of man will war- 
rant. --Great affairs," says Lord Bacon, "are 
commonly too coarse and stubborn to be 
worked upon by the fine edges and points of 
wit."* His papers in negotiation were occa- 
sionally somewhat too controversial in their 
tone: they were not near enough to the man- 
ner of an amicable conversation about a dis- 



* It may be proper to remind the reader, that 
here the word " wit" is used in its ancient sense. 
31 



puled point of business, in which a negotia- 
tor does not so much draw out his argument, 
as hint his own object, and sound the inten- 
tion of his opponent. He sometimes seems 
to have pursued triumph more than advan- 
tage, and not to have remembered that to 
leave the opposite party satisfied with what 
he has got, and in good humour with him- 
self, is not one of the least proofs of a nego- 
tiator's skill. Where the papers were in- 
tended ultimately to reach the public through 
Parliament, it might have been prudent to 
regard chiefly the final object ; and when 
this excuse was wanting, much must be par- 
doned to the controversial habits of a Parlia- 
mentary life. It is hard for a debater to be 
a negotiator: the faculty of guiding public 
assemblies is very remote from the art of 
dealing with individuals. 

Mr. Canning's power of writing verse may 
rather be classed with his accomplishments, 
than numbered among his high and noble 
faculties. It would have been a distinction 
for an inferior man. His verses were far 
above those of Cicero, of Burke, and of Ba- 
con. The taste prevalent in his youth led 
him to feel more relish for sententious de- 
claimers than is shared by lovers of the true 
poetry of imagination and sensibility. In 
some respects his poetical compositions were 
also influenced by his early intercourse with 
Mr. Sheridan, though he was restrained by 
his more familiar contemplation of classical 
models from the glittering conceits of that 
extraordinary man. Something of an artifi- 
cial and composite diction is discernible in 
the English poems of those who have ac- 
quired reputation by Latin verse, — more 
especially since the pursuit of rigid purity 
has required so timid an imitation as not 
only to confine itself to the words, but to 
adopt none but the phrases of ancient poets. 
Of this effect Gray must be allowed to fur- 
nish an example. 

Absolute silence about Mr. Canning's writ- 
ings as a political satirist, — which were for 
their hour so popular, — might be imputed to 
undue timidity. In that character he yielded 
to General Fitzpatrick in arch stateliness and 
poignant raillery; to Mr. Moore in the gay 
prodigality with which he squanders his 
countless stores of wit ; and to his own 
friend Mr. Frere in the richness of a native 
vein of original and fantastic drollery. In 
that ungenial province, where the brightest 
of laurels are apt very soon to fade, and 
where Dryden only boasts immortal lays, it 
is perhaps his best praise to record that 
there is no writing of his, which a man of 
honour might not have avowed as soon as 
the first heat of contest was past. 

In some of the amusements or tasks of his 
boyhood there are passages which, without 
much help from fancy, might appear to con- 
tain allusions to his greatest measures of 
policy, as well as to the tenor of his life, 
and to the melancholy splendour which sur- 
rounded his death. In the concluding line 
of the first English verses written by him at 
V 



242 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



Eton, he expressed a wish, which has been 
• singularly realised; that he might 

"Live in a blaze, and in a blaze expire." 

It is a striking coincidence, that the states- 
man, whose dying measure was to mature 
an alliance for the deliverance of Greece, 
should, when a boy. have written English 
verses on the slavery of that country; and 
that in his prize poem at Oxford, on the Pil- 
grimage to Mecca, — a composition as much 
applauded as a modern Latin poem can as- 
pire to be — he shquld have as bitterly deplo- 
red the lot of other renowned countries, now 
groaning under the same barbarous yoke, — 



" IS T unc Satrapae imperio et sacvo subditaTurcae."* 

To conclude : — he was a man of fine and 
brilliant genius, of warm affections, of a high 
and generous spirit, — a statesman who, at 
home, converted most of his opponents into 
warm supporters ; who, abroad, was the sole 
hope and trust of all who sought an orderly and 
legal liberty ; and who was cut off in the midst 
of vigorous and splendid measures, which, if 
executed by himself, or with his own spirit, 
promised to place his name in the first class 
of rulers, among the founders of lasting peace, 
and the guardians of human improvement. 



Iter ad Meccam, Oxford, 1789. 



PREFACE 



TO A REPRINT OF 



THE EDINDURGH REVIEW 



of 1755.* 



It is generally known that two numbers 
of a Critical Journal were published at Edin- 
burgh in the year 1755, under the title of the 
: Edinburgh Review." The following vo- 
lume contains an exact reprint of that Re- 
view, now become so rare that it is not to be 
found in the libraries of some of the most 
curious collectors. To this reprint are added 
the names of the writers of the most impor- 
tant articles. Care has been laken to authen- 
ticate the list of names by reference to well- 
informed persons, and by comparison with 
copies in the possession of those who have 
derived their information from distinct and 
independent sources. If no part of it should 
be now corrected by those Scotchmen of let- 
ters still living, who may have known the 
fact from the writers themselves, we may 
regard this literary secret as llnally discover- 
ed, with some gratification to the curious 
reader, and without either pain to the feel- 
ings, or wrong to the character of any one. 
There are few anonymous writers the dis- 
cover}- of whose /names would be an object 
of curiosity after the lapse of sixty years : 
there are perhaps still fewer whose secret 
might be exposed to the public after that 
long period with perfect security to their 
reputation for equity and forbearance. 

The mere circumstance that this volume 
contains the first printed writings of Adam 
Smith and Robertson, and the only known 
publication of Lord Chancellor Rosslyn, will 

* Published in 1816.— Ed. 



probably be thought a sufficient reason for 
its present appearance. 

Of the eight articles which appear to have 
been furnished by Dr. Robertson, six are on 
historical subjects. Written during the com- 
position of the History of Scotland, they show 
evident marks of the wary understanding, 
the insight into character, the right judgment 
in affairs, and the union of the sober specu- 
lation of a philosopher with the practical 
prudence of a statesman, as well as the 
studied elegance and somewhat ceremonious 
stateliness of style which distinguish his 
more elaborate writings. He had already- 
succeeded in guarding his diction against 
the words and phrases of the dialect which 
he habitually spoke ; — an enterprise in which 
he had no forerunner, and of which the diffi- 
culty even now can only be estimated by a 
native of Scotland. The dread of inelegance 
in a language almost foreign kept him, as it 
has kept succeeding Scotch writers, at a dis- 
tance from the familiar English, the perfect use 
of which can be acquired only by conversation 
from the earlist years. Two inaccurate ex- 
pressions only are to be found in these early 
and hasty productions of this elegant writer. 
Instead of "individuals'"' he uses the Galli- 
cism "particulars;"' and for "enumeration" 
he employs " induction," — a term properly- 
applicable only with a view 7 to the general in- 
ference which enumeration affords. In the 
review of the History of Peter the Great it is 
not uninteresting to find it remarked, that the 
violence and ferocity of that renowned barba- 



PREFACE TO A REPRINT OF THE EDINBURGH REVIEW OF 1755. 243 



rian perhaps partly fitted him to be the reform- 
er of a barbarous people : as it was afterwards 
observed in the Histories of Scotland and of 
Charles V., that a milder and more refined 
character might have somewhat disqualified 
Luther and Knox for their great work. Two 
articles being on Scottish affairs were natu- 
ral relaxations for the historian of Scotland. 
In that which relates to the Catalogue of 
Scottish Bishops we observe a subdued smile 
at the eagerness of the antiquary and the 
ecclesiastical partisan, qualified indeed by a 
just sense of the value of the collateral infor- 
mation which their toil may chance to throw 
up. but which he was too cautious and de- 
corous to have hazarded in his avowed writ- 
ings. That he reviewed Douglas' Account 
of North America was a fortunate circum- 
stance, if we may suppose that the recollec- 
tion might at a distant period have contribut- 
ed to suggest the composition of the History 
of America. None of these writings could 
have justified any expectation of his histori- 
cal fame ; because they furnished no occa- 
sion for exerting the talent for narration, — 
the most difficult but the most necessary 
attainment for an historian, and one in which 
he has often equalled the greatest masters 
of his art. In perusing the two essays of a 
literary sort ascribed to him, it may seem 
that he has carried lenient and liberal criti- 
cism to an excess. His mercy to the vicious 
style of Hervey may have been in some 
measure the result of professional prudence : 
but it must be owned that he does not seem 
enough aware of the interval between Gray 
and Shenstone, and that he names versifiers 
now wholly forgotten. Had he and his asso- 
ciates, however, erred on the opposite ex- 
treme, — had they underrated and vilified 
works of genius, their fault would now ap- 
pear much more offensive. To overrate 
somewhat the inferior degrees of real merit 
which are reached by contemporaries is 
indeed the natural disposition of superior 
minds, when they are neither degraded by 
jealousy nor inflamed by hostile prejudice. 
The faint and secondary beauties of contem- 
poraries are aided by novelty ; they are 
brought near enough to the attention by cu- 
riosity ; and they are compared with their 
competitors of the same time instead of being 
tried by the test of likeness to the produce 
of all ages and nations. This goodnatured 
exaggeration encourages talent, and gives 
pleasure to readers as well as writers, with- 
out any permanent injury to the public taste. 
The light which seems brilliant only because 
it is near the eye, cannot reach the distant 
observer. Books which please for a year, 
which please for ten years, and which please 
for ever, gradually take their destined sta- 
tions. There is little need of harsh criti- 
cism to forward this final justice. The very 
critic who has bestowed too prodigal praise, 
if he long survives his criticism, will survive 
also his harmless error. Robertson never 
ceased to admire Gray: but he lived long 
enough probably to forget the name of Jago. 



In the contributions of Dr. Adam Smith 
it is easy to trace his general habits both of 
thinking and writing. Among the inferior 
excellencies of this great philosopher, it is 
not to be forgotten that in his full and flow- 
ing composition he manages the English 
language with a freer hand and with more 
native ease than any other Scottish writer. 
Robertson avoids Scotticisms: but Smith 
might be taken for an English writer not 
peculiarly idiomatical. It is not improbable 
that the early lectures of Hutcheson, an elo- 
quent native of Ireland, and a residence at 
Oxford from the age of seventeen to that of 
twenty-four, may have aided Smith in the 
attainment of this more free and native style. 
It must however be owned, that his works, 
confined to subjects of science or specula- 
tion, do not afford the severest test of a 
writer's familiarity with a language. On 
such subjects it is comparatively easy, with- 
out any appearance of constraint or parade, 
to avoid the difficulties of idiomatical expres- 
sion by the employment of general and tech- 
nical terms. His review of Johnson's Dic- 
tionary is chiefly valuable as a proof that 
neither of these eminent persons was well 
qualified to write an English dictionary. 
The plan of Johnson and the specimens of 
Smith are alike faulty. At that period, in- 
deed, neither the cultivation of our old litera- 
ture, nor the study of the languages from 
which the English springs or to which it is 
related, nor the habit of observing the gene- 
ral structure of language, was so far advanced 
as to render it possible for this great work to 
approach perfection. His parallel between 
French and English writers* is equally just 
and ingenious, and betrays very little of that 
French taste in polite letters, especially in 
dramatic poetry to which Dr. Smith and 
his friend Mr. Hume were prone. The ob- 
servations on the life of a savage, which 
when seen from a distance appears to be di- 
vided between Arcadian repose and chival- 
rous adventure, and by this union is the most 
alluring object of general curiosity and the 
natural scene of the golden age both of the 
legendary, and of the paradoxical sophist, 
are an example of those original speculations 
on the reciprocal influence of society and 
opinions which characterize the genius of 
Smith. The commendation of Rousseau's 
eloquent Dedication to the Republic of Ge- 
neva, for expressing "that ardent and passion- 
ate esteem which it becomes a good citizen to 
entertain for the government of his. country 
and the character of his countrymen," is an 
instance of the seeming exaggeration of just 
principles, arising from the employment of 
the language of moral feeling, as that of ethi- 
cal philosophy, which is very observable in 
the Theory of Moral Sentiments. 

Though the contributions of Alexander 
Wedderburn, afterwards Earl of Rosslyn. af- 
forded little scope for the display of mental 
superiority, it. is not uninteresting to examine 



Letter to the Editor, at the end of the volume. 



244 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



the first essays in composition of a man whose 
powers of reason and eloquence raised him 
to the highest dignity of the state. A Greek 
grammar and two law books were allotted to 
him as subjects of criticism. Humble as 
these subjects arc, an attentive perusal will 
discover in his remarks on them a distinct- 
ness of conception and a terseness as well as 
precision of language which are by no means 
common qualities of writing. One error in 
the use of the future tense deserves notice 
only as it shows the difficulties which he 
had to surmount in acquiring what costs an 
Englishman no study. The praise bestowed 
in his Preface on Buchanan for an "un- 
daunted spirit of liberty/' is an instance of 
the change which sixty years have produced 
in political sentiment. Though that great 
writer was ranked among the enemies of 
monarchy,* the praise of him, especially in 
Scotland, was a mark of fidelity to a govern- 
ment which, though monarchical, was found- 
ed on the principles of the Revolution, and 
feared no danger but from the partisans of 
hereditary right. But the criticisms and the in- 
genious and judicious Preface show the early 
taste of a man who at the age of twenty-two 
withstands every temptation to unseason- 
able display. The love of letters, together 
with talents already conspicuous, had in the 
preceding year (1754) placed him in the 
chair at the first meeting of a literary society 
of which Hume and Smith were members. 
The same dignified sentiment attended him 
through a long life of activity and ambition, 
and shed a lustre over his declining years. It 
was respectably manifested by fidelity to the 
literary friends of his youth, and it gave him 
a disposition, perhaps somewhat excessive, 
to applaud every shadow of the like merit in 
others. 

The other writers are only to be regarded 
as respectable auxiliaries in such an under- 
taking. Dr. Blair is an useful example, that 
a station among good writers may be attained 
by assiduity and good sense, with the help 
of an uncorrupted taste : while for the want 
of these qualities, it is often not reached by 
others whose powers of mind may be allied 
to genius. 

The delicate task of reviewing the theolo- 
gical publications of Scotland was allotted to 
Mr. Jardine, one of the ministers of Edin- 
burgh, whose performance of that duty 
would have required no particular notice, had 
it not contributed with other circumstances 
to bring the work to its sudden and unex- 
pected close. At the very moment when 
Mr. Wedderburn (in his note at the end of 
the second number) had announced an in- 
tention to enlarge the plan, he and his col- 
leagues were obliged to relinquish the work. 

The temper of the people of Scotland was 
ut that moment peculiarly jealous on every 
question that approached the boundaries of 
theology. A popular election of the paro- 

* He is usually placed with Languet and Althu- 
pen among the Monarchomisls. 



chial clergy had been restored with Presby- 
tery by the Revolution. The rights of Pa- 
trons had been reimposed on the Scottish 
Church in .the last years of Queen Anne, 
by Ministers who desired, if they did not 
meditate, the re-establishment of Episco- " 
pacy. But for thirty years afterwards this 
unpopular right was either disused by the 
Patrons or successfully resisted by the people. 
The zealous Presbyterians still retained the 
doctrine and spirit of the Covenanters; and 
their favourite preachers, bred up amidst the 
furious persecutions of Charles the Second, 
had rather learnt piety and fortitude than ac- 
quired that useful and ornamental learning 
which becomes their order in tunes of quiet. 
Some of them had separated from the Church 
on account of lay Patronage, among other 
marks of degeneracy. But besides these 
Seceders, the majority of the Established 
clergy were adverse to the law of Patronage, 
and disposed to connive at resistance to its 
execution. On the other hand, the more 
lettered and refined ministers of the Church, 
who had secretly relinquished many parts of 
the Calvinistic system, — from the unpopu- 
larity of their own opinions and modes of 
preaching, from their connection with the 
gentry who held the rights of Patronage, 
and from repugnance to the vulgar and illite- 
rate ministers whom turbulent elections had 
brought into the Church, — became hostile to 
the interference of the people, and zealously 
laboured to enforce the execution of a law 
which had hitherto remained almost dormant. 
The Orthodox party maintained the rights of 
the people against a regulation imposed on 
them by their enemies; and the party which 
in matters of religion claimed the distinction 
of liberality and toleration, contended for the 
absolute authority of the civil magistrate to 
the destruction of a right which more than 
any other interested the conscience of the 
people of Scotland. At the head of this last 
party was Dr. Robertson, one of the contribu- 
tors to the present volume, who about ihe 
time of its appearance was on the eve of 
effecting a revolution in the practice of the 
Church, by at length compelling the stubborn 
Presbyterians to submit to the authority of a 
law which they abhorred. 

Another circumstance rendered the time 
very perilous for Scotch reviewers of eccle- 
siastical publications. The writings of Mr. 
Hume, the intimate friend of the leader of 
the tolerant clergy, very naturally excited 
the alarm of the Orthodox party, who, like 
their predecessors of the preceding age, were 
zealous for the rights of the people, but con- 
fined their charity within the pale of their 
own communion, and were much disposed 
to regard the impunity of heretics and infidels 
as a reproach to a Christian magistrate. In 
the year 1754 a complaint to the General 
Assembly against the philosophical writings 
of Mr. Hume and Lord Kames was with dif- 
ficulty eluded by the friends of free discus- 
sion . The writers of the Review were aware 
of the danger to which they were exposed by 



ON THE WRITINGS OF MACHIAVEL. 



245 



these circumstances. They kept the secret ] 
of their Review from Mr. Hume, the most 
intimate friend of some of them. They for- 
bore to notice in it his History of the Stuarts. 
of which the first volume appeared at Edin- 
burgh two months before the publication of 
the Review ; though it is little to say that it 
was the most remarkable work which ever 
issued from the Scottish press. 

They trusted that the moderation and well- 
known piety of Mr. Jardine would conduct 
them safely through the suspicion and jeal- 
ousy of jarring parties. Nor does it in fact ap- 
pear that any part of his criticisms is at va- 
riance with that enlightened reverence for 
religion which he was known to feel : but he 
was somewhat influenced by the ecclesiasti- 
cal party to which he adhered. He seems to 
have thought that he might securely assail the 
opponents of Patronage through the sides of I 
Erskine, Boston, and other popular preachers, j 
who were either Seeeders. or divines of the ! 
same school. He even ventured to use the 
weapon of ridicule against their extravagant 
metaphors, their wire-drawn allegories, their 
mean allusions, and to laugh at those who 
complained of " the connivance at Popery, 4 
the toleration of Prelacy, the pretended rights 
of Lay Patrons, — of heretical professors in the 
universities, and a lax clergy in possession 
of the churches," as the crying' evils of the 
time. 

This species of attack, at a moment when 
,ythe religious feelings of the public were thus 
* susceptible, appears to have excited general 
alarm. The Orthodox might blame the writ- 
ings criticised without approving the tone 
assumed by the critic : the multitude were 
exasperated by the scorn with which their 
favourite writers were treated : and many 
who altogether disapproved these writings 
might consider ridicule as a weapon of 
doubtful propriety against language habitu- 



ally employed to convey the religious and 
moral feelings of a nation. In these circum- 
stances the authors of the Review did not 
think themselves bound to hazard their quiet, 
reputation, and interest, by perseverance in 
their attempt to improve the taste of their 
countrymen. 

It will not be supposed that the remarks 
made above on the ecclesiastical parties in 
Scotland sixty years ago can have any refer- 
ence to their political character at the present 
day. The principles of toleration now seem 
to prevail among the Scottish clergy more 
than among any other established church in 
Europe. A public act of the General As- 
sembly may be considered as a renunciation 
of that hostility to the full toleration of Catho- 
lics which was for a long time the disgrace 
of the most liberal Protestants. The party 
called 'Orthodox' are purified from the in- 
tolerance which unhappily reigned among 
their predecessors, and have in general 
adopted those principles of religious liberty 
which the sincerely pious, when consistent 
with themselves, must be the foremost to 
maintain. Some of them also, even hi these 
times, espouse those generous and sacred 
principles of civil liberty which distinguished 
the old Puritans, and which in spite of their 
faults entitle them to be ranked among the 
first benefactors of their country.* 



* " The precious spark of liberty bad been kin- 
dled and was preserved by the Puritans alone : 
and it was to this sect, whose principles appear so 
frivolous and habits so ridiculous, that the English 
owe the whole freedom of their constitution." — 
Hume, History of England, chap. xl. This testi- 
mony to the merits of the Puritans, from the 
mouth of their enemy, must be owned to be 
founded in exaggeration. But if we allow them 
to have materially contributed to the preservation 
of English liberty, we must acknowledge that the 
world owes more to the ancient Puritans than to 
any other sect or party among men. 



ON THE 



WHITINGS OE MACHIAVEL/ 



Literature, which lies much nearer to 
the feelings of mankind than science, has 
the most important effect on the sentiments 
with which the sciences are regarded, the 
activity with which they are pursued, and 
the mode in which they are cultivated. It 
is the instrument, in particular, by which 
ethical science is generally diffused. As the 
useful arts maintain the general honour of 
physical knowledge, so polite letters allure 

* From the Edinburgh Review, vol. xxvii. p. 
207.— Ed. 



the world into the neighbourhood of the 
sciences of morals and of mind. Wherever 
the agreeable vehicle of literature does not 
convey their doctrines to the public, they re- 
main as the occupation of a few recluses in 
the schools, with no root in the general feel- 
ings, and liable to be destroyed by the dis- 
persion of a handful of doctors, and the 
destruction of their unlamented seminaries. 
Nor is this all : — polite literature is not only 
the true guardian of the moral sciences, and 
the sole instrument of spreading their bene- 
fits among men, but it becomes, from these 
v 2 



216 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



very circumstances, the regulator of their 
cultivation and their progress. As long as 
they are confined to a small number of men 
in scholastic retirement, there is no restrainl 
upon their natural prorieness to degenerate 
either into verbal subtilties or shadowy 
dreams. As long as speculation remained 
in the schools, ail its followers were divided 
into mere dialecticians, or mystical visiona- 
ries, both alike unmindful of the real world, 
and disregarded by its inhabitants. The re- 
vival of literature produced a revolution at 
once in the state of society, and in the mode 
of philosophizing. It attracted readers from 
the common ranks of society, who were 
gradually led on from eloquence and poetry, 
to morals and philosophy. Philosophers and 
moralists, after an interval of almost a thou- 
sand years, during which they had spoken 
only to each other, once more discovered 
that they might address the great body of 
mankind, with the hope of fame and of use- 
fulness. Intercourse with this great public, 
supplied new materials, and imposed new 
restraints: the feelings, the common sense, 
the ordinary affairs of men, presented them- 
selves again to the moralist j and philosophers 
were compelled to speak in terms intelligible 
and agreeable to their new hearers. Before 
this period, little prose had been written in 
any modern language, except chronicles or 
romances. Boccacio had indeed acquired a 
classical rank, by compositions of the latter 
kind ; and historical genius had risen in Frois- 
sart and Comines to a height which has not 
been equalled among the same nation in 
times of greater refinement. But Latin was 
still the language in which all subjects then 
deemed of higher dignity, and which occu- 
pied the life of the learned by profession, 
were treated. This system continued till 
the Reformation, which, by the employment 
of the living languages in public worship, 
gave them a dignity unknown before, and, 
by the versions of the Bible, and the practice 
of preaching and writing on theology and 
morals in the common tongues, did more 
for polishing modern literature, for diffusing 
knowledge, and for improving morality, than 
all the other events and discoveries of that 
active age. 

Machiavel is the first still celebrated writer 
Avho discussed grave questions in a modern 
language. This peculiarity is the more wor- 
thy of notice, because he was not excited by 
the powerful stimulant of the Reformation. 
That event was probably regarded by him 
as a disturbance in a barbarous country, pro- 
duced by the novelties of a vulgar monk, 
unworthy of the notice of a man wholly oc- 
cupied with the affairs of Florence, and the 
hope of expelling si rangers from Italy ; and 
having reached, at the appearance of Luther, 
the last unhappy period of his agitated life. 

The Prince is an account of the means by 
which tyrannical power is to be acquired and 
preserved: it is a theory of that class of 
phenomena in the history of mankind. It is 
essential to its purpose, therefore, that it 



should contain an enumeration and exposi- 
tion of tyrannical arts; and. on that account, 
it may be viewed and used as a manual of 
such arts. A philosophical treatise on poi- 
sons, would in- like manner determine the 
quantity of each poisonous substance capable 
of producing death, the circumstances favour- 
able or adverse to its operation, and every 
other information essential to the purpose of 
the poisoner, though not intended for his use. 
But it is also plain, that the calm statement 
of tyrannical arts is the bitterest of all satires 
against them. The Prince must therefore 
have had this double aspect, though neither 
of the objects which they seem to indicate 
had been actually in the contemplation of 
the author. It may not be the object of the 
chemist to teach the means of exhibiting an- 
tidotes, any more than those of administer- 
ing poisons; but his readers may employ his 
discoveries for both objects. Aristotle* had 
long before given a similar theory of tyranny, 
without the suspicion of an immoral inten- 
tion. Nor was it any novelty in more recent 
times, among those who must have been the 
first teachers of Machiavel. The School- 
men followed the footsteps of Aristotle too 
closely, to omit so striking a passage ; and 
Aquinas explains it, in his commentary, like 
the rest, in the unsuspecting simplicity of his 
heart. To us accordingly, we confess, the 
plan of Machiavel seems, like those of for- 
mer writers, to have been purely scientific ; 
and so Lord Bacon seems to have understood,. 
Mm, where he thanks him for an exposition^ 
of immoral policy. In that singular passage, 
where the latter lays down the theory of the 
advancement of fortune (which, when com- 
pared with his life, so well illustrates the 
fitness of his understanding, and the unfitness 
of his character for the affairs of the world), 
he justifies his application of learning to such 
a subject, on a principle which extends to 
The Prince : — " that there be not any thing 
in being or action which should not be drawn 
and collected into contemplation and doc- 
trine." 

Great defects of character, we readily ad- 
mit, are manifested by the writings of Ma- 
chiavel : but if a man of so powerful a genius 
had shown a nature utterly depraved, it would 
have been a painful, and perhaps single, ex- 
ception to the laws of human nature. And 
no depravity can be conceived greater than 
a deliberate intention to teach perfidy and 
cruelty. That a man who was a warm lovei 
of his country, who bore cruel sufferings for 
her liberty, and who was beloved by the best 
of his countrymen, t should fall into such un- 
paralleled wickedness, may be considered 

* Politics, lib. v. c. iii. 

t Among other proofs of the esteem in which 
he was held by those who knew his character, we 
may refer to the affectionate letters of Guicciar- 
dini, who, however independent his own opinions 
were, became, by his employment under the Popes 
of the House of Medici, the supporter of their 
authority, and consequently a political opponent 
of Machiavel, the most zealous of the Republi- 
cans. 



ON THE WRITINGS OF MACHIAVEL. 



247 



as wholly incredible. No such depravity is 
consistent with the composition of the History 
of Florence. It is only by exciting moral 
sentiment, that the narrative of human ac- 
tions can be rendered interesting. Divested 
of morality, they lose their whole dignity, 
and all their power over feeling. History 
would be thrown aside as disgusting, if it did 
not inspire the reader with pity for the suf- 
ferer, — with anger against the oppressor, — 
with anxiety for the triumph of right ; — to 
say nothing of the admiration for genius, and 
valour, and energy, which, though it disturbs 
the justice of our historical judgments, par- 
takes also of a moral nature. The author of 
The Prince, according to the common notion 
of its intention, could never have inspired 
these sentiments, of which he must have 
utterly emptied his own heart. To pos- 
sess the power, however, of contemplating 
tyranny with scientific coldness, and of ren- 
dering it the mere subject of theory, must 
be owned to indicate a defect of moral sen- 
sibility. The happier nature, or fortune, of 
Aristotle, prompted him to manifest distinct- 
ly his detestation of the flagitious policy which 
he reduced to its principles. 

As another subject of regret, not as an 
excuse for Machiavel, a distant approach to 
the same defect may be observed in Lord 
Bacon's History of Henry the Seventh; where 
we certainly find too little reprehension of 
falsehood and extortion, too cool a display of 
the expedients of cunning, sometimes digni- 
fied by the name of wisdom, and through- 
out, perhaps, too systematic a character given 
to the measures of that monarch, in order to 
exemplify, in him, a perfect model of king- 
craft; pursuing safety and power by any 
means, — acting well in quiet times, because 
it was most expedient, but never restrained 
from convenient crimes. This History would 
have been as delightful as it is admirable, if 
he had felt the difference between wisdom 
and cunning as warmly in that work, as he 
has discerned it clearly in his philosophy. 

Many historical speculators have indeed 
incurred some part of this fault. Enamoured 
of their own solution of the seeming contra- 
dictions of a character, they become indul- 
gent to the character itself; and, when they 
have explained its vices, are disposed, un- 
consciously, to write as if they had excused 
them. A writer who has made a successful 
exertion to render an intricate character in- 
telligible, who has brought his mind to so 
singular an attempt as a theory of villany, 
and has silenced his repugnance and indig- 
nation sufficiently for the purposes of rational 
examination, naturally exults in his victory 
over so many difficulties, delights in contem- 
plating the creations of his own ingenuity, 
and the order which he seems to have intro- 
duced into the chaos of malignant passions, 
and may at length view his work with that 
complacency which diffuses clearness and 
calmness over the language in which he 
communicates his imagined discoveries. 

It should also be remembered, that Ma- 



chiavel lived in an age when the events of 
every day must have blunted his moral feel- 
ings, and' wearied out his indignation. In so 
far as we acquit the intention of the writer, 
his work becomes a weightier evidence of 
the depravity which surrounded him. In this 
state of things, after the final disappointment 
of all his hopes, when Florence was subjected 
to tyrants, and Italy lay under the yoke of 
foreigners, — having undergone torture for the 
freedom of his country, and doomed to beg- 
gary in his old age, after a life of public ser- 
vice, it is not absolutely unnatural that he 
should have resolved to compose a theory of 
the tyranny under which he had fallen, and 
that he should have manifested his indigna- 
tion against the cowardly slaves who had 
yielded to it, by a stern and cold description 
of its maxims. 

His last chapter, in winch he seems once 
more to breathe a free air, has a character 
totally different from all the preceding ones. 
His exhortation to the Medici to deliver Italy 
from foreigners, again speaks out his ancient 
feelings. Perhaps he might have thought it 
possible to pardon any means employed by 
an Italian usurper to expel the foreign mas- 
ters of his country. This ray of hope might 
have supported him in delineating the means 
of usurpation ; by doing which he might have 
had some faint expectation that he could en- 
tice the usurper to become a deliverer. — 
Knowing that the native governments were 
too base to defend Italy, and that all others 
were leagued to enslave her, he might, in his 
despair of all legitimate rulers, have hoped 
something for independence, and perhaps at 
last even" for liberty, from the energy and 
genius of an illustrious tyrant. 

From Petrarch, with some of Avhose pa- 
thetic verses Machiavel concludes, to Alfieri, 
the national feeling of Italy seems to have 
taken refuge in the minds of her writers. 
They write more tenderly of their country 
as it is more basely abandoned by their coun- 
trymen. Nowhere has so much been well 
said, or so little nobly done. While we blame 
the Character of the nation, or lament the 
fortune which in some measure produced it, 
we must, in equity, excuse some irregulari- 
ties in the indignation of men of genius, when 
they see the ingenious inhabitants of their 
beautiful and renowned country now appa- 
rently for ever robbed of that independence 
which is enjoyed by obscure and barbarous 
communities. 

The dispute about the intention of The 
Prince has thrown into the shade the merit 
of the Discourses on Livy. The praise be- 
stowed on them by Mr. Stewart* is scanty: 
that "they furnish lights to the school of 
Montesquieu" is surely inadequate com- 
mendation. They are the first attempts in a 
new science — the philosophv of history; and, 
as such, they form a brilliant point in the pro- 
gress of reason. For this Lord Bacon com- 



* In the Dissertation prefixed to the EncycJo 
paedia Britannica. — Ed. 



248 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



mends him : — •'•' the form of writing which is 
the fittest for this variable argument of ne- 
gotiation, is that which Machiavel chose 
wisely and aptly for government, namely, 
discourse upon histories or examples: for, 
knowledge drawn freshly, and in our view, 
out of particulars, findeth its way best to 
particulars again ; and it hath much greater 
life on practice when the discourse attendeth 
upon the example, than when the example 
attendeth upon the discourse." It is ob- 
servable, that the Florentine Secretary is the 
only modern writer who is named in that 
part of the Advancement of Learning which 
relates to civil knowledge. The apology of 
Albericus Gentilis for the morality of The 
Prince, has been often quoted, and is cer- 
tainly weighty as a testimony, when we con- 
sider that the writer was born within twenty 
years of the death of Machiavel, and edu- 
cated at no great distance from Florence. It 
is somewhat singular, that the context of this 
passage should never have been quoted : — 
" To the knowledge of history must be added 
that part of philosophy which treats of mo- 
rals and politics ; for this is the soul of his- 
tory, which explains the causes of the ac- 
tions and sayings of men, and of the events 
which befall them : and on this subject I 
am not afraid .to name Nicholas Machiavel, 
as the most excellent of all writers, in his 
golden Observations on Livy. He is the 
writer whom I now seek, because he reads 
history not with the eyes of a grammarian, 
but with those of a philosopher."* 

It is a just and refined observation of Mr. 
Hume, that the mere theory of Machiavel 
(to waive the more important consideration 
of morality) was perverted by the atrocities 
which, among the Italians, then passed un- 
der the name of 'policy.' The number of 
men who took a part in political measures in 
the republican governments of Italy, spread 
the taint of this pretended policy farther, and 
made it a more national quality than in the 
Transalpine monarchies. But neither the 
civil wars of France and England, nor the 
administrations of Henry the Seventh, Ferdi- 
nand and Louis the Eleventh (to say nothing 
of the succeeding religious wars), will allow 
us to consider it as peculiarly Italian. It 
arose from the circumstances of Europe in 
those times. In every age in which contests 
are long maintained by chiefs too strong, or 
bodies of men too numerous for the ordinary 
control of law, for power, or privileges, or 
possessions, or opinions to which they are 
ardently attached, the passions excited by 
such interests, heated by sympathy, and in- 
flamed to madness by resistance, soon throw 
# off moral restraint in the treatment of ene- 
mies. Retaliation, which deters individuals, 
provokes multitudes to new cruelty : and the 
atrocities which originated in the rage of am- 
bition and fanaticism, are at length thought 
necessary for safety. Each party adopts the 
cruelties of the enemy, as we now adopt a 



* De Legat. lib. iii. c. ix. 



new discovery in the art of war. The craft 
and violence thought necessary for existence 
are admitted into the established policy of 
such deplorable times. 

But though this be the tendency of such 
circumstances in all times, it must be owned 
that these evils prevail among different na- 
tions, and in different ages, in a very unequal 
degree. Some part of these differences may 
depend on national peculiarities, which can- 
not be satisfactorily explained : but, in the 
greater part of them, experience is striking 
and uniform. Civil wars are comparatively 
regular and humane, under circumstances 
that may be pretty exactly defined ; — among 
nations long accustomed to popular govern- 
ment, to free speakers and to free writers; 
familiar with all the boldness and turbulence 
of numerous assemblies; not afraid of ex- 
amining any matter human or divine; where 
great numbers take an interest in the con- 
duct of their superiors of every sort, watch 
it, and often censure it ; where there is a 
public, and where that public boldly utters 
decisive opinions; where no impassable lines 
of demarcation destine the lower classes to 
eternal servitude, and the higher to envy 
and hatred and deep curses from their infe- 
riors; where the administration of law is so 
purified by the participation and eye of the 
public, as to become a grand school of hu- 
manity and justice; and where, as the con- 
sequence of all, there is a general diffusion 
of the comforts of life, a general cultivation 
of reason, and a widely diffused feeling of 
equality and moral pride. The species seems 
to become gentler as all galling curbs are 
gradually disused. Quiet, or at least com- 
parative order, is promoted by the absence 
of all the expedients once thought essential 
to preserve tranquillity. Compare Asia with 
Europe ; — the extremes are there seen. But 
if all the immediate degrees be examined, 
it will be found that civil wars are milder, 
in proportion to the progress of the body of 
the people in importance and well-being. 
Compare the civil wars of the two Roses 
with those under Charles the First: compare 
these, again, with the humanity and wisdom 
of the Revolution of sixteen hundred and 
eighty-eight. Examine the civil war which 
led to the American Revolution : we there 
see anarchy without confusion, and govern- 
ments abolished and established without 
spilling a drop of blood. Even the progress 
of civilization, when unattended by the bless- 
ings of civil liberty, produces many of the 
same effects. When Mr. Hume wrote the 
excellent observations quoted by Mr. Stew- 
art, Europe had for more than a century 
been exempt from those general convulsions 
which try the moral character of nations, 
and ascertain their progress towards a more 
civilized state of mind. We have since! 
been visited by one of the most tremendous 
of these tempests; and our minds are yet 
filled with the dreadful calamities, and the 
ambiguous and precarious benefits, which 
have sprung from it. The contemporaries 



REVIEW OF THE LIVES OF MITON'S NEPHEWS. 



249 



of such terrific scenes are seldom in a tem- 
per to contemplate them calmly : and yet, 
though the events of this age have disap- 
pointed the expectations of sanguine bene- 
volence concerning the state of civilization 
in Europe, a dispassionate posterity will pro- 
bably decide that it has stood the test of 
general commotions, and proved its progress 
by their comparative mildness. One period 
of frenzy has been, indeed, horribly distin- 
guished, perhaps beyond any equal time in 
history, by popular massacres and judicial 
murders, among a people peculiarly sus- 
ceptible of a momentary fanaticism. This 
has been followed by a war in which one 
party contended for universal dominion, and 
all the rest of Europe struggled for exist- 
ence. But how soon did the ancient laws 
of war between European adversaries re- 



sume the ascendant, which had indeed been 
suspended more in form than in fact ! How 
slight are the traces which the atrocities of 
faction and the manners of twenty years' 
invasion and conquest have left on the senti- 
ments of Europe! On a review of the dis- 
turbed period of the French Revolution, the 
mind is struck by the disappearance of 
classes of crimes which have often attended 
such convulsions ; — no charge of poison • few 
assassinations, properly so called ; no case 
hitherto authenticated of secret execution ! 
If any crimes of this nature can be proved, 
the truth of history requires that the proof 
should be produced. But those who assert 
them without proof must be considered as 
calumniating their age, and bringing into 
question the humanizing effects of order 
and good government. 



REVIEW OF MR. GODWIN'S LIVES 



EDWARD AND JOHN PHILIPS, &c. &c* 



The public would have perhaps welcomed 
Mr. Godwin's reappearance as an author, 
most heartily, if he had chosen the part of a 
novelist. In that character his name is high, 
and his eminence undisputed. The time is 
long past since this would have been thought 
a slight, or even secondary praise. No ad- 
dition of more unquestionable value has 
been made by the moderns, to the treasures 
of literature inherited from antiquity, than 
those fictions which paint the manners and 
character of the body of mankind, and affect 
the reader by the relation of misfortunes 
which may befall himself. The English 
nation would have more to lose than any 
other, by undervaluing this species of compo- 
sition. Richardson has perhaps lost, though 
unjustly, a part of his popularity at home ; 
but he still contributes to support the fame 
of his country abroad. The small blemishes 
of his diction are lost in translation ; and the 
changes of English manners, and the occa- 
sional homeliness of some of his represen- 
tations, are unfelt by foreigners. Fielding 
will for ever remain the delight of his coun- 
try, and will always retain his place in the 
libraries of Europe, notwithstanding the un- 
fortunate grossness, — the mark of an un- 
cultivated taste, — which if not yet entirely 
excluded from conversation, has been for 

* From the Edinb. Rev. vol. xxv. p. 485. — Ed. 
32 



some time banished from our writings, where, 
during the best age of our national genius, 
it prevailed more than in those of any other 
polished nation. It is impossible in a Scot- 
tish journal, to omit Smollett, even if there 
had not been much better reasons for the 
mention of his name, than for the sake of 
observing, that he and Arbuthnot are suffi- 
cient to rescue Scotland from the imputation 
of wanting talent for pleasantry : though, it 
must be owned, we are grave people, hap- 
pily educated under an austere system of 
morals ; possessing, perhaps, some humour, 
in our peculiar dialect, but fearful of taking 
the liberty of jesting in a foreign language 
like the English ; prone to abstruse specula- 
tion, to vehement dispute, to eagerness in 
the pursuit of business and ambition, and to 
all those intent occupations of mind which 
rather indispose it to unbend in easy play- 
fulness. 

Since the beautiful tales of Goldsmith and 
Mackenzie, the composition of novels has 
been almost left to women; and, in the dis- 
tribution of literary labour, nothing seems 
more natural, than that, as soon as the talents 
of women are sufficiently cultivated, this 
task should be assigned to the sex which 
has most leisure for the delicate observa- 
tion of manners, and whose importance de- 
pends on the sentiments which most usually 
checker common life with poetical incidents. 



250 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



They have performed their part with such 
il success, that the -literary works of 
women, instead of receiving the humiliating 
praise of being gazed at as wonders and pro- 
digies, have, lor the first time, composed a 
considerable part of the reputation of an 
ingenious nation in a lettered age. It ought 
to be added, that their delicacy, co-operating 
with the progress of refinement, has contri- 
buted to efface from these important fictions 
the remains of barbarism which had dis- 
graced the vigorous genius of our ancestors. 
Mr. Godwin has preserved the place of 
men in this branch of literature. Caleb 
Williams is probably the finest novel pro- 
duced by a man, — at least since the Vicar 
of Wakefield. The sentiments, if not the 
opinions, from which it arose, were transient. 
Local usages and institutions were the sub- 
jects of its satire, exaggerated beyond the 
usual privilege of that species of writing. 
Yet it has been translated into most lan- 
guages ; and it has appeared in various forms, 
on the theatres, not only in England, but of 
France and Germany. There is scarcely a 
Continental circulating library in which it is 
not one of the books which most quickly re- 
quire to be replaced. Though written with a 
temporary purpose, it will be read with intense 
interest, and with a painful impatience for 
the issue, long after the circumstances which 
produced its original composition shall cease 
to be known to all but to those who are well 
read in history. There is scarcely a fiction in 
any language which it is so difficult to lay by. 
A young person of understanding and sensi- 
bility, not familiar with the history of its 
origin, nor forewarned of its connection with 
peculiar opinions, in whose hands it is now 
put for the first time, will peruse it with 
perhaps more ardent sympathy and trem- 
bling curiosity, than those who read it when 
their attention was divided, and their feel- 
ings disturbed by controversy and specula- 
tion. A building thrown up for a season, has 
become, by the skill of the builder, a durable 
edifice. It is a striking, but not a solitary 
example, of the purpose of the writer being 
swallowed up by the interest of the work, 
— of a man of ability intending to take part 
in the disputes of the moment, but led by 
the instinct of his talent to address himself 
to the permanent feelings of human nature. 
It must not, however, be denied, that the 
marks of temporary origin and peculiar opi- 
nion, are still the vulnerable part of the book. 
A fiction contrived to support an opinion is 
a vicious composition. Even a fiction con- 
trived to enforce a maxim of conduct is not 
of the highest class. And though the vigor- 
ous powers of Mr. Godwin raised him above 
his own intention, still the marks of that 
intention ought to be effaced as marks of 
mortality; and nothing ought to remain in 
the book which will not always interest the 
reader. The passages which betray the me- 
taphysician, more "than the novelist, ouaht 
to be weeded out with more than ordinary 
care. The character of Falkland is a beau- 



tiful invention. That such a man could have 
become an assassin, is perhaps an improba- 
bility ; and if such a crime be possible for a 
soul so elevated, it may be due to the dignity 
of human nature to throw a veil over so hu- 
miliating a possibility, except when we are 
compelled to expose it by its real occurrence. 
In a merely literary view, however, the im- 
probability of this leading incident is more 
than compensated, by all those agitating and 
terrible scenes of which it is the parent : and 
if the colours had been delicately shaded, if 
all the steps in the long progress from chi- 
valrous sentiment to assassination had been 
more patiently traced, and more distinctly 
brought into view, more might have been 
lost by weakening the contrast, than would 
have been gained by softening or removing 
the improbability. The character of Tyrrel, 
is a grosser exaggeration : and his conduct 
is such as neither our manners would pro- 
duce, nor our laws tolerate. One or two 
monstrous examples of tyranny, nursed and 
armed by immense wealth, are no authority 
for fiction, which is a picture of general na- 
ture. The descriptive power of several parts 
of this novel is of the highest order. The 
landscape in the morning of Caleb's escape 
from prison, and a similar escape from a Span- 
ish prison in St. Leon, are among the scenes 
of fiction which must the most frequently and 
vividly reappear in the imagination of a rea- 
der of sensibility. His disguises and escapes 
in London, though detailed at too great length, 
have a frightful reality, perhaps nowhere pa- 
ralleled in our language, unless it be in some 
paintings of Daniel De Foe,* with whom it is 
distinction enough to bear comparison. There 
are several somewhat similar scenes in the 
Colonel Jack of that admirable writer, which, 
among his novels, is indeed only the second ; 
but which could be second to none but Ro- 
binson Crusoe, — one of those very few r books 
which are equally popular in every country 
of Europe, and which delight every reader 
from the philosopher to the child. Caleb 
Williams resembles the novels of De Foe, 
in the austerity with which it rejects the 
agency of women and the power of love. 

It would be affectation to pass over in 
silence so remarkable a work as the Inquiry 
into Political Justice; but it is not the time 
to say much of it. The season of contro- 
versy is past, and the period of history is not 
yet arrived. Whatever may be its mistakes, 
which we shall be the last to underrate, it is 
certain that works in which errors equally 
dangerous are maintained with far less inge- 
nuity, have obtained for their authors a con- 
spicuous place in the philosophical history 
of the eighteenth century.' But books, as 
well as men, are subject to what is called 
'fortune.' The same circumstances which 

* A great-grandson of Daniel De Foe, of the 
same name, is now a creditable tradesman in 
Hnngerford Market in London. His manners 
give a favourable impression of his sense and mo- 
rals. He is neither unconscious of his ancestor's 
fame, nor ostentatious of it. 



REVIEW OF THE LIVES OF MILTON'S NEPHEWS. 



251 



favoured its sudden popularity, have since 
unduly depressed its reputation. Had it ap- 
peared in a metaphysical age, and in a period 
of tranquillity, it would have been discussed 
by philosophers, and might have excited ac- 
rimonious disputes; but these would have 
ended, after the correction of erroneous 
speculations, in assigning to the author that 
station to which his eminent talents had en- 
titled him. It would soon have been ac- 
knowledged, that the author of one of the 
most deeply interesting fictions of his age, 
and of a treatise on metaphysical morals 
which excited general alarm, whatever else 
he might be, must be a person of vigorous 
and versatile powers. But the circumstances 
of the times, in spite of the author's in- 
tention, transmuted a philosophical treatise 
into a political pamphlet. It seemed to be 
thrown up by the vortex of the French Revo- 
lution, and it sunk accordingly as that whirl- 
pool subsided ; while by a perverse fortune, 
the honesty of the author's intentions con- 
tributed to the prejudice against his work. 
With the simplicity and good faith of a re- 
tired speculator, conscious of no object but 
the pursuit of truth, he followed his reason- 
ings wherever they seemed to him to lead, 
without looking up to examine the array of 
sentiment and institution, as well as of in- 
terest and prejudice, which he was about to 
encounter. Intending no mischief, he con- 
sidered no consequences ; and, in the eye of 
the multitude, was transformed into an in- 
cendiary, only because he was an undesign- 
ing speculator. The ordinary clamour was 
excited against him: even the liberal sacri- 
ficed him to their character for liberality. — a 
fate not very uncommon for those who, in 
critical times, are supposed to go too far ; and 
many of his own disciples, returning into the 
world, and, as usual, recoiling most violently 
from their visions, to the grossest worldly- 
mindedness, offered the fame of their master 
as an atonement for their own faults. For a 
time it required courage to brave the pre- 
judice excited by his name. It may, even 
now perhaps, need some fortitude of a differ- 
ent kind to write, though in the most impar- 
tial temper, the small fragment of literary 
history which relates to it. The moment 
for doing full and exact justice will come. 

All observation on the personal conduct of 
a writer, when that conduct is not of a pub- 
lic nature, is of dangerous example ; and, 
when it leads to blame, is severely repre- 
hensible. But it is but common justice to 
say, that there are few instances of more re- 
spectable conduct among writers, than is ap- 
parent in the subsequent works of Mr. God- 
win. He calmly corrected what appeared to 
him to be his own mistakes ; and he proved 
the perfect disinterestedness of his correc- 
tions, by adhering to opinions as obnoxious 
to the powerful as those which he relinquish- 
ed. Untempted by the success of his scho- 
lars in paying their court to the dispensers 
of favour, he adhered to the old and rational 
principles of liberty, — violently shaken as 



these venerable principles had been, by the 
tempest which had beaten down the neigh- 
bouring erections of anarchy. He continued 
to seek independence and reputation, with 
that various success to which the fashions 
of literature subject professed writers] and 
to struggle with the difficulties incideut to 
other modes of industry, for which his pre- 
vious habits had not prepared him. He has 
thus, in our humble opinion, deserved the 
respect of all those, whatever may be their 
opinions, who still wish that some men in 
England may think for themselves, even at 
the risk of thinking wrong; but more espe- 
cially of the friends of liberty, to whose 
cause he has courageously adhered. 

The work before us, is a contribution to 
the literary history of the seventeenth cen- 
tury. It arose from that well-grounded re- 
verence for the morality, as well as the ge- 
nius, of Milton, which gives importance to 
every circumstance connected with him. 
After all that had been written about him, it 
appeared to Mr. Godwin, that there was still 
an unapproached point of view, from which 
Milton's character might be surveyed, — the 
history of those nephews to whom he had 
been a preceptor and a father. ' : It was ac- 
cident," he tells us, "that first threw in my 
way two or three productions of these wri- 
ters, that my literary acquaintance,* whom 
I consulted, had never heard of. Dr. Johnson 
had told me, that the pupils of Milton had 
given to the world 'only one genuine pro- 
duction.' Persons better informed than Dr. 
Johnson, could tell me perhaps of half a 
dozen. How great was my surprise, when I 
found my collection swelling to forty or 
fifty !" Chiefly from these publications, but 
from a considerable variety of little-known 
sources, he has collected, with singular in- 
dustry, all the notices, generally incidental, 
concerning these two persons, which are 
scattered over the writings of their age. 

Their lives are not only interesting as a 
fragment of the history of Milton, but curi- 
ous as a specimen of the condition of pro- 
fessed authors in the seventeenth century. 
If they had been men of genius, or con- 
temptible scribblers, they would not in either 
case have been fair specimens of their class. 
Dryden and Flecknoe are equally exceptions. 
The nephews of Milton belonged to that 
large body of literary men who are destined 
to minister to the general curiosity ; to keep 
up the stock of public information ; to com- 
pile, to abridge, to translate ; — a body of im- 
portance in a great country, being necessary 
to maintain, though they cannot advance, its 
literature. The degree of good sense, good 
taste, and sound opinions diffused among this 
class of writers, is of no small moment to 



* This plural use of ' acquaintance' is no d^ubt 
abundantly warranted by the example of Dryden, 
the highest authority in a case of diction, of any 
single English writer: but as the usage is divided, 
the convenience of distinguishing the plural from 
the singular at first sight seems to determine, that 
the preferable plural is "acquaintances." 



252 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



the public reason and morals; and we know- 
not where we should find so exact a repre- 
sentation of the literary life of two authors, 
of the period between the Restoration and 
the Revolution, as in this volume. The com- 
plaint, that the details are too multiplied and 
minute for the importance of the subject, will 
be ungracious in an age distinguished by a 
passion for bibliography, and a voracious ap- 
petite for anecdote. It cannot be denied, 
that great acuteness is shown in assembling 
and weighing all the very minute circum- 
stances, from which their history must often 
be rather conjectured than inferred. It may 
appear singular, that we, in this speculative 
part of the island, should consider the di- 
gressions from the biography, and the pas- 
sages of general speculation, as the part of 
the work which might, with the greatest ad- 
vantage, be retrenched : but they are cer- 
tainly episodes too large for the action, and 
have sometimes the air of openings of chap- 
ters in an intended history of England. 
These two faults, of digressions too expand- 
ed, and details too minute, are the principal 
defects of the volume ; which, however, 
must be considered hereafter as a necessary 
part of all collections respecting the biogra- 
phy of Milton. 

Edward and John Philips were the sons 
of Edward Philips of Shrewsbury, Secondary 
of the Crown Office in the Court of Chancery, 
by Anne, sister of John Milton. Edward 
was born in London in 1630, and John in 
1631. To this sister the first original English 
verses of Milton were addressed, — which he 
composed before the aije of seventeen, — to 
soothe her sorrow for the loss of an infant son. 
His first published verses were the Epitaph on 
Shakespeare. To perform the offices of do- 
mestic tenderness, and to render due honour 
to kindred genius, were the noble purposes by 
which he consecrated his poetical power at 
the opening of a life, every moment of which 
corresponded to this early promise. On his 
return from his travels, he found his ne- 
phews, by the death of their father, become 
orphans. He took them into his house, sup- 
porting and educating them ; which he was 
enabled to do by the recompense which he 
received for the instruction of other pupils, 
And for this act of respectable industry, and 
generous affection, in thus remembering the 
humblest claims of prudence and kindness 
amidst the lofty ambition and sublime con- 
templations of his mature powers, he has 
been sneered at by a moralist, in a work 
which, being a system of our poetical bio- 
graphy, ought especially to have recom- 
mended this most moral example to the imi- 
tation of British youth. 

John published very early a vindication 
of his uncle'o Defence of the People of Eng- 
land. Both brothers, in a very few years, 
weary of the austere morals of the Republi- 
cans, quitted the party of Milton, and adopted 
the politics, with'the wit and festivity, of the 
young Cavaliers : but the elder, a person 
of gentle disposition and amiable manners, 



more a man of letters than a politician, retain- 
ed at least due reverence and gratitude for his 
benefactor, and is conjectured by Mr. God- 
win, upon grounds that do not seem improba- 
ble, to have contributed to save his uncle at 
the Restoration. Twenty years after the 
death of Milton, the first Life of him was 
published by Edward Philips; upon which 
all succeeding narratives have been built. 
This Theatrum Poetarum will be always 
read with interest, as containing the opinions 
concerning poetry and poets, which he pro- 
bably imbibed from Milton. This amiable 
writer died between 1694 and 1698. 

John Philips, a coarse buffoon, and a vul- 
gar debauchee, was, throughout life, chiefly 
a political pamphleteer, who turned with 
every change of fortune and breath of popu- 
lar clamour, but on all sides preserved a con- 
sistency in violence, scurrility, and servility 
to his masters, whether they were the fa- 
vourites of the Court, or the leaders of the 
rabble. Having cried out for the blood of 
his former friends at the Restoration, he in- 
sulted the memory of Milton, within two 
years of his death. He adhered to the cause 
of Charles II. till it became unpopular; and 
disgraced the then new name of Whig by 
associating with the atrocious Titus Oates. 
In his vindication of that execrable wretch,, 
he adopts the maxim, "that the attestations 
of a hundred Catholics cannot be put in bal- 
ance with the oath of one Protestant ;" — 
which, if ( our own party ' were substituted 
for 'Protestant,' and 'the opposite one' for 
' Catholic,' may be regarded as the general 
nrinciple of the jurisprudence of most tri- 
umphant factions. He was silenced, or driven 
to literary compilation, by those fatal events 
in 1683, which seemed to be the final tri- 
umph of the Court over public liberty. His 
servile voice, however, hailed the accession 
of James II. The Revolution produced a 
new turn of this weathercock ; but, happily 
for the kingdom, no second Restoration gave 
occasion to another display of his incon- 
stancy. In 1681 he had been the associate 
of Oates, and the tool of Shaftesbury: in 
1685 he thus addresses James II. in doggerel 
scurrility: 

" Must the Faith's true Defender bleed to death. 
A sacrifice to Cooper's wrath?" 

In 1695 he took a part in that vast mass of 
bad verse occasioned by the death of Queen 
Mary: and in 1697 he celebrated King Wil- 
liam as Augustus Britannicus. in a poem on 
the Peace of Ryswick. From the Revolu- 
tion to his death, about 1704, he was use- 
fully employed as editor of the Monthly 
Mercury, a journal which was wholly, or 
principally, a translation from Le Mercure 
Historique, published at the Hague, by some 
of those ingenious and excellent Protestant 
refugees, whose writings contributed to ex- 
cite all Europe against Louis XIV. Mr. 
Godwin at last, very naturally, relents a lit- 
tle towards him : he is unwilling to part on 
bad terms with one who has been so long a 



REVIEW OF THE LIVES OF MILTON'S NEPHEWS. 



253 



companion. All, however, that indulgent 
ingenuity can discover in his favour is, that 
he was an indefatigable writer; and that, 
during his last years, he rested, after so 
many vibrations, in the opinions ot a consti- 
tutional Whig. But, in a man like John 
Philips, the latter circumstance is only one 
of the signs of the times, and proves no more 
than that the principles of English liberty 
were patronized by a government which 
owed to these principles its existence. 

The above is a very slight sketch of the 
lives of these two persons, which Mr. God- 
win, with equal patience and acuteness of 
research, has gleaned from publications, of 
which it required a much more than ordi- 
nary familiarity with the literature of the last 
century, even to know the existence. It is 
somewhat singular, that no inquiries seem to 
have been made respecting the history of the 
descendants of Milton's brother, Sir Christo- 
pher ; and that it has not been ascertained 
whether either of his nephews left children. 
Thomas Milton, the son of Sir Christopher, 
was, it seems, Secondary to the Crown Office 
in Chancery ; and it could not be very diffi- 
cult for a resident in London to ascertain the 
period of his death, and perhaps to discover 
his residence and the state of his family. 

Milton's direct descendants can only exist, 
if they exist at all, among the posterity of his 
youngest and favourite daughter Deborah, 
afterwards Mrs. Clarke, a woman of cultiva- 
ted understanding, and not unpleasing man- 
ners, who was known to Richardson and 
Professor Ward, and was patronized by Ad- 
dison.* Her affecting exclamation is well 
known, on seeing her father's portrait for the 
first time more than thirty years after his 
death: — -'Oh my father, my dear father!" 
''She spoke of him," says Richardson, "with 
great tenderness; she said he was delight- 
ful company, the life of the conversation, 
not only by a flow of subject, but by unaf- 
fected cheerfulness and civility." This is 
the character of one whom Dr. Johnson re- 
presents as a morose tyrant, drawn by a 
supposed victim of his domestic oppression. 
Her daughter, Mrs. Foster, for whose benefit 
Dr. Newton and Dr. Birch procured Comus 
to be acted, survived all her children. The 
only child of Deborah Milton, of whom we 
have any accounts besides Mrs. Foster, was 
Caleb Clarke, who went to Madras in the 
first years of the eighteenth century, and 
who then vanishes from the view of the bio- 
graphers of Milton. We have been enabled, 
by accident, to enlarge a very little this ap- 
pendage to his history. It appears from an 
examination of the parish register of Fort St. 
George, that Caleb Clarke, who seems to 
have been parish-clerk of that place from 
1717 to 1719, was buried there on the 26th 
of October of the latter year. By his wife 
Mary, whose original surname does not ap- 
pear, he had three children born at Madras; 

* Who intended to have procured a permanent 
provision for her. She was presented with filty 
guineas by Queen Caroline. 



— Abraham, baptized on the 2d of June, 
1703 ; Mary, baptized on the 17th of March, 
1706, and buried on December 15th of the 
same year; and Isaac, baptized 13th of Feb- 
ruary, 1711. Of Isaac no farther account 
appears. Abraham, the great-grandson of 
Milton, in September, 1725, married Anna 
Clarke; and the baptism of their daughter 
Mary is registered on the 2d of April, 1727. 
With this all notices of this family cease. 
But as neither Abraham, nor any of his fami- 
ly, nor his brother Isaac, died at Madras, and 
as he was only twenty-four years of age at 
the baptism of his daughter, it is probable 
that the family migrated to some other part 
of India, and that some trace of them might 
yet be discovered by examination of the 
parish registers of Calcutta and Bombay. If 
they had returned to England, they could not 
have escaped the curiosity of the admirers 
and historians of Milton. We cannot apolo- 
gize for the minuteness of this genealogy, or 
for the eagerness of our desire that it should 
be enlarged. We profess that superstitious 
veneration for the memory of the greatest of 
poets, which would regard the slightest relic 
of him as sacred ; and we cannot conceive 
either true poetical sensibility, or a just sense 
of the glory of England, to belong to that 
Englishman, who would not feel the strong- 
est emotions at the sight of a descendant 
of Milton, discovered in the person even of 
the most humble and unlettered of human 
beings. 

While the grandson of Milton resided at 
Madras, in a condition so humble as to make 
the office of parish-clerk an object of ambi- 
tion, it is somewhat remarkable that the 
elder brother of Addison should have been 
the Governor of that settlement. The ho- 
nourable Galston Addison died there in the 
year 1709. Thomas Pitt, grandfather to 
Lord Chatham, had been his immediate pre- 
decessor in the government. 

It was in the same year that Mr. Addison 
began those contributions to periodical es- 
says, which, as long as any sensibility to 
the beauties of English style remains, must 
be considered as its purest and most perfect 
models. But it was not until eighteen months 
afterwards, — when, influenced by fidelity to 
his friends, and attachment to the cause of 
liberty, he had retired from office, and when, 
with his usual judgment, he resolved to re- 
sume the more active cultivation of literature, 
as the elegant employment of his leisure, — 
that he undertook the series of essays on 
Paradise Lost; — not, as has been weakly 
supposed, with the presumptuous hope of 
exalting Milton, but with the more reasonable 
intention of cultivating the public taste, and 
instructing the nation in the principles of just 
criticism, by observations on a work already 
acknowledged to be the first of English 
poems. If any doubt could be entertained 
respecting the purpose of this excellent wri- 
ter, it must be -silenced by the language in 
which he announces his criticism : — " As the 
first place among our English poets is due to 
W 



254 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



Milton," says he, (: I shall enter into a regu- 
lar criticism upon his Paradise Lost," &c. It 
is clear that he takes for granted the para- 
mount greatness of Milton; and that his 
object was not to disinter a poet who had 
been buried in unjust oblivion, but to illus- 
trate the rules of criticism by observations 
on the writings of him whom all his readers 
revered as the greatest poet of their country. 
This passage might have been added by Mr. 
Godwin to the numerous proofs by which he 
has demonstrated the ignorance and negli- 
gence, if not the malice, of those who would 
persuade us that the English nation could 
have suspended their admiration of a poem. 
— the glory of their country, and the boast 
of human genius. — till they were taught its 
excellences by critics, and enabled by politi- 
cal revolutions to indulge their feelings with 
safety. It was indeed worthy of Lord Somers 
to have been one of its earliest admirers; 
and to his influence and conversation it is 
not improbable that we owe, though indi- 
rectly, the essays of Addison. The latter's 
criticism manifests and inspires a more genu- 
ine sense of poetical beauty than others of 
more ambitious pretensions, and now of 
greater name. But it must not be forgotten 
that Milton had subdued the adverse preju- 
dices of Dryden and Atterbury, long before 
he had extorted from a more acrimonious 
hostility, that unwilling but noble tribute of 



justice to the poet, for which Dr. Johnson 
seems to have made satisfaction to his hatred 
by a virulent libel on the man.* 

It is an excellence of Mr. Godwin's narra- 
tive, that he thinks and feels about the men 
and events of the age of Milton, in some 
measure as Milton himself felt and thought. 
Exact conformity of sentiment is neither pos- 
sible nor desirable : but a Life of Milton, 
written by a zealous opponent of his princi- 
ples, in the relation of events which so much 
exasperate the passions, almost inevitably 
degenerates into a libel. The constant hos- 
tility of a biographer to the subject of his 
narrative, whether it be just or not, is teazing 
and vexatious: the natural frailty of over- 
partiality is a thousand times more agreeable. 

* The strange misrepresentations, long preva- 
lent among ourselves respecting the slow progress 
of Milton's reputation, sanctioned as they were 
both by Johnson and by Thomas Warton, have 
produced ridiculous effects abroad. On the 16th 
of November, 1814, a Parisian poet named Cam- 
penon was, in the present unhappy state of French 
literature, received at the Academy as the succes- 
sor of the Abbe Delille. In his Discours de 
Reception, he speaks of the Abbe's translation 
" de ce Paradis Perdu, dont 1'Agleterre est si 
fiere depuis qu'elle acesse d'en ignorerle mcrite." 
The president M. Regnault de St. Jean d'Angely 
said that M. Delille repaid our hospitality by trans- 
lating Milton, — " en doublant ainsi la celebrite du 
Poete ; dont le genie a inspire a PAngleterre un 
si tardif mais si legitime orgueil." 



REVIEW 



ROGERS' POEMS 



It seems very doubtful, whether the pro- ; 
gress and the vicissitudes of the elegant arts 
can be referred to the operation of general 
laws, with the same plausibility as the exer- 
tions of the more robust faculties of the 
human mind, in the severer forms of science 
and of useful art. The action of fancy and 
of taste seems to be affected by causes too 
various and minute to be enumerated with 
sufficient completeness for the purposes of 
philosophical theory. To explain them, may 
appear to be as hopeless an attempt, as to 
account for one summer being more warm 
and genial than another. The difficulty 
would be insurmountable, even in framing 
the most general outline of a theory, if the 
various forms assumed by imagination, hi 
the fine arts, did not depend on some of the 
most conspicuous, as well as powerful agents 
in the moral world. But these arise from 
revolutions of popular sentiments, and are 
connected with the opinions of the age, and 



with the manners of the refined class, as 
certainly, though not in so great a degree, as 
with the passions of the multitude. The 
comedy of a polished monarchy never can 
be of the same character with that of a bold 
and tumultuous democracy. Changes of re- 
ligion and of government, civil or foreign 
wars, conquests which derive splendour from 
distance, or extent, or difficulty, long tran- 
quillity, — all these, and hrdeed every con- 
ceivable modification of the state of a com- 
munity, show themselves in the tone of its 
poetry, and leave long and deep traces on 
every part of its literature. Geometry is the 
same, not only at London and Paris, but in 
the extremes of Athens and Samarcand : but 
the state of the general feeling in England, 
at this moment, requires a different poetry 
from that which delighted our ancestors in 
the time of Luther or Alfred. 

During the greater part of the eighteenth 
century, the connection of the character of 



REVIEW OF ROGERS' POEMS. 



255 



English poetry with the state of the country, 
was very easily traced. The period which 
extended from the English to the French 
Revolution, was the golden age of authentic 
history. Governments were secure, nations 
tranquil, improvements rapid, manners mild 
beyond the example of any former age. The 
English nation which pos :ss id the greatest 
uf all human blessings, — a wisely constructed 
popular government, necessarily enjoyed the 
largest share of every other benefit. The 
tranquillity of that fortunate period was not 
disturbed by any of those calamitous, or even 
extraordinary events, which excite the imagi- 
nation and inflame the passions. No age 
was more exempt from the prevalence of 
any species of popular enthusiasm. Poetry, 
in this state of things, partook of that calm, 
argumentative, moral, and directly useful 
character into which it naturally subsides, 
when there are no events to call up the 
higher passions, — when every talent is al- 
lured into the immediate service of a pros- 
perous and improving society, — and when 
wit, taste, diffused literature, and fastidious 
criticism, combine to deter the young writer 
from the more arduous enterprises of poetical 
genius. In such an age, every art becomes 
rational. Reason is the power which presides 
in a calm. But reason guides, rather than 
impels ; and, though it must regulate every 
exertion of genius, it never can rouse it to 
vigorous action. 

The school of Dryden and Pope, which 
prevailed till a very late period of the last 
century, is neither the most poetical nor the 
most national part of our literary annals. 
These great poets sometimes indeed ventur- 
ed into the regions of pure poetry : but their 
general character is, that "not in fancy's 
maze they wandered long;" and that they 
rather approached the elegant correctness of 
our Continental neighbours, than supported 
the daring flight, which, in the former age, 
had borne English poetry to a sublimer ele- 
vation than that of any other modern people 
of the West. 

Towards the middle of the century, great, 
though quiet changes, began to manifest 
themselves in the republic of letters in every 
European nation which retained any portion 
of mental activity. About that time, the ex- 
clusive authority of our great rhyming poets 
began to be weakened ; while new tastes and 
fashions began to show themselves in the 
political world. A school of poetry must 
have prevailed long enough, to be probably 
on the verge of downfal, before its practice 
. is embodied in a correspondent system of 
criticism. 

Johnson was the critic of our second poet- 
ical school. As far as his prejudices of a po- 
litical or religious kind did not disqualify him 
for all criticism, he was admirably fitted by 
nature to be the critic of this species of poe- 
try. Without more imagination, sensibility, 
or delicacy than it required, — not always 
with perhaps quite enough for its higher 
parts, — he possessed sagacity, shrewdness, 



experience, knowledge of mankind, a taste 
for rational and orderly compositions, and a 
disposition to accept, instead of poetry, that 
lofty and vigorous declamation in harmo- 
nious verse, of which he himself was capa- 
ble, and to which his great master sometimes 
descended. His spontaneous admiration 
scarcely soared above Dryden. " Merit of a 
loftier class he rather saw than felt." Shake- 
speare has transcendent excellence of every 
sort, and for every critic, except those who 
are repelled by the faults which usually at- 
tend sublime virtues, — character and man- 
ners, morality and prudence, as well as ima- 
gery and passion. Johnson did indeed per- 
form a vigorous act of reluctant justice to- 
wards Milton ; but it was a proof, to use his 
own words, that 

" At length our mighty Bard's victorious lays 
Fill the loud voice of universal praise ; 
And baffled Spile, with hopeless anguish dumb, 
Yields 10 renown ihe centuries to come !''* 

The deformities of the Life of Gray ought 
not to be ascribed to jealousy, — for Johnson's 
mind, though coarse, was not mean, — but to 
the prejudices of his university, his political 
faction, and his poetical sect : and this last 
bigotry is the more remarkable, because it is 
exerted against the most skilful and tasteful 
of innovators, who, in reviving more poetical 
subjects and a more splendid diction, has 
employed more care and finish than those 
who aimed only at correctness. 

The interval which elapsed between the 
death of Goldsmith and the rise of Cowper, 
is perhaps more barren than any other twelve 
years in the history of our poetry since the 
accession of Elizabeth. It seemed as if the 
fertile soil was at length exhausted. But it 
had in fact only ceased to exhibit its accus- 
tomed produce. The established poetry had 
worn out either its own resources, or the con- 
stancy of its readers. Former attempts to 
introduce novelty had been either too weak 
or too early. Neither the beautiful fancy of 
Collins, nor the learned and ingenious indus- 
try of Warton, nor even the union of sublime 
genius with consummate art in Gray, had 
produced a general change in poetical com- 
position. But the fulness of time was ap- 
proaching ; and a revolution has been accom- 
plished, of which the commencement nearly 
coincides — not, as we conceive, accidental- 
ly — w ith that of the political revolution which 
has changed the character as well as the 
condition of Europe. It has been a thousand 
times observed, that nations become weary 
even of excellence, and seek a new way of 
writing, though it should be a worse. But 
besides the operation of satiety — the general 
cause of literary revolutions — several par- 
ticular circumstances seem to have affected 
the late changes of our poetical taste ; of 
which, two are more conspicuous than the 
rest. 

In the natural progress of society, the songs 
which are the effusion of the feelings of a 



* Prologue to Comus. — Ed. 



256 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



rude tribe, are gradually polished into a form 
of poetry still retaining the marks of the na- 
tional opinions; sentiments, and manners, 
from which it originally sprung. The plants 
are improved by cultivation ; but they are 
still the native produce of the soil. The 
only perfect example which we know, of 
this sort, is Greece. Knowledge and useful 
art, and perhaps in a greal measure religion, 
the Greeks received from the East: but as 
they studied no foreign language, it was im- 
possible that any foreign literature should in- 
fluence the progress of theirs. Not even the 
name of a Persian, Assyrian, Phenician, or 
Egyptian poet is alluded to by any Greek 
writer: The Greek poetry was, therefore, 
wholly national. The Pelasgic ballads were 
insensibly formed into Epic, and Tragic, and 
Lyric poems: but the heroes, the opinions, 
and the customs, continued as exclusively 
Grecian, as they had been when the Helle- 
nic minstrels knew little beyond the Adriatic 
and the JEgean. The literature of Rome 
was a copy from that of Greece. When the 
classical studies revived amid the chivalrous 
manners and feudal institutions of Gothic 
Europe, the imitation of ancient poets strug- 
gled against the power of modern sentiments, 
with various event, in different times and 
countries, — but every where in such a man- 
ner, as to give somewhat of an artificial and 
exotic character to poetry. Jupiter and the 
Muses appeared in the poems of Christian 
nations. The feelings and principles of de- 
mocracies were copied by the gentlemen of 
Teutonic monarchies or aristocracies. The 
sentiments of the poet in his verse, were not 
those which actuated him in his conduct. 
The forms and rules of composition were 
borrowed from antiquity, instead of sponta- 
neously arising from the manner of thinking 
of modern communities. In Italy, when let- 
ters first revived, the chivalrous principle 
was too near the period of its full vigour, to 
be oppressed by his foreign learning. An- 
cient ornaments were borrowed ; but the ro- 
mantic form was prevalent : and where the 
forms were classical, the spirit continued to 
be romantic. The structure of Tasso's poem 
was that of the Grecian epic ; but his heroes 
were Christian knights. French poetry 
having been somewhat unaccountably late 
in its rise, and slow in its progress, reached 
its most brilliant period, when all Europe had 
considerably lost its ancient characteristic 
principles, and was fully imbued with classi- 
cal ideas. Hence it acquired faultless ele- 
gance : — hence also it became less natural, — 
more timid and more imitative, — more like 
a feeble translation of Roman poetry. The 
first age of English poetry, in the reign of 
Elizabeth, displayed a combination, — fantas- 
tic enough, — of chivalrous fancy and feeling 
with classical pedantry; but, upon the whole, 
its native genius was unsubdued. The poems 
of that age, with all their faults, and partly 
perhaps from their faults, are the most na- 
tional part of our poetry, as they undoubtedly 
contain its highest beauties. From the ac- 



cession of James, to the Civil War, the glory 
of Shakespeare turned the whole national 
genius to the drama; and, after the Restora- 
tion, a new and classical school arose, under 
whom our old and peculiar literature was 
abandoned, and almost forgotten. But all 
imported tastes in literature must be in some 
measure superficial. The poetry which once 
grew in the bosoms of a people, is always 
capable of being revived by a skilful hand. 
When the brilliant and poignant lines of 
Pope began to pall on the public ear, it was 
natural that we should revert to the cultiva- 
tion of our indigenous poetry. 

Nor was this the sole, or perhaps the chief 
agent which was working a poetical change. 
As the condition and character of the former 
age had produced an argumentative, di- 
dactic, sententious, prudential, and satirical 
poetry ; so the approaches to a new order (or 
rather at first disorder) in political society, 
were attended by correspondent movements 
in the poetical world. Bolder speculations 
began to prevail. A combination of the 
science and art of the tranquil period, with 
the hardy enterprises of that which suc- 
ceeded, gave rise to scientific poems, in which 
a bold attempt was made, by the mere force 
of diction, to give a political interest and 
elevation to the coldest parts of knowledge, 
and to those arts which have been hitherto 
considered as the meanest. Having been 
forced above their natural place by the won- 
der at first elicited, they have not yet reco- 
vered from the subsequent depression. Nor 
will a similar attempt be successful, without 
a more temperate use of power over style, 
till the diffusion of physical knowledge ren- 
ders it familiar to the popular imagination, 
and till the prodigies worked by the mechani- 
cal arts shall have bestowed on them a cha- 
racter of grandeur. 

As the agitation of men's minds approach- 
ed the period of an explosion, its effects on 
literature became more visible. The desire 
of strong emotion succeeded to the solici- 
tude to avoid disgust. Fictions, both dra- 
matic and narrative, were formed according 
to the school of Rousseau and Goethe. The 
mixture of comic and tragic pictures once 
more displayed itself, as in the ancient and 
national drama. The sublime and energetic 
feelings of devotion began to be more fre- 
quently associated with poetry. The ten- 
dency of political speculation concurred in 
directing the mind of the poet to the intense 
and undisguised passions of the uneducated; 
which fastidious politeness had excluded 
from the subjects of poetical imitation. The 
history of nations unlike ourselves, the fan- 
tastic mythology and ferocious superstition 
of distant times and countries, or the legends 
of our own antique faith, and the romances 
of our fabulous and heroic ages, became 
themes of poetry. Traces of a higher order 
of feeling appeared in the contemplations in 
which the poet indulged, and in the events 
and scenes which he delighted to describe. 
The fire with which a chivalrous tale was 



REVIEW OF ROGERS' POEMS. 



257 



told, made the reader inattentive to negli- 
gences in the story or the style. Poetry be- 
came more devout, more contemplative, more 
mystical, more visionary, — more alien from 
the taste of those whose poetry is only a 
polished prosaic verse, — more full of antique 
superstition, and more prone to daring inno- 
vation, — painting both coarser realities and 
purer imaginations, than she had before ha- 
zarded, — sometimes buried in the profound 
quiet required by the dreams of fancy, — 
sometimes turbulent and martial, — seeking 
''• fierce wars and faithful loves" in those 
times long past, when the frequency of the 
most dreadful dangers produced heroic ener- 
gy and the ardour of faithful affection. 

Even the direction given to the traveller 
by the accidents of war has not been with- 
out its influence. Greece, the mother of 
freedom and of poetry in the West, which 
had long employed only the antiquary, the 
artist, and the philologist, was at length des- 
tined, after an interval of many silent and 
inglorious ages, to awaken the genius of a 
poet. Full of enthusiasm for those perfect 
forms of heroism and liberty, which his 
imagination had placed in the recesses of 
antiquity, he gave vent to his impatience of 
the imperfections of living men and real in- 
stitutions, in an original strain of sublime 
satire, which clothes moral anger in imagery 
of an almost horrible grandeur ; and which, 
though it cannot coincide with the estimate 
of reason, yet could only flow from that 
worship of perfection, which is the soul of 
all true poetry. 

The tendency of poetry to become na- 
tional, was in more than one case remarkable. 
While the Scottish middle age inspired the 
most popular poet perhaps of the eighteenth 
century, the national genius of Ireland at 
length found a poetical representative, whose 
exquisite ear, and flexible fancy, wantoned 
in all the varieties of poetical luxury, from 
the levities to the fondness of love, from 
polished pleasantry to ardent passion, and 
from the social joys of private life to a 
tender and mournful patriotism, taught by 
the melancholy fortunes of an illustrious 
country, — with a range adapted to every 
nerve in the composition of a people sus- 
ceptible of all feelings which have the colour 
of generosity, and more exempt probably 
than any other from degrading and unpoeti- 
cal vices. 

The failure of innumerable adventurers is 
inevitable, in literary, as well as in political, 
revolutions. The inventor seldom perfects 
his invention. The uneouthness of the no- 
velty, the clumsiness with which it is ma- 
naged by an unpractised hand, and the dog- 
matical contempt of criticism natural to the 
pride and enthusiasm of the innovator, com- 
bine to expose him to ridicule, and generally 
terminate in his being admired (though 
warmly) by a few of his contemporaries, — 
remembered only occasionally in after times, 
— and. supplanted in general estimation by 
more cautious and skilful imitators. With 
33 



the very reverse of unfriendly feelings, we 
observe that erroneous theories respecting 
poetical diction, — exclusive and proscriptive 
notions in criticism, which in adding new 
provinces to poetry would deprive her of an- 
cient dominions and lawful instruments of 
rule, — and a neglect of that extreme regard 
to general sympathy, and even accidental 
prejudice, which is necessary to guard poeti- 
cal novelties against their natural enemy the 
satirist, — have powerfully counteracted an 
attempt, equally moral and philosophical, 
made by a writer of undisputed poetical 
genius, to enlarge the territories of art, by un- 
folding the poetical interest which lies latent 
in the common acts of the humblest men, 
and in the most ordinary modes of feeling, as 
well as in the most familiar scenes of nature. 

The various opinions which may naturally 
be formed of the merit of individual writers, 
form no necessary part of our consideration. 
We consider the present as one of the most 
flourishing periods of English poetry: but 
those who condemn all contemporary poets, 
need not on that account dissent from our 
speculations. It is sufficient to have proved 
the reality, and in part perhaps to have ex- 
plained the origin, of a literary revolution. 
At no time does the success of writers bear 
so uncertain a proportion to their genius, as 
when the rules of judging and the habits of 
feeling are unsettled. 

It is not uninteresting, even as a matter of 
speculation, to observe the fortune of a poem 
which, like the Pleasures of Memory, ap- 
peared at the commencement of this literary 
revolution, without paying court to the revo- 
lutionary tastes, or seeking distinction by re- 
sistance to them. It borrowed no aid either 
from prejudice or innovation. It neither co- 
pied the fashion of the age which was pass- 
ing away, nor offered any homage to the 
rising novelties. It resembles, only in mea- 
sure, the poems of the eighteenth century, 
which were written in heroic rhyme. Neither 
the brilliant sententiousness of Pope, nor the 
frequent languor and negligence perhaps in- 
separable from the exquisite nature of Gold- 
smith, could be traced in a poem, from which 
taste and labour equally banished mannerism 
and inequality. It was patronized by no sect 
or faction. It was neither imposed on the 
public by any literary cabal, nor forced into 
notice by the noisy anger of conspicuous 
enemies. Yet, destitute as it was of every 
foreign help, it acquired a popularity origi- 
nally very great ; and which has not only 
continued amidst extraordinary fluctuation 
of general taste, but has increased amid a 
succession of formidable competitors. No 
production, so popular, was probably ever so 
little censured by criticism : and thus is com- 
bined the applause of contemporaries with the 
suffrage of the representatives of posterity. 

It is needless to make extracts from a 
poem which is familiar to every reader. In 
selection, indeed, no two readers would pro- 
bably agree : but the description of the 
Gipsies, — of the Boy quitting his Father's 
w2 



258 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



house. — and of the Savoyard recalling the 
mountainous scenery of his country, — and 
the descriptive commencement of the tale in 
Cumberland, have remained most deeply 
impressed on our minds. We should be dis- 
posed to quote the following verses, as not 
surpassed, in pure and chaste elegance, by 
any English lines :— 

•' When Joy's bright sun has shed his evening 

rav. 
And Hope's delusive meteors cease (o piny ; 
When clouds on clouds the smiling prospect 

close, 
Still through the gloom thy star serenely glows : 
Like yon fair orb she gilds the brow of Night 
With the mild magic of reflected light." 

The conclusion of the fine passage on the 
Veterans at Greenwich and Chelsea, has a 
pensive dignity which beautifully corres- 
ponds with the scene : — 

" Long have ye known Reflection's genial ray 
Gild the calm close of Valour's various day." 

And we cannot resist the pleasure of quo- 
ting the moral, tender, and elegant lines 
which close the Poem : — 

" Lighter than air, Hope's summer-visions fly, 
If but a fleeting cloud obscure the sky ; 
If but a beam of sober Reason play, 
Lo, Fancy's fairy frost-work melts away ! 
But can the wiles of Art, the grasp of Power, 
Snatch the rich relics of a well-spent hour? 
These, when the trembling spirit wings her 

flight, 
Pour round her path a stream of living light; 
And gild those pure and perfect realms of rest, 
Where Virtue triumphs, and her sons are blest!" 

The descriptive passages require indeed a 
closer inspection, and a more exercised eye. 
than those of some celebrated contempora- 
ries who sacrifice elegance to effect, and 
whose figures stand out in bold relief, from 
the general roughness of their more unfin- 
ished compositions: and in the moral parts, 
there is often discoverable a Virgilian art, 
which suggests, rather than displays, the 
various and contrasted scenes of human life, 
and adds to the power of language by a cer- 
tain air of reflection and modesty, in the 
preference of measured terms to those of 
more apparent energy. 

In the View from the House,* the scene is 
neither delightful from very superior beauty, 
nor striking by singularity, nor powerful from 
reminding us of terrible passions or memo- 
rable deeds. It consists of the more ordinary 
of the beautiful features of nature, neither 
exaggerated nor represented with curious 
minuteness, but exhibited with picturesque 
elegance, in connection with those tranquil 
emotions which they call up in the calm 
order of a virtuous mind, in every condition 
of society and of life. The verses on the 
Torso, are in a more severe style. The 
Fragment of a divine artist, which awakened 
the genius of Michael Angelo, seems to dis- 
dain ornament. It would be difficult to 
name two small poems, by the same writer, 

* In the Epistle to a Friend. — Ed. 



in which he has attained such high degrees 
of kinds of excellence so dissimilar, as are 
seen in the Sick Chamber and the Butterfly. 
The first has a truth of detail, which, con- 
sidered merely as painting, is admirable; 
but assumes a higher character, when it is 
felt to be that minute remembrance, with 
which affection recollects every circumstance 
that could have affected a beloved sufferer. 
Though the morality which concludes the 
second, be in itself very beautiful, it maybe 
doubted whether the verses would not have 
left a more unmixed delight, if the address 
had remained as a mere sport of fancy, with- 
out the seriousness of an object, or an appli- 
cation. The verses written in Westminster 
Abbey are surrounded by dangerous recol- 
lections : they aspire to commemorate Fox, 
and to copy some of the grandest thoughts 
in the most sublime work of Bossuet. No- 
thing can satisfy the expectation awakened 
by such names: yet we are assured that 
there are some of them which would be en- 
vied by the best writers of this age. The 
scenery of Loch Long is among the grandest 
in Scotland ; and the description of it shows 
the power of feeling and painting. In this 
island, the taste for nature has grown with 
the progress of refinement. It is most alive 
in those who are most brilliantly distinguish- 
ed in social and active life. It elevates the 
mind above the meanness which it might 
contract in the rivalship for praise; and pre- 
serves those habits of reflection and sensi- 
bility, which receive so many rude shocks 
in the coarse contests of the world. Not 
many summer hours can be passed in the 
most mountainous solitudes of Scotland, with- 
out meeting some who are worthy to be 
remembered with the sublime objects of 
nature, which they had travelled so far to 
admire. 

The most conspicuous of the novelties of 
this volume is the poem or poems, entitled 
"Fragments of the Voyage of Columbus." 
The subject of this poem is, politically or 
philosophically considered, among the most 
important in the annals of mankind. The in- 
troduction of Christianity (humanly viewed), 
the irruption of the Northern barbarians, the 
contest between the Christian and Mussul- 
man nations in Syria, the two inventions of 
gunpowder and printing, the emancipation 
of the human understanding by the Refor- 
mation, the discovery of America, and of a 
maritime passage to Asia in the last ten 
years of the fifteenth century, are the events 
which have produced the greatest and most 
durable effects, since the establishment of 
civilization, and the consequent commence- 
ment of authentic history. But the poetical 
capabilities of an event bear no proportion to 
historical importance. None of the conse- 
quences that do not strike the senses or the 
fancy can interest the poet. The greatest 
of the transactions above enumerated is ob- 
viously incapable of entering into poetry. 
The Crusades were not without permanent 
effects on the state of men: but their poeti- 



REVIEW OF ROGERS' POEMS. 



250 



cal interest does not arise from these effects ; 
and it immeasurably surpasses them. 

Whether the voyage of Columbus be des- 
tined to be for ever incapable of becoming 
the subject of an epic poem, is a question 
which we have scarcely the means of answer- 
ing. The success of great writers has often 
so little corresponded with the promise of 
their subject, that we might be almost tempt- 
ed to think the choice of a subject indifferent. 
The story of Hamlet, or of Paradise Lost, 
would beforehand have been pronounced to 
be unmanageable. Perhaps the genius of 
Shakespeare and of Milton has rather com- 
pensated for the incorrigible defects of un- 
grateful subjects, than conquered them. The 
course of ages may produce the poetical 
genius, the historical materials and the na- 
tional feelings, for an American epic poem. 
There is yet but one state in America, and 
that state is hardly become a nation. At 
some future period, when every part of the 
continent has been the scene of memorable 
events, when the discovery and conquest 
have receded into that legendary dimness 
which allows fancy to mould them at her 
pleasure, the early history of America may 
afford scope for the genius of a thousand 
national poets; and while some may soften 
the cruelty which darkens the daring energy 
of Cortez and Pizarro, — while others may. 
in perhaps new forms of poetry, ennoble the 
pacific conquests of Penn, — and while the 
genius, the exploits, and the fate of Raleigh, 
may render his establishments probably the 
most alluring of American subjects, every 
inhabitant of the new world will turn his 
eyes with filial reverence towards Columbus, 
and regard, with equal enthusiasm, the 
voyage which laid the foundation of so many 
states, and peopled a continent with civilized 
men. Most epic subjects, but especially 
such a subject as Columbus, require either 
the fire of an actor in the scene, or the reli- 
gious reverence of a very distant posterity. 
Homer, as well as Ercilla and Camoens, 
show what may be done by an epic poet 
who himself feels the passions of his heroes. 
It must not be denied that Virgil has bor- 
rowed a colour of refinement from the court 
of Augustus, in painting the age of Priam 
and of Dido. Evander is a solitary and ex- 
quisite model of primitive manners, divest- 
ed of grossness, without losing their sim- 
plicity. But to an European poet, in this age 
of the world, the Voyage of Columbus is too 
naked and too exactly defined by history. 
It has no variety, — scarcely any succession 
of events. It consists of one scene, during 
which two or three simple passions continue 
in a state of the highest excitement. It is a 
voyage with intense anxiety in every bosom, 
controlled by magnanimous fortitude in the 
leader, and producing among his followers 
a fear, — sometimes submissive, sometimes 
mutinous, always ignoble, ft admits of no 
variety of character, — no unexpected revolu- 
tions. And even the issue, though of un- 
speakable iraportance ; and admirably adapt- 



ed to some kinds of poetry, is not an event 
of such outward dignity and splendour as 
ought naturally to close the active and bril- 
liant course of an epic poem. 

It is natural that the Fragments should 
give a specimen of the marvellous as well 
as of the other constituents of epic fiction. 
We may observe, that it is neither the inten- 
tion nor the tendency of poetical machinery 
to supersede secondary causes, to fetter the 
will, and to make human creatures appear 
as the mere instruments of destiny. It is 
introduced to satisfy that insatiable demand 
for a nature more exalted than that which 
we know by experience, which creates all 
poetry, and which is most active in its high- 
est species, and in its most perfect produc- 
tions. It is not to account for thoughts and 
feelings, that superhuman agents are brought 
down upon earth : it is rather for the con- 
trary purpose, of lifting them into a myste- 
rious dignity beyond the cognizance of rea- 
son. There is a material difference between 
the acts which superior beings perform, and 
the sentiments which they inspire. It is 
true, that when a god fights against men, 
there can be no uncertainty or anxiety, and 
consequently no interest about the event, — 
unless indeed in the rude theology of Homer, 
where Minerva may animate the Greeks, 
while Mars excites the Trojans: but it is 
quite otherwise with these divine persons 
inspiring passion, or represented as agents hi 
the great phenomena of nature. Venus and 
Mars inspire love or valour; they give a 
noble origin and a dignified character to 
these sentiments : but the sentiments them- 
selves act according to the laws of our na- 
ture ; and their celestial source has no ten- 
dency to impair their power over human 
sympathy. No event, which has not too much 
modern vulgarity to be susceptible of alliance 
with poetry, can be incapable of being enno- 
bled by that eminently poetical art which 
ascribes it either to the Supreme Will, or to 
the agency of beings who are greater than 
human. The wisdom of Columbus is neither 
less venerable, nor less his own, because it 
is supposed to flow more directly than that 
of other wise men, from the inspiration of 
heaven. The mutiny of his seamen is not 
less interesting or formidable because the 
poet traces it to the suggestion of those ma- 
lignant spirits, in whom the imagination, in- 
dependent of all theological doctrines, is 
naturally prone to personify and embody the 
causes of evil. 

Unless, indeed, the marvellous be a part 
of the popular creed at the period of the 
action, the reader of a subsequent age will 
refuse to sympathize with it. His poetica 1 
faith is founded in sympathy with that of the 
poetical personages. Still more objectionable 
is a marvellous influence, neither believed in 
by the reader nor by the hero ; — like a great 
part of the machinery of the Henriade arid 
the Lusiad, which indeed is not only ab- 
solutely ineffective, but rather disennobles 
heroic fiction, by association with fight and 



260 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



frivolous ideas. Allegorical persons (if the 
expression may be allowed) are only in the 
way to become agents. The abstraction has 
received a faint outline of form ; but it has 
not yet acquired those individual marks and 
characteristic peculiarities, which render it 
a really existing being. On the other hand, 
the more sublime parts of our own religion, 
and more especially those which are common 
to all religion, are too awful and too philoso- 
phical for poetical effect. If we except Pa- 
radise Lost, where all is supernatural, and 
where the ancestors of the human race are 
not strictly human beings, it must be owned 
that no successful attempt has been made to 
ally a human action with the sublimer prin- 
ciples of the Christian theology. Some opi- 
nions, which may perhaps, without irrever- 
ence, be said to be rather appendages to the 
Christian system, than essential parts of it, 
are in that sort of intermediate state which 
fits them for the purposes of poetry ; — suffi- 
ciently exalted to ennoble the human actions 
with which they are blended, but not so 
exactly defined, nor so deeply revered, as to 
be inconsistent with the liberty of imagina- 
tion. The guardian angels, in the project of 
Dryden, had the inconvenience of having 
never taken any deep root in popular belief : 
the agency of evil spirits was firmly believed 
in the age of Columbus. With the truth of 
facts poetry can have no concern ; but the 
truth of manners is necessary to its persons. 
If the minute investigations of the Notes to 
this poem had related to historical details, 
they would have been insignificant ) but they 
are intended to justify the human and the 
supernatural parts of it, by an appeal to the 
mariners and to the opinions of the age. 

Perhaps there is no volume in our language 
of which it can be so truly said, as of the 
present, that it is equally exempt from the 



frailties of negligence and the vices of affec- 
tation. Exquisite polish of style is indeed 
more admired by the artist than by the peo- 
ple. The gentle and elegant pleasure which 
it imparts, can only be felt by a calm reason, 
an exercised taste, and a mind free from tur- 
bulent passions. But these beauties of exe- 
cution can exist only in combination with 
much of the primary beauties of thought and 
feeling; and poets of the first rank depend 
on them for no small part of the perpetuity 
of their fame. In poetry, though not in elo- 
quence, it is less to rouse the passions of a 
moment, than to satisfy the taste of all 
ages. 

In estimating the poetical rank of Mr. 
Rogers, it must not be forgotten that popu- 
larity never can arise from elegance alone. 
The vices of a poem may render it popular ; 
and virtues of a faint character may be suffi- 
cient to preserve a languishing and cold re- 
putation. But to be both popular poets and 
classical writers, is the rare lot of those few 
who are released from all solicitude about 
their literary fame. It often happens to suc- 
cessful writers, that the lustre of their first 
productions throws a temporary cloud over 
some of those which follow. Of all literary 
misfortunes, this is the most easily endured, 
and the most speedily repaired. It is gene- 
rally no more than a momentary illusion 
produced by disappointed admiration, which 
expected more from the talents of the ad- 
mired writer than any talents could perform. 
Mr. Rogers has long passed that period of 
probation, during which it may be excusable 
to feel some painful solicitude about the re- 
ception of every new work. Whatever may 
be the rank assigned hereafter to his writ- 
ings, when compared with each other, the 
writer has most certainly taken his place 
among the classical poets of his country. 



REVIEW 



MADAME DE STAEL'S 'DE I/ALLEMAGNE. 



>* 



Till the middle of the eighteenth century, 
Germany was, in one important respect, sin- 
gular among the great nations of Christendom. 
She had attained a high rank in Europe by 
discoveries and inventions, by science, by 
abstract speculation as well as positive know- 
ledge, by the genius and the art of war, 
and above all, by the theological revolution, 
which unfettered the understanding in one 



,! p ™ m the Edinburgh Review, vol. xxii. p. 
J 68. — Ed. 



part of Europe, and loosened its chains in 
the other; but she was without a national 
literature. The country of Guttenberg, of 
Copernicus, of Luther, of Kepler, and of 
Leibnitz, had no writer in her own language, 
whose name was known to the neighbouring 
nations. German captains and statesmen, 
philosophers and scholars, were celebrated; 
but German writers were unknown. The 
nations of the Spanish peninsula formed the 
exact contrast to Germany. She had every 
mark of mental cultivation but a vernacular 



REVIEW OF DE L'ALLEMAGNE. 



261 



literature : they, since the Reformation, had 
ceased to exercise their reason; and they 
retained only their poets, whom they were 
content to admire, without daring any longer 
to emulate. In Italy, Metastasio was the 
only renowned poet ; and sensibility to the 
arts of design had survived genius : but the 
monuments of ancient times still kept alive 
the pursuits of antiquities and philology ; and 
the rivalship of small states, and the glory 
of former ages, preserved an interest in lite- 
rary history. The national mind retained 
that tendency towards experimental science, 
which it perhaps principally owed to the 
fame of Galileo ; and began also to take some 
part in those attempts to discover the means 
of bettering the human condition, by inquiries 
into the principles of legislation and political 
economy, which form the most honourable 
distinction of the eighteenth century. France 
and England abated nothing of their activity. 
Whatever may be thought of the purity of 
taste, or of the soundness of opinion of Mon- 
tesquieu and Voltaire, Buffon and Rousseau, 
no man will dispute the vigour of their genius. 
The same period among us was not marked 
by the loss of any of our ancient titles to 
fame ; and it was splendidly distinguished 
by the rise of ihe arts, of history, of oratory, 
and (shall we not add?) of pamting. But 
Germany remained a solitary example of a 
civilized, learned, and scientific nation, with- 
out a literature. The chivalrous ballads of 
the middle age, and the efforts of the Silesian 
poets in the beginning of the seventeenth 
century, were just sufficient to render the 
general defect more striking. French was 
the language of every court ; and the number 
of courts in Germany rendered this circum- 
stance almost equivalent to the exclusion of 
German from every society of rank. Phi- 
losophers employed a barbarous Latin, — as 
they had throughout all Europe, till the 
Reformation had given dignity tc the ver- 
nacular tongues, by employing them in the 
service of Religion, and till Montaigne, Gali- 
leo, and Bacon, broke down the barrier 
between the learned and the people, by phi- 
losophizing in a popular language ; and the 
German language continued to be the mere 
instrument of the most vulgar intercourse of 
life. Germany had, therefore, no exclusive 
mental possession : for poetry and eloquence 
may. and in some measure must be national ; 
but knowledge, which is the common patri- 
mony of civilized men, can be appropriated 
by no people. 

A great revolution, however, at length 
began, which in the course of half a century 
terminated in bestowing on Germany a litera- 
ture, perhaps the most characteristic pos- 
sessed by any European nation. It had the 
important peculiarity of being the first which 
had its birth in an enlightened age. The 
imagination and sensibility of an infant poe- 
try were in it singularly blended with the 
refinements of philosophy. A studious and 
learned people, familiar with the poets of 
other nations, with the first simplicity of 



nature and feeling, were too often tempted 
to pursue the singular, the excessive, and the 
monstrous. Their fancy was attracted to- 
wards the deformities and diseases of moral 
nature ; — the wildness of an infant literature, 
combined with the eccentric and fearless 
speculations of a philosophical age. Some 
of the qualities of the childhood of art were 
united to others which usually attend its de- 
cline. German literature, various, rich, bold, 
and at length, by an inversion of the usual 
progress, working itself into originality, was 
tainted with the exaggeration natural to the 
imitator, and to all those who know the pas- 
sions rather by study than by feeling. 

Another cause concurred to widen the 
chasm which separated the German writers 
from the most polite nations of Europe. 
While England and France had almost re- 
linquished those more abstruse speculations 
which had employed them in the age of 
Gassendi and Hobbes, and, with a confused 
mixture of contempt and despair, had tacitly 
abandoned questions which seemed alike 
inscrutable and unprofitable, a metaphysical 
passion arose in Germany, stronger and more- 
extensive than had been known in Europe 
since the downfall of the Scholastic philoso- 
phy. A system of metaphysics appeared, 
which, with the ambition natural to that 
science, aspired to dictate principles to every 
part of human knowledge. It was for a long- 
time universally adopted. Other systems, 
derived from it, succeeded each other with 
the rapidity of fashions in dress. Metaphy- 
sical publications were multiplied almost to 
the same degree, as political tracts in the 
most factious period of a popular government. 
The subject was soon exhausted, and the 
metaphysical passion seems to be nearly ex- 
tinguished : for the small circle of dispute 
respecting first principles, must be always 
rapidly described ; and the speculator, who 
thought his course infinite, finds himself al- 
most instantaneously returned to the point 
from which he began. But the lajiguagfe 
of abstruse research spread over the whole 
German style. Allusions to the most subtile 
speculations were common in popular writ- 
ings. Bold metaphors, derived from their 
peculiar philosophy, became familiar in ob- 
servations on literature and manners. The 
style of Germany at length differed from 
that of France, and even of England, more 
as the literature of the East differs from that 
of the West, than as that of one European 
people from that of their neighbours. 

Hence it partly arose, that while physical 
and political Germany was so familiar to 
foreigners, intellectual and literary Germany 
continued' almost unknown. Thirty years 
ago,* there Avere probably in London as 
many Persian as German scholars. Neither 
Goethe nor Schiller conquered the repug- 
nance. Political confusions, a timid and 
exclusive taste, and the habitual neglect of 
foreign languages, excluded German litera- 



* Written in 1813.— Ed. 



262 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS 



ture from France. Temporaryand permanent 
causes contributed to banish it after a short pe- 
riod of Success, from England. Dramas, more 
remarkable for theatrical effect, than dramati- 
cal genius, exhibited scenes and characters of 
a paradoxical molality (on -which no writer 
lias animadverted with more philosophical 
and moral eloquence than Mad. de Stacl). — 
unsafe even in the quiet of the schools. L>ut 
peculiarly dangerous in the theatre, where 
it comes into contact with the inflammable 
passions of ignorant multitudes, — and justly 
alarming to those who. with great reason, 
considered domestic virtue as one of the 
privileges and safeguards of the English na- 
tion. These moral paradoxes, which were 
chiefly found among the inferior poets of 
Germany, appeared at the same time with 
the political novelties of the French Revolu- 
tion, and underwent the same fate. German 
literal ure was branded as the accomplice of 
freethinking philosophy and revolutionary 
politics. It happened rather whimsically, 
that we now began to throw out the same 
reproaches against other nations, which the 
French had directed against us in the begin- 
ning of the eighteenth century. We were 
then charged by our polite neighbours with 
the vulgarity and turbulence of rebellious 
upstarts, who held nothing sacred in religion, 
or stable in government ; whom — 

" No king could govern, and no God could 
please ;''* 

and whose coarse and barbarous literature 
could excite only the ridicule of cultivated 
nations. The political part of these charges 
we applied to America, which had retained as 
much as she could of our government and 
laws; and the literary part to Germany, where 
literature had either been formed on our mo- 
dels, or moved by a kindred impulse, even 
where it assumed somewhat of a different 
form. The same persons who applauded 
wit, and pardoned the shocking licentious- 
ness of English comedy, were loudest in 
their clamours against the immorality of the 
German theatre. In our zeal against a few 
scenes, dangerous only by over-refinement, 
we seemed to have forgotten the vulgar 
grossness which tainted the whole brilliant 
period from Fletcher to Congreve. Nor did 
we sufficiently remember, that the most 
daring and fantastical combinations of the 
German stage, did not approach to that union 
of taste and sense in the thought and expres- 
sion, with wildness and extravagance in the 
invention of monstrous character and horrible 
incident, to be found in some of our earlier 
dramas, which, for their energy and beauty, 
the public taste has lately called from oblivion. 
The more permanent causes of the slow 
and small progress of German literature in 
France and England, are philosophically de- 
veloped in two beautiful chapters of the 
present work.t A translation from German 



* Absalom and Achitophel. — Ed. 
t Part ii., chap. 1, 2. 



into a language so different in its structure 
and origin as French, fails, as a piece of 
music composed for one sort of instrument 
when performed on another. In Germany, 
style, and even language, are not yet fixed. 
In Fiance, rules are despotic : "the reader 
will not be amused at the expense of his 
literal}- conscience; there alone he is scru- 
pulous." A German writer is above his 
public, and forms it : a French writer dreads 
a public already enlightened and severe ; he 
constantly thinks of immediate effect ; he is 
in society, even while he is composing ; and 
never loses sight of the effect of his writings 
on those whose opinions and pleasantries he 
is accustomed to fear. The German writers 
have, in a higher degree, the first requisite 
for writing — the power of feeling with viva- 
city and force. In Fiance, a book is read 
to be spoken of, and must therefore catch 
the spirit of society : in Germany, it is read 
by solitary students, who seek instruction or 
emotion ; and, " in the silence of retirement, 
nothing seems more melancholy than the 
spirit of the world." The French require a 
clearness which may sometimes render their 
writers superficial : and the Germans, in the 
pursuit of originality and depth, often convey 
obvious thoughts in an obscure style. In 
the dramatic art, the most national part of 
literature, the French are distinguished in 
whatever relates to the action, the intrigue, 
and the interest of events : but the Germans 
surpass them in representing the impressions 
of the heart, and the secret storms of the 
strong passions. 

This work will make known to future ages 
the state of Germany in the highest degree 
of its philosophical and poetical activity, at 
the moment before the pride of genius was 
humbled by foreign conquest, or the national 
mind turned from literary enthusiasm by 
struggles for the restoration of independence. 
The fleeting opportunity of observation at so 
extraordinary a moment, has happily been 
seized by one of those very few persons, 
who are capable at once of observing and 
painting manners, — of estimating and ex- 
pounding philosophical systems, — of feeling 
the beauties of the most dissimilar forms of 
literature, — of tracing the peculiarities ^of 
usages, arts, and even speculations, to their 
common principle in national character,— 
and of disposing them in their natural place 
as features in the great portrait of a people. 

The attainments of a respectable travel- 
ler of the second class, are, in the present 
age, not uncommon. Many persons are per- 
fectly well qualified to convey exact infor- 
mation, wherever the subject can be exactly 
known. But the most important objects in 
a country can neither be numbered nor 
measured. The naturalist gives no picture 
of scenery by the most accurate catalogue 
of mineral and vegetable produce; and, after 
all that the political arithmetician can tell us 
of wealth and population, we continue igno- 
rant of the spirit which actuates them, and 
of the character which modifies their appli- 



REVIEW OF DE L'ALLEMAGNE. 



263 



cation. The genius of the philosophical and 
poetical traveller is of a higher order. It is 
founded in the power of catching, at a rapid 
glance, the physiognomy of man and of na- 
ture. It is, in one of its parts, an expansion 
of that sagacity winch seizes the character 
of an individual, in his features, in his ex- 
pression, in his gestures, in his tones, — in 
every outward sign of his thoughts and feel- 
ings. The application of this intuitive power 
to the varied mass called a '-'nation," is one 
of the most rare efforts of the human intel- 
lect. The mind and the eye must co-ope- 
rate, with electrical rapidity, to recall what 
a nation has been, to sympathize with their 
present sentiments and passions, and to trace 
the workings of national character in amuse- 
ments, in habits, in institutions and opinions. 
There appears to be an extemporaneous fa- 
cility of theorizing, necessary to catch the 
first aspect of a new country, — the features 
of which would enter the mind in absolute 
confusion, if they were not immediately re- 
ferred to some principle, and reduced to 
some system. To embody this conception, 
there must exist the power of painting both 
scenery and character, — of combining the 
vivacity of first impression with the accuracy 
of minute examination, — of placing a nation, 
strongly individualized by every mark of its 
mind and disposition, in the midst of ancient 
monuments, clothed in its own apparel, en- 
gaged in its ordinary occupations and pas- 
times amidst its native scenes, like a grand 
historical painting, with appropriate drapery, 
and with the accompaniments of architecture 
and landscape, whicli illustrate and charac- 
terize, as well as adorn. 

The voice of Europe has already applaud- 
ed the genius of a national painter in the 
author of Corinne. But it was there aided 
by the power of a pathetic fiction, by the 
variety and opposition of national character, 
and by the charm of a country which unites 
beauty to renown. In the work before us, 
she has thrown off the aid of fiction ; she de- 
lineates a less poetical character, and a coun- 
try more interesting by expectation than by 
recollection. But- 4 is not the less certain 
that it is the most vigorous effort of her 
genius, and probably the most elaborate and 
masculine production of the faculties of wo- 
man. What other woman, indeed, (and we 
may add how many men.) could have pre- 
served all the grace and brilliancy of Parisian 
society in analyzing its nature, — explained 
the most abstruse metaphysical theories of 
Germany precisely, yet perspicuously and 
agreeably, — and combined the eloquence 
which inspires exalted sentiments of virtue, 
with the enviable talent of gently indicating 
the defects of men or of nations, by the skil- 
fully softened touches of a polite and merci- 
ful pleasantry 1 

In a short introduction, the principal na- 
tions of Europe are derived from three races, 
— the Sclavonic, the Latin, and the Teutonic. 
The imitative and feeble literature, — the 
recent precipitate and superficial civilization 



of the Sclavonic nations, sufficiently distin- 
guish them from the two great races. The 
Latin nations, who inhabit the south of Eu- 
rope, are the most anciently civilized : social 
institutions, blended with Paganism, pre- 
ceded their reception of Christianity. They 
have less disposition than their northern 
neighbours to abstract reflection; they un- 
derstand better the business and pleasures 
of the world; they inherit the sagacity of 
the Komans in civil affairs; and " they alone, 
like those ancient masters, know how to 
practice the art of domination." The Ger- 
manic nations, who inhabit the north of Eu- 
rope and the British islands, received their 
civilization with Christianity : chivalry and 
the middle ages are the subjects of their 
traditions and legends; their natural genius 
is more Gothic than classical ; they are dis- 
tinguished by independence and good faith, 
— by seriousness both in their talents and 
character, rather than by address or vivacity. 
u The social dignity which the English owe 
to their political constitution, places them at 
the head of Teutonic nations, but does not 
exempt them from the character of the race." 
The literature of the Latin nations is copied 
from the ancients, and retains the original 
colour of their polytheism: that of the na- 
tions of Germanic origin has a chivalrous 
basis, and is modified by a spiritual religion. 
The French and Germans are at the two ex- 
tremities of the chain; the French con- 
sidering outward objects, and the Germans 
thought and feeling, as the prime movers of 
the moral world. "The French, the most 
cultivated of Latin nations, inclines to a clas- 
sical poetry: the English, the most illustri- 
ous of Germanic ones, delights in a poetry 
more romantic and chivalrous." 

The theory which we have thus abridged 
is most ingenious, and exhibits in the live- 
liest form the distinction between different 
systems of literature and manners. It is 
partly true ; for the principle of race is 
doubtless one of the most important in the 
history of mankind ; and the first impressions 
on the susceptible character of rude tribes 
may be traced in the qualities of their most 
civilized descendants. But, considered as 
an exclusive and universal theory, it is not 
secure against the attacks of sceptical inge- 
nuity. The facts do not seem entirely to 
correspond with it. It was among the Latin 
nations of the South, that chivalry and ro- 
mance first flourished. Provence was the 
earliest seat of romantic poetry. A chival- 
rous literature predominated in Italy during 
the most brilliant period of Italian genius. 
The poetry of the Spanish peninsula seems 
to have been more romantic and less sub- 
jected to classical bondage than that of any 
other part of Europe. On the contrary, chi- 
valry, which was the refinement of the mid- 
dle age, penetrated more slowly into the 
countries of the North. In general, the 
character of the literature of each European 
nation seems extremely to depend upon the 
period at which it had reached its highest 



264 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



point of cultivation. Spanish and Italian 
poetry flourished while Europe was still chi- 
valrous. French literature attained its high- 
est splendour after the Grecian and Roman 
writers had become the object of universal 
reverence. The Germans cultivated their 
poetry a hundred years later, when the study 
of antiquity had revived the knowledge of 
the Gothic sentiments and principles. Na- 
ture produced a chivalrous poetry in the six- 
teenth century ; — learning in the eighteenth. 
Perhaps the history of English poetry reflects 
the revolution of European taste more dis- 
tinctly than that of any other nation. We 
have successively cultivated a Gothic poetry 
from nature, a classical poetry from imita- 
tion, and a second Gothic from the study of 
our own arfcient poets. 

To this consideration it must be added, 
that Catholic and Protestant nations must 
differ in their poetical system. The festal 
shows and legendary polytheism of the Ca- 
tholics had the effect of a sort of Christian 
Paganism. The Protestant poetry was spirit- 
ualized by the genius of their worship, and 
was undoubtedly exalted by the daily peru- 
sal of translations of the sublime poems of 
the Hebrews, — a discipline, without which it 
is probable that the nations of the West 
never could have been prepared to endure 
Oriental poetry. In justice, however, to the 
ingenious theory of Mad. de Stael, it ought 
to be observed, that the original character 
ascribed by her to the Northern nations, 
must have disposed them to the adoption of 
a Protestant faith and worship; while the 
Popery of the South was naturally preserved 
by an early disposition to a splendid ceremo- 
nial, and a various and flexible mythology. 

The work is divided into four parts: — on 
Germany and German Manners ; on Litera- 
ture and the Arts ; on Philosophy and Mo- 
rals: on Religion and Enthusiasm. 

The first is the most perfect in its kind, 
belongs the most entirely to the genius of 
the writer, and affords the best example of 
the talent for painting nations which we 
have attempted to describe. It seems also. 
as far as foreign critics can presume to de- 
cide, to be in the most finished style of any 
composition of the author, and more se- 
curely to bid defiance to that minute criti- 
cism, which, in other works, her genius 
rather disdained than propitiated. The Ger- 
mans are a just, constant, and sincere peo- 
ple ; with great power of imagination and 
reflection ; without brilliancy in society, or 
address in affairs; slow, and easily intimi- 
dated in action ; adventurous and fearless in 
speculation; often uniting enthusiasm for 
the elegant arts with little progress in the 
manners and refinements of life; more ca- 
pable of bein»- inflamed by opinions than by 
interests; obedient to authority, rather from 
an orderly and mechanical character than 
from servility ; having learned to value li- 
berty neither by the enjoyment of it. nor by 
severe oppression ; divested by the' nature 
of their governments, and the division of 



their territories, of patriotic pride : too prone 
in the relations of domestic life, to substitute 
fancy and feeling for positive duty ; not un- 
frequently combining a natural character 
with artilicial manners, and much real feel- 
ing with affected enthusiasm; divided by 
the sternness of feudal demarcation into an 
unlettered nobility, unpolished scholar, and a 
depressed commonalty; and exposing them- 
selves to derision, when, with their grave and 
clumsy honesty, they attempt to copy the 
lively and dexterous profligacy of their South- 
ern neighbours. 

In the plentiful provinces of Southern Ger- 
many', where religion, as well as government, 
shackle the activity of speculation, the peo- 
ple have sunk into a sort of lethargic comfort 
and stupid enjoyment. It is a heavy and 
monotonous country, with no arts, except the 
national art of instrumental music, — no lite- 
rature, — a rude utterance, — no society, or 
only crowded assemblies, which seemed to 
be brought together for ceremonial, more 
than for pleasure, — "an obsequious polite- 
ness towards an aristocracy without ele- 
gance." In Austria, more especially, are 
seen a calm and languid mediocrity in sensa- 
tions and desires, — a people mechanical in 
their very sports, " whose existence is neither 
disturbed nor exalted by guilt or genius, by 
intolerance or enthusiasm," — a phlegmatic 
administration, inflexibly adhering to its an- 
cient course, and repelling knowledge, on 
which the vigour of states must now depend, 
— great societies of amiable and respectable 
persons — which suggest the reflection, that 
" in retirement monotony composes the soul, 
but in the world it wearies the mind." 

In the rigorous climate and gloomy towns 
of Protestant Germany only, the national 
mind is displayed. There the whole litera- 
ture and philosophy are assembled. Berlin 
is slowly rising to be the capital of enlight- 
ened Germany. The Duchess of Weimar, 
who compelled Napoleon to respect her in 
the intoxication of victory, has changed her 
little capital into a seat of knowledge and 
elegance, under the auspices of Goethe, 
Wieland, and Schiller* No European pa- 
lace has assembled so refined a society since 
some of the small Italian courts of the six- 
teenth century. It is only by the Protestant 
provinces of the North that Germany is known 
as a lettered and philosophical country. 

Moralists and philosophers have often re- 
marked, that licentious gallantry is fatal to 
love, and destructive of the importance of 
women. "I will venture to assert," says 
Mad. de Stael, "against the received opinion, 
that France was perhaps, of all the countries 
of the world, that in which women had the 
least happiness in love. It was called the 
' paradise' of women, because they enjoyed 
the greatest liberty ; but that liberty arosel 
from the negligent profligacy of the other 
sex." The observations* which follow this 
remarkable testimony are so beautiful and 

* Part i. chap. 4. 



REVIEW OF DE L'ALLEMAGNE, 



265 



forcible, that they ought to be engraven on 
the mind of ever}' woman disposed to mur- 
mur at those restraints which maintain the 
dignity of womanhood. 

Some enthusiasm, says Mad. de Stael, or, 
in other words, some high passion, capable 
of actuating multitudes, has been felt by 
every people, at those epochs of their .na- 
tional existence, which are distinguished by 
great acts. Four periods are very remark- 
able in the progress of the European world : 
the heroic ages which founded civilization ; 
republican patriotism, which was the glory 
of antiquity; chivalry, the martial religion 
of Europe ; and the love of liberty, of which 
the history began about the period of the 
Reformation. The chivalrous impression is 
worn out in Germany; and, in future, says 
this generous and enlightened writer, <c no- 
thing great will be accomplished in that 
country, but by the liberal impulse which 
has in Europe succeeded to chivalry." 

The society and manners of Germany are 
continually illustrated by comparison or con- 
trast with those of France. Some passages 
and chapters on this subject, together with 
the author's brilliant preface to the thoughts 
of the Prince de Ligne, may be considered 
as the first contributions towards a theory of 
the talent — if we must not say of the art — 
of conversation, which affords so considerable 
a part of the most liberal enjoyments of re- 
fined life. Those, indeed, who affect a Spar- 
tan or monastic severity in their estimate of 
the society of capitals, may almost condemn 
a talent, which in their opinion only adorns 
vice. But that must have a moral tendency 
which raises society from slander or intoxi- 
cation, to any contest and rivalship of mental 
power. Wit and grace are perhaps the only 
means which could allure the thoughtless 
into the neighbourhood of reflection, and 
inspire them with some admiration for supe- 
riority of mind. Society is the only school 
in which the indolence of the great will 
submit to learn. Refined conversation is at 
least sprinkled with literature, and directed, 
more often than the talk of the vulgar, to 
objects of general interest. That talent can- 
not really be frivolous which affords the 
channel through which some knowledge, or 
even some respect for knowledge, may be in- 
sinuated into minds incapable of labour, and 
whose tastes so materially influence the com- 
munity. Satirical pictures of the vices of a 
great society create a vulgar prejudice against 
their most blameless and virtuous pleasures. 
But, whatever may be the vice of London or 
Paris, it is lessened, not increased, by the 
cultivation of every liberal talent which in- 
nocently fills their time, and tends, in some 
measure, to raise them above malice and sen- 
suality. And there is a considerable illusion 
in the provincial estimate of the immoralities 
of the capital. These immoralities are public, 
from the rank of the parties; and they are 
rendered more conspicuous by the celebrity, 
or perhaps by the talents, of some of them. 
Men of letters, and women of wit, describe 
34 



their own sufferings with eloquence, — the 
faults of others, and sometimes their own, 
with energy : their descriptions interest every 
reader, and are circulated throughout Eu- 
rope. But it does not follow that the mise- 
ries or the faults are greater or more frequent 
than those of obscure and vulgar persons, 
whose sufferings and vices are known to 
nobody, and would be uninteresting if they 
were known. 

The second, and most generally amusing, 
as well as the largest part of this work, is 
an animated skelch of the literary history 
of Germany, with criticisms on the most 
celebrated German poets and poems, inter- 
spersed with reflections equally original and 
beautiful, tending 1o cultivate a comprehen- 
sive taste in the fine arts, and to ingraft the 
love of virtue on the sense of beauty. Of the 
poems criticised, some are well known to 
most of our readers. The earlier pieces of 
Schiller are generally read in translations of 
various merit, though, except the Robbers, 
they are not by the present taste of Germanv 
placed in the first class of his works, luo 
versions of Leonora, of Oberon, of Wallen- 
stein, of Nathan, and of Iphigenia in Tauris, 
are among those which do the most honour 
to English literature. Goetz of Berlichingen 
has been vigorously rendered by a writer, 
whose chivalrous genius, exerted upon some- 
what similar scenes of British history, has 
since rendered him the most popular poet of 
his age. 

An epic poem, or a poetical romance, has 
lately been discovered in Germany, entitled 
'Niebelungen,' on the Destruction of the 
Burgundians by Attila; and it is believed, 
that at least some parts of it were composed 
not long after the event, though the whole 
did not assume its present shape till the 
completion of the vernacular languages about 
the beginning of the thirteenth century. Lu- 
ther's version of the Scriptures was an epoch 
in German literature. One of the innumera- 
ble blessings of the Reformation was tO' 
make reading popular by such translations, 
and to accustom the people to weekly at- 
tempts at some sort of argument or declama- 
tion in their native tongue. The vigorous 
mind of the great Reformer gave to his trans- 
lation an energy and conciseness, which made 
it a model in style, as well as an authority 
in language. Hagedorn, Weiss, and Gellert,, 
copied the French without vivacity; and 
Bodmer imitated the English without genius. 

At length' Klopstock, an imitator of Milton, 
formed a German poetry, and Wieland im- 
proved the language and versification; though 
this last accomplished writer has somewhat 
suffered in his reputation, by the recent zeal 
of the Germans against the imitation of any 
foreign, but especially of the French school, 
" The genius of Klopstock was inflamed by 
the perusal of Milton and Young." This 
combination of names is astonishing to an 
English ear. It creates a presumption against 
the poetical sensibility of Klopstock, to find 
that he combined two poets, placed at an 
2%. 



266 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



immeasurable distance from each other ; and 
whose whole superficial resemblance arises 
from some part of Milton's subject, and from 
the doctrines of their theology, rather than 
the spirit of their religion. Through all the 
works of You;;-;, written with such a variety 
of temper and manner, there predominates 
one talent ; — inexhaustible wit, with little 
sound,. son or depth of sensibility. 

His melancholy is artificial; and Ms combi- 
nations are as grotesque and fantastic in his 
Night Thoughts as in his Satires. How ex- 
actly docs a poet characterise his own talent, 
who opens a series of poetical meditations 
on death and immortality, by a satirical epi- 
gram against the selfishness of the world ! 
Wit and ingenuity are the only talents which 
Milton disdained. He is simple in his con- 
ceptions; even when his diction is overloaded 
with gorgeous learning. He is never gloomy 
but when he is grand. He is the painter of 
love, as well as of terror. He did not aim at 
mirth; but he is cheerful whenever he de- 
scends from higher feelings: and nothing 
tenus more to inspire a calm and constant 
delight, than the contemplation of that ideal 
purity and grandeur which he, above all 
poets, had the faculty of bestowing on every 
form of moral nature. Klopstock's ode on 
the rivalship of the muse of Germany with 
the muse of Albion, is elegantly translated 
by Mad. de Stael : and we applaud her taste 
for preferring prose to verse in French trans- 
lations of German poems. 

After having spoken of Winkelmann anil 
Lessing, the most perspicuous, concise, and 
lively of German prose-writers, she proceeds 
to Schiller and Goethe, the greatest of Ger- 
man poets. Schiller presents only the genius 
of a great poet, and the character of a vir- 
tuous man. The original, singular, and rather 
admirable than amiable mind of Goethe, — 
his dictatorial power over national literature, 
— his inequality, caprice, original ity, and fire 
in conversation, — his union of a youthful 
imagination with exhausted sensibility, and 
the impartiality of a stern sagacity, neither 
influenced by opinions nor predilections, are 
painted with extraordinary skill. 

Among the tragedies of Schiller which 
have appeared since we have ceased to trans- 
late German dramas, the most celebrated are, 
Mary Stuart, Joan of Arc, and William Tell. 
Such subjects as Mary Stuart generally ex- 
cite an expectation which cannot be grati- 
fied. We agree with Madame de Stael in 
admiring many scenes of Schiller's Mary, 
and especially her noble farew-ell to Leices- 
ter. But the tragedy would probably dis- 
please English readers, to say nothing of spec- 
tators. Our political disputes have given a 
more inflexible reality to the events of Eliza- 
beth's reign, than history would otherwise 
have bestowed on facts equally modern. 
Neither of our parties could endure a Mary 
who confesses the murder of her husband, or 
an Elizabeth who instigates the assassination 
of her prisoner. In William Tell. Schiller 
has avoided the commonplaces of a repub- 



lican conspiracy, and faithfully represented 
the indignation of an oppressed Helvetian 
Highlander. 

Egmont is considered by Mad. de Stael as 
the finest of Goethe's tragedies, written, like 
Werther, in the enthusiasm of his youth. It 
is rather singular that poets have availed 
themselves so little of the chivalrous charac- 
ter, the illustrious love, and the aw till mala- 
dy of Tasso. The Torquato Tasso ot Goethe 
is the only attempt to convert this subject to 
the purposes of the drama. Two men of ge- 
nius, of very modern times, have suffered in 
a somewhat similar manner: but the habits 
of Rousseau's life were vulgar, and the suf- 
ferings of Cowper are both recent and sacred. 
The scenes translated from Faust well repre- 
sent the terrible energy of that most odious 
of the works of genius, in which the whole 
power of imagination is employed to dispel 
the charms which poetry bestows on human 
life, — where the punishment of vice proceeds 
from cruelty without justice, and "where 
the remorse seems as infernal as the guilt." 

Since the death of Schiller, and the deser- 
tion of the drama by Goethe, several tragic 
writers have appeared, the most celebrated 
of whom are Werner, the author of Luther 
and of Attila, Gerstenberg, Klinger, Tieck, 
Collin, and Oehlenschlager, a Dane, who has 
introduced into his poetry the terrible my- 
thology of Scandinavia. 

The result of the chapter on Comedy 
seems to be, that the comic genius has not 
yet arisen in Germany. German novels have 
been more translated into English than other 
works of literature ; and a novel by Tieck, 
entitled 'Sternbald,' seems to deserve trans- 
lation. Jean Paul Richie r, a popular novel- 
ist, but too national to bear translation, said, 
" that the French had the empire of the land, 
the English that of the sea, and the Germans 
that of the air." 

Though Schiller wrote the History of the 
Belgic Revolt, and of the Thirty Years' War, 
with eloquence and the spirit of liberty, the 
only classical writer in this department is 
J. de M filler, the historian of Switzerland. 
Though born in a speculative age, he has 
chosen the picturesque and dramatic, manner 
of ancient historians : and his minute erudi- 
tion in the annals of the Middle Ages sup- 
plies his imagination with the particulars 
which characterise persons and actions. He 
abuses his extent of knowledge and power 
of detail ; he sometimes affects the seiiten- 
tiousness of Tacitus ; and his pursuit of 
antique phraseology occasionally degenerates 
into affectation. But his diction is in general 
grave and severe ; and in his posthumous 
Abridgment of Universal History, he has 
shown great talents for that difficult sort of 
composition, — the power of comprehensive 
outline, of compression without obscurity, of 
painting characters by few and grand strokes, 
and of disposing events so skilfully, that 
their causes and effects are seen without 
being pointed out. Like Sallust, another 
affecter of archaism, and declaimer against 



REVIEW OF DE L'ALLEMAGNE. 



267 



his age, his private and political life is said 
to have been repugnant to his historical mo- 
rality. "The reader of Miiller is desirous 
of believing that of all the virtues which he 
strongly felt in the composition of his works, 
there were at least some which he perma- 
nently possessed." 

The estimate of literary Germany would 
not be complete, without the observation that 
it possesses a greater number of laborious 
scholars, and of useful books, than any other 
country. The possession of other languages 
may open more literary enjoyment : the Ger- 
man is assuredly the key to most knowledge. 
The works of Fulleborn, Buhle. Tiedemann, 
and Tennemann, are the first attempts to 
form a philosophical history of philosophy, of 
which the learned compiler Brucker had no 
more conception than a monkish annalist of 
rivalling Hume. The philosophy of literary 
history is one of the most recently opened 
fields of speculation. A few beautiful frag- 
ments of it are among the happiest parts of 
Hume's Essays. The great work of Madame 
de Stael On Literature, was the first attempt 
on a bold and extensive scale. In the neigh- 
bourhood of her late residence,* and perhaps 
not uninfluenced by her spirit, two writers of 
great merit, though of dissimilar character, 
have very recently treated various parts of 
this wide subject; M. de Sismondi, in his 
History of the Literature of the South, and 
M. de Barante, in his Picture of French 
Literature during the Eighteenth Century. 
Sismondi, guided by Bouterweck and Schle- 
gel, hazards larger views, indulges his talent 
for speculation, and seems with difficulty to 
suppress that bolder spirit, and those more 
liberal principles, which breathe in his His- 
tory of the Italian Republics. Barante, more 
thoroughly imbued with the elegancies and 
the prejudices of his national literature, feels 
more delicately the peculiarities of great 
writers, and traces with a more refined saga- 
city the immediate effects of their writings. 
But his work, under a very ingenious dis- 
guise of literary criticism, is an attack on the 
opinions of the eighteenth century: and it 
will assuredly never be honoured by the dis- 
pleasure either of Napoleon, or of any of his 
successors in absolute power. 

One of our authoress' chapters is chiefly 
employed on the works and system of Wil- 
liam and Frederic Schlegel ; — of whom Wil- 
liam is celebrated for his Lectures on Dra- 
matic Poetry, for his admirable translation 
of Shakespeare, and for versions, said to be 
of equal excellence, of the Spanish dramatic 
poets ; and Frederic, besides his other merits, 
has the very singular distinction of having 
acquired the Sanscrit language, and studied 
the Indian learning and science in Europe, 
chiefly by the aid of a British Orientalist, 
long detained as a prisoner at Paris. The 
general tendency of the literary system of 
these critics, is towards the manners, poetry, 
and religion of the Middle Ages. They have 

* Coppet, near Geneva. 



reached the extreme point towards which 
the general sentiment of Europe has been 
impelled by the calamities of a philosophical 
revolution, and the various fortunes of a 
twenty years' universal war. They are pe- 
culiarly adverse to French literature) which, 
since the age of Louis XIV., has, in their 
opinion, weakened the primitive principles 
common to all Christendom, as well as di- 
vested the poetry of each people of its origi- 
nality and character. Their system is exag- 
gerated and exclusive : in pursuit of national 
originality, they lose sight of the primary and 
universal beauties of art. The imitation of 
our own antiquities may be as artificial as 
the copy of a foreign literature. Nothing is 
less natural than a modern antique. In a 
comprehensive system of literature, there is 
sufficient place for the irregular works of 
sublime genius, and for the faultless models 
of classical taste. From age to age, the 
multitude fluctuates between various and 
sometimes opposite fashions of literary ac- 
tivity. These are not all of equal value ; but 
the philosophical critic discovers and admires 
the common principles of beauty, from which 
they all derive their power over human 
nature. 

The Third Part of this work is the most 
singular. An account of metaphysical sys- 
tems by a woman, is a novelty in the history 
of the human mind ; and whatever may be 
thought of its success in some of its parts, it 
must be regarded on the whole as the boldest 
effort of the female intellect. It must, how- 
ever, not be forgotten, that it is a contribution 
rather to the history of human nature, than 
to that of speculation ; and that it considers 
the source, spirit, and moral influence of 
metaphysical opinions, more than their truth 
or falsehood. "Metaphysics are at least 
the gymnastics of the understanding." The 
common-place clamour of mediocrity will 
naturally be excited by the sex, and even 
by the genius of the author. Every example 
of vivacity and grace, every exertion of fancy, 
every display of eloquence, every effusion 
of sensibility, will be cited as a presumption 
against the depth of her researches, and the 
accuracy of her statements. On such prin- 
ciples, the evidence against her would doubt- 
less be conclusive. But dulncss is not 
accuracy; nor are ingenious and elegant 
writers therefore superficial : and those who 
are best acquainted with the philosophical 
revolutions of Germany, will be most aston- 
ished at the general correctness of this short, 
clear, and agreeable exposition. 

The character of Lord Bacon is a just and 
noble tribute to his genius. Several eminent 
writers of the Continent have, however, 
lately fallen into the mistake of ascribing 
to him a system of opinions respecting the 
origin and first principles of human know- 
ledge. What distinguishes him among great 
philosophers is, that he taught no peculiar 
opinions, but wholly devoted himself to the 
improvement of the method of philosophising. 
He belongs neither to the English nor any 



268 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



other school of metaphysics ; for he was not 
a metaphysician. Mr. Locke was not a 
moralist ; and his collateral discussions of 
ethical subjects are not among the valuable 
parts of his great work. ' ; The works of 
Dugald Stewart contain so perfect a theory 
of the intellectual faculties, that it may be 
considered as the natural history of a moral 
being." The French metaphysicians of the 
eighteenth century, since Condillac, deserve 
the contempt expressed for them, by their 
shallow, precipitate, and degrading misap- 
plications of the Lockian philosophy. It is 
impossible to abridge the abridgment here 
given of the Kantian philosophy, or of those 
systems which have arisen from it. and 
which continue to dispute the supremacy of 
the speculative world. The opinions of Kant 
are more fully stated, because he has changed 
the general manner of thinking, and has given 
a new direction to the national mind. Those 
of Fichte, Schelling, and his other successors, 
it is of less importance to the proper purpose 
of this work to detail ; because, though their 
doctrines be new, they continue and produce 
the same effect on national character, and 
the same influence on sciences and arts. 
The manner of philosophising remains the 
same in the Idealism of Fichte, and in the 
Pantheism of Schelling. Under various names 
and forms, it is the general tendency of the 
German philosophy to consider thought not 
as the produce of objects, or as one of the 
classes of phenomena, but as the agent which 
exhibits the appearance of the outward world, 
and which regulates those operations which 
it seems only to represent. The philosophy 
of the human understanding is, in all coun- 
tries, acknowledged to contain the principles 
of all sciences; but in Germany, metaphysi- 
cal speculation pervades their application to 
particulars. 

The subject of the Fouith Part is the state 
of religion, and the nature of all those disin- 
terested and exalted sentiments which are 
here comprehended under the name of ( en- 
thusiasm.' A contemplative people like the 
Germans have in their character the principle 
which disposes men to religion. The Re- 
formation, which was their Revolution, arose 
from ideas. " Of all the great men whom 
Germany has produced, Luther has the most 
German character. His firmness had some- 
thing rude; his conviction made him opinion- 
ated : intellectual boldness was the source 
of his courage; in action, the ardour of his 
passions did not divert him from abstract 
studies; and though He allocked certain dog- 
mas and practices, he was not urged to the 
attack by incredulity, but by enthusiasm." 

' ; The right of examining what we ought 
to believe, is the foundation of Prote'stanismt." 
Though each of the first Reformers esta- 
blished a practical Popery in his own church, 
opinions were gradually liberalised, and the 
temper of sects was softened. Little open 
iiuivdulity had appeared in Germany; and 
even Lessing speculated with far more cir- 
cumspection than had been observed by a 



series of English writers from Hobbes to 
Bolingbroke. Secret unbelievers were friend- 
ly to Christianity and Protestantism,as institu- 
tions beneficial to mankind, and far removed 
from that anti-religious fanaticism which was 
more naturally provoked in France by the 
intolerant spirit and invidious splendour of a 
Catholic hierarchy. 

The reaction of the French Revolution has 
been felt throughout Europe, in religion as 
well as in politics. Many of the higher 
classes adopted some portion of those religi- 
ous sentiments of which they at first assumed 
the exterior, as a badge of their hostility to 
the fashions of France. The sensibility of 
the multitude, impatient of cold dogmatism 
and morality, eagerly sought to be once more 
roused by a religion which employed popular 
eloquence, and spoke to imagination and 
emotion. The gloom of general convulsions 
and calamities created a disposition to seri- 
ousness, and to the consolations of piety ; and 
the disasters of a revolution allied to incredu- 
lity, threw a more than usual discredit and 
odium on irreligious opinions. In Great 
Britain, these causes have acted most con- 
spicuously on the inferior classes; though 
they have also powerfully affected many en- 
lightened and accomplished individuals of a 
higher condition. In France, they have pro- 
duced in some men of letters the play of a 
sort of poetical religion round the fancy : but 
the general effect seems to have been a dis- 
position to establish a double doctrine, — a 
system of infidelity for the initiated, with a 
contemptuous indulgence and even active 
encouragement of superstition among the 
vulgar, like that which prevailed among the 
ancients before the rise of Christianity. This 
sentiment (from the revival of which the 
Lutheran Reformation seems to have pre- 
served Europe), though not so furious and 
frantic as the atheistical fanaticism of the 
Reign of Terror, is, beyond any permanent 
condition of human society, destructive of 
ingenuousness, good faith, and probity, — of 
intellectual courage, and manly character, — 
and of that respect for all human beings, 
without which there can be no justice or 
humanity from the powerful towards the 
humble. 

In Germany the effects have been also very 
remarkable. Some men of eminence in lite- 
rature have become Catholics. In general, 
their tendency is towards a pious mysticism, 
which almost equally loves every sect where 
a devotional spirit prevails. They have re- 
turned rather to sentiment than to dog-ma, — 
more to religion than to theology. Their 
disposition to religious feeling, which they 
call ' religiosity,' is. to use the words of a 
strictly orthodox English theologian, "a love 
of divine things for the beauty of their moral 
qualities." It is the love of the good and 
fair, wherever it exists, but chiefly when ab- 
solute and boundless excellence is contem- 
plated in " the first good, first perfect, first 
fair." This moral enthusiasm easily adapts 
itself to the various ceremonies of worship, 



REVIEW OF DE L'ALLEMAGNE. 



269 



and even systems of opinion prevalent among 
mankind. The devotional spirit, contemplat- 
ing different parts of the order of nature, or 
influenced by a different temper of mind, 
may give rise to very different and apparently 
repugnant theological doctrines. These doc- 
trines are considered as modifications of 
human nature, under the influence of the re- 
ligious principle, — not as propositions which 
argument can either establish or confute, or 
reconcile with each other. The Ideal phi- 
losophy favours this singular manner of con- 
sidering the subject. As it leaves no reality 
but in the mind, it lessens the distance be- 
tween belief and imagination; and disposes 
its adherents to regard opinions as the mere 
play of the understanding, — incapable of 
being measured by any outward standard, 
and important chiefly from reference to the 
sentiment, from which they spring, and on 
which they powerfully react. The union of 
a mystical piety, with a philosophy verging 
towards idealism, has accordingly been ob- 
served in periods of the history of the human 
understanding, very distant from each other, 
and, in most of their other circumstances, 
extremely dissimilar. -The same language, 
respecting the annihilation of self, and of the 
world, may be used by the sceptic and by 
the enthusiast. Among the Hindu philoso- 
phers in the most ancient times, — among the 
Sufis in modern Persia, — during the ferment 
of Eastern and Western opinions, which pro- 
duced the latter Platonism, — -in Malebranche 
and his English disciple Norris, — and in 
Berkeley himself, though in a tempered and 
mitigated state, — the tendency to this union 
may be distinctly traced.- It seems, how- 
ever, to be fitted only for few men ; and for 
them not long. Sentiments so sublime, and 
so distant from the vidgar affairs and boister- 
ous passions of men, may be preserved for a 
time, in the calm solitude of a contemplative 
visionary ; but in the bustle of the world 
they are likely soon to evaporate, when they 
are neither embodied in opinions, nor adorned 
by ceremonies, nor animated by the attack 
and defence of controversy. When the ar- 
dour of a short-lived enthusiasm has subsided, 
the poetical philosophy which exalted fancy 
to the level of belief, may probably leave the 
same ultimate result with the argumentative 
scepticism which lowered belief to the level 
of fancy. 

An ardent susceptibility of every disinte- 
rested sentiment, — more especially of every 
social affection, — blended by the power of 
imagination with a passionate love of the 
beautiful, the grand, and the good, is, under 
the name of : enthusiasm,' the subject of the 
conclusion, — the most eloquent part (if we 
perhaps except the incomparable chapter on 
' Conjugal Love,) of a work which, for variety 
of knowledge, flexibility of power, elevation 
of view, and comprehension of mind, is un- 
equal among the works of women; and 
which, in the union of the graces of society 
and literature with the genius of philosophy, 
•6 not surpassed by many among' those of 



men. To affect any tenderness in pointing 
out its defects or faults, would be an absurd 
assumption of superiority : it has no need 
of mercy. The most obvious and general 
objection will be, that the Germans are too 
much praised. But every writer must be 
allowed to value his subject somewhat higher 
than the spectator : unless the German feel- 
ings had been adopted, they could not have 
been forcibly represented. It will also be 
found, that the objection is more apparent 
than real. Mad. de Stael is indeed the most 
generous of critics: but she almost always 
speaks the whole truth to intelligent ears ; 
though she often hints the unfavourable parts 
of it so gently and politely, that they may 
escape the notice of a hasty reader, and be 
scarcely perceived by a gross understanding. 
A careful reader, who brings together all 
the observations intentionally scattered over 
various parts of the book, will find sufficient 
justice (though administered in mercy) in 
whatever respects manners or literature. It 
is on subjects of philosophy that the admi- 
ration will perhaps justly be considered as 
more undistinguishing. Something of the 
wonder excited by novelty in language and 
opinion still influences her mind. Many 
writers have acquired philosophical celebrity 
in Germany, who, if they had written with 
equal power, would have been unnoticed or 
soon forgotten in England. Ourtheosophists, 
the Hutchinsonians, had as many men of 
talent among them, as those whom M. de 
Stael has honoured by her mention among 
the Germans : but they have long since irre- 
coverably sunk into oblivion. There is a 
writer now alive in England,* who has pub- 
lished doctrines not dissimilar to those which 
Mad. de Stael ascribes to Schelling. Not- 
withstanding the allurements of a singular 
character, and an unintelligible style, his 
paradoxes are probably not known to a dozen 
persons in this busy country of industry and 
ambition. In a bigoted age, he might have 
suffered the martyrdom of Vanini or Bruno : 
in a metaphysical country, where a new 
publication was the most interesting event, 
and where twenty universities, unfettered 
by Church or State, were hotbeds of specu- 
lation, he might have acquired celebrity as 
the founder of a sect. 

In this as in the other writings of Mad. de 
Stael, the reader (or at least the lazy English 
reader) is apt to be wearied by too constant 
a demand upon his admiration. It seems 
to be part of her literary system, that the 
pauses of eloquence must be filled up by 
ingenuity. Nothing plain and unornamented 
is left in composition. But we desire a plain 
groundwork, from which wit or eloquence is 
to arise, when the occasion calls them forth. 
The effect would be often greater if the ta 
lent were less. The natural power of inte- 
resting scenes or events over the heart, is 
somewhat disturbed by too uniform a colour 

* Probably Mr. William Taylor, of Norwich. 
—Ed. 

x2 



270 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



of sentiment, and by the constant pursuit of 
uncommon reflections or ingenious turns. 
The eye is dazzled by unvaried brilliancy. 
We long for the grateful vicissitude of repose. 

In the statement of facts and reasonings, 
no style is more clear than that of Mad. de 
Stael ; — what is so lively must indeed be 
clear: bnt i^i the expression of sentiment 
she has been often thought to use vague lan- 
guage. In expressing either intense degrees, 
or delicate shades, or intricate combinations 
of feeling, the common reader will seldom 
understand that of which he has never been 
conscious : and the writer placed on the ex- 
treme frontiers of human nature, is in dan- 
ger of mistaking chimeras for realities, or of 
failing in a struggle to express what language 
does not afford the means of describing. 
There is also a vagueness incident to the 
language of feeling, which is not so properly 
a defect, as a quality which distinguishes it 
from the language of thought. Very often 
in poetry, and sometimes in eloquence, it is 
the office of words, not so much to denote a 
succession of separate ideas, as, like musical 
sounds, to inspire a series of emotions, or to 
produce a durable tone of sentiment. The 
terms 'perspicuity' and 'precision,' which 
denote the relations of language to intellec- 
tual discernment, are inapplicable to it when 
employed as the mere vehicle of a succes- 
sion of feelings. A series of words may, in 
this manner, be very expressive, where few 
of them singly convey a precise meaning: 
and men of greater intellect than suscepti- 
bility, in such passages as those of Mad. de 
Stael, — where eloquence is employed chiefly 
to inspire feeling, — unjustly charge their own 
defects to that deep, moral, and poetical sen- 
sibility with which they are unable to sym- 
pathise. 

The few persons in Great Britain who 
continue to take an interest in speculative 
philosophy, will certainly complain of some 
injustice in her estimate of German meta- 
physical system*. The moral painter of 
nations is indeed more authorised than the 
speculative philosopher to try these opinions 
by their tendencies and results. When the 
logical consequences of an opinion are false, 
the opinion itself must also be false : but 
whether the supposed pernicious influence 
of the adoption, or habitual contemplation 
of an opinion, be a legitimate objection to 
the opinion itself, is a question which has 
not yet been decided to the general satis- 
faction, nor perhaps even stated with suffi- 
cient precision. 

There are certain facts in human nature, 
derived either from immediate consciousness 
or unvarying observation, which are more 
certain than the conclusions of any abstract 
reasoning, and which metaphysical theories 
are destined only to explain. That a theory 



is at variance with such facts, and logically 
leads to the denial of their existence, is a 
strictly philosophical objection to the theory: 
— that there is a real distinction between 
right and wrong, in some measure appre- 
hended and felt by all men, — that moral 
sentiments and disinterested affections, how- 
ever originating, are actually a part of our 
nature. — that praise and blame, reward and 
punishment, may be properly bestowed on 
actions according to their moral character, — 
are principles as much more indubitable as 
they are more important than any theoretical 
conclusions. Whether they be demonstrated 
by reason, or perceived by intuition, or re- 
vealed by a primitive sentiment, they are 
equally indispensable parts of every sound 
mind. But the mere inconvenience or dan- 
ger of an opinion can never be allowed as 
an argument against its truth. It is indeed 
the duty of every good man to present to 
the public what he believes to be truth, in 
such a manner as may least wound the feel- 
ings, or disturb the principles of the simple 
and the ignorant : and that duty is not always 
easily reconcilable with the duties of sincer- 
ity and free inquiry. The collision of such 
conflicting duties is the painful and inevitable 
consequence of the ignorance of the mul- 
titude, and of the immature state, even in 
the highest minds, of the great talent for 
presenting truth under all its aspects, and 
adapting it to all the degrees of capacity or 
varieties of prejudice which distinguish men. 
That talent must one day be formed ; and 
we may be perfectly assured that the whole 
of truth can never be injurious to the whole 
of virtue. In the mean time philosophers 
would act more magnanimously, and there- 
fore, perhaps, more wisely, if they were to 
suspend, during discussion,* their moral 
anger against doctrines which they deem 
pernicious ; and, while they estimate actions, 
habits, and institutions, by their tendency, 
to weigh opinions in the mere balance of 
reason. Virtue in action may require the 
impulse of sentiment, and even of enthu- 
siasm : but in theoretical researches, her 
champions must not appear to decline the 
combat on any ground chosen by their ad- 
A'ersaries. and least of all on that of intellect. 
To call in the aid of popular feelings in 
philosophical contests, is some avowal of 
weakness. It seems a more magnanimous- 
wisdom to defy attack from every quarter, 
and by every weapon; and to use no topics 
which can be thought to imply an unworthy 
doubt whether the principles of virtue be 
impregnable by argument, or to betray an 
irreverent distrust of the final and perfect 
harmony between morality and truth. 

* The observation may be applied to Ciceio and 
Stewart, as well as to Mad. de. Stael. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



271 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES 



THE KEVOLUTION OF 1688. 



CHAPTER I. 

General state of affairs at home — Abroad. — 
Characters of the Ministry. — Sunderland. — 
Rocfiestcr. — Halifax. — Godolphin. — Jef- 
freys. — Feversham. — His conduct after the 
victory of Sedgemoor. — Kirke. — Judicial 
proceedings in the West. — Trials of Mrs. 
Lisle. — Behaviour of the King. — Trial of 
Mrs. Gaunt and others. — Case of Hampden. 
— Prideaux. — Lord Brandon. — Delamere. 

Though a struggle with calamity strength- 
ens and elevates the mind, the necessity of 
passive submission to long adversity is rather 
likely to weaken and subdue it : great mis- 
fortunes disturb the understanding perhaps 
as much as great success ; and extraordinary 
vicissitudes often produce the opposite vices 
of rashness and tearfulness by inspiring a 
disposition to trust too much to fortune, and 
to yield to it too soon. Few men experienced 
more sudden changes of fortune than James 
II. ; but it was unfortunate for his character 
that he never owed his prosperity, and not 
always his adversity, to himself. The affairs 
of his family seemed to be at the lowest ebb 
a few months before their triumphant restora- 
tion. Four years before the death of his 
brother, it appeared probable that he would 
be excluded from the succession to the 
crown; and his friends seemed to have no 
other means of averting that doom, than by 
proposing such limitations of the royal pre- 
rogative as would have reduced the govern- 
ment to a merely nominal monarchy. But 
the dissolution by which Charles had safely 
and successfully punished the independence 
of his last Parliament, the destruction of some 
of his most formidable opponents, and the 
general discouragement of their adherents, 
paved the way for his peaceable, and even 
popular, succession ; the defeat of the revolts 
of Monmouth and Argyle appeared to have 
fixed his throne on immovable foundations ; 
and he was then placed in circumstances 
more favourable than those of any of his 
predecessors to the extension of his power, 
or, if such had been his purpose, to the un- 
disturbed exercise of his constitutional autho- 
rity. The friends of liberty, dispirited by 
events which all, in a greater or less degree, 
brought discredit upon their cause, were 



confounded with unsuccessful conspirators 
and defeated rebels : they seemed to be at 
the mercy of a prince, who, with reason, 
considered them as the irreconcilable ene- 
mies of his designs. The zealous partisans 
of monarchy believed themselves on the eve 
of reaping the fruits of a contest of fifty 
years' duration, under a monarch of mature 
experience, of tried personal courage, who 
possessed a knowledge of men, and a capa- 
city as well as an inclination for business ; 
whose constancy, intrepidity, and sternness 
were likely to establish their political prin- 
ciples ; and from whose prudence, as well as 
gratitude and good faith, they were willing 
to hope that he would not disturb the secu- 
rity of their religion. The turbulence of the 
preceding times had more than usually dis- 
posed men of pacific temper to support an 
established government. The multitude, 
pleased with a new reign, generally disposed 
to admire vigour and to look with compla- 
cency on success, showed many symptoms 
of that propensity which is natural to them, 
or rather to mankind, — to carry their ap- 
plauses to the side of fortune, and to imbibe 
the warmest passions of a victorious party. 
The strength of the Tories in a Parliament 
assembled in such a temper of the nation, 
was aided by a numerous reinforcement of 
members of low condition and subservient 
character, whom the forfeiture of the char- 
ters of towns enabled the Court to pour into 
the House of Commons.* In Scotland the 
prevalent party had ruled with such barba- 
rity that the absolute power of the King- 
seemed to be their only shield against the 
resentment of their countrymen. The Irish 
nation, devotedly attached to a sovereign of 
their own oppressed religion, offered inex- 
haustible means of forming a brave and en- 
thusiastic army, ready to quell revolts in 
every part of his dominions. His revenue 
was ampler than that of any former King of 
England : a disciplined army of about twenty 
thousand men was, for the first time, esta- 

* " Clerks and gentlemen's servants." Evelyn, 
Memoirs, vol. i. p. 558. The Earl of Bath carried 
fifteen of the new charters with him into Corn- 
wall, from which he was called the " Prince Elec- 
tor." "There are not 135 in this House who sat 
in the last." p. 562. By the lists in the Parlia 
mentary History they appear to be only 128. 



272 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



blished during peace in this island ; and a 
formidable fleet was a more than ordinarily 
powerful weapon in the hands of a prince 
whose skill and valour in maritime war had 
endeared him to the seamen, and recom- 
mended him to the people. 

The condition of foreign affairs was equally 
favourable to the King. Louis XIV. had ; at 
that moment, reached the zenith of his great- 
ness; his army was larger and better than 
any which had been known in Europe since 
the vigorous age of the Roman empire: h ; s 
marine enabled him soon after to cope with 
the combined forces of the only two mari- 
time powers: he had enlarged his dominions, 
strengthened his frontiers, and daily medita- 
ted new conquests : men of genius applauded 
his munificence, and even some men of virtue 
contributed to the glory of his reign. This 
potent monarch was bound to James by closer 
ties than those of treaty, — by kindred, by 
religion, by similar principles of government, 
by the importance of each to the success of 
the designs of the other; and he was ready 
to supply the pecuniary aid required by the 
English monarch, on condition that James 
should not subject himself to the control of 
his Parliament, but should acquiesce in the 
schemes of France against her neighbours. 
On the other hand, the feeble Government 
of Spain was no longer able to defend her 
unwieldy empire ; while the German branch 
of the Austrian family had, by their intole- 
rance, driven Hungary into revolt, and thus 
opened the way for the Ottoman armies twice 
to besiege Vienna. Venice, the last of the 
Italian states which retained a national cha- 
racter, took no longer any part in the contests 
of Europe, content with the feeble lustre 
which conquests from Turkey shed over the 
evening of her greatness. The kingdoms of 
the North were confined within their own 
subordinate system : Russia was not num- 
bered among civilized nations : and the Ger- 
manic states were still divided between their 
fears from the ambition of France, and their 
attachment to her for having preserved them 
from the yoke of Austria. Though a power- 
ful party in Holland was still attached to 
Fiance, there remained, on the Continent, no 
security against the ambition of Louis, — no 
hope for the liberties of mankind but the 
power of that great republic, animated by 
the unconquerable soul of the Prince of 
Orange. All those nations, of both religions, 
who trembled at the progress of France, 
turned their eyes towards James, and courted 
his alliance, in hopes that he might still be 
detached from his connection with Louis, 
and that England might resume her ancient 
and noble station, as the guardian of the 
independence of nations. Could he have 
varied his policy, that bright career was still 
open to him : he, or rather a man of genius 
i lagnanimity in his situation, might have 
rivalled the renown of Elizabeth, and anti- 
cipated the glories of Marlborough. He was 
courted or dreaded by all Europe. Who 
could, then, have presumed to foretell that 



this great monarch, in the short space of four 
years, would be compelled to relinquish his 
throne, and to fly from his country, without 
Btruggle and almost without disturbance, by 
the mere result of his own system of mea- 
sures, which, unwise and unrighteous as it 
was, seemed in every instance to be crowned 
with success till the very moment of its over- 
throw. 

The ability of his ministers might have 
been considered as among the happy parts 
of his fortune. It was a little before this 
time that the meetings of such ministers be- 
gan to be generally known by the modern 
name of the "Cabinet Council."* The 
Privy Council had been originally a selection 
of a similar nature; but when seats in that 
body began to be given or left to those who 
did not enjoy the King's confidence, and it 
became too numerous for secrecy or des- 
patch, a committee of its number, which is 
now called the " Cabinet Council," was in- 
trusted with the direction of confidential 
affairs ; leaving to the body at large business 
of a judicial or formal nature, — to the greater 
part of its members an honourable distinc- 
tion instead of an office of trust. The mem- 
bers of the Cabinet Council were then, as 
they still are, chosen from the Privy Council 
by the King, without any legal nomination, 
and generally consisted of the ministers at 
the head of the principal departments of 
public affairs. A short account of the cha- 
racter of the members of the Cabinet will 
illustrate the events of the reign of James II. 

Robert Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, who 
soon acquired the chief ascendancy in this 
administration, entered on public life with 
all the external advantages of birth and for- 
tune. His father had fallen in the royal 
army at the battle of Newbury, with those 
melancholy forebodings of danger from the 
victory of his own party which filled the 
breasts of the more generous royalists, and 
which, on the same occasion, saddened the 
dying moments of Lord Falkland. His mo- 
ther was Lady Dorothy Sidney, celebrated 
by Waller under the name of Sacharissa. He 
was early employed in diplomatic missions, 
where he acquired the political knowledge, 
insinuating address, and polished manners, 
which are learnt in that school, together 
with the subtilty, dissimulation, flexibility of 
principle, indifference on questions of con- 
stitutional policy, and impatience of the re- 
straints of popular government, which have 
been sometimes contracted by English am- 
bassadors in the course of a long intercourse 
with the ministers of absolute princes. A 
faint and superficial preference of the gene- 
ral principles of civil liberty was blended in 
a manner not altogether unusual with his 
diplomatic vices. He seems to have secured 
the support of the Duchess of Portsmouth to 
the administration formed by the advice of 
Sir William Temple, and to have then also 

* North, Life of Lord Keeper Guildford, p. 
218. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



273 



gained for himself the confidence of that in- 
comparable person, who possessed all the 
honest arts of a negotiator.* He gave an 
early earnest of the inconstancy of an over- 
refined character by fluctuating between the 
exclusion of the Duke of York and the limi- 
tations of the royal prerogative. He was 
removed from his administration for his vote 
on the Exclusion Bill ; but the love of office 
soon prevailed over his feeble spirit of inde- 
pendence, and he made his peace with the 
Court through the Duke of York, who had 
long been well disposed to him,t and of the 
Duchess of Portsmouth, who found no diffi- 
culty in reconciling to a polished as well as 
pliant courtier, an accomplished negotiator, 
and a minister more versed in foreign affairs 
than any of his colleagues. \ Negligence and 
profusion bound him to office by stronger 
though coarser ties than those of ambition : 
he lived in an age when a delicate purity in 
pecuniary matters had not begun to have a 
general influence on statesmen, and when a 
sense of personal honour, growing out of long 
habits of co-operation and friendship, had not 
yet contributed to secure them against politi- 
cal i n constancy . He was one of the most dis- 
tinguished of a species of men who perform 
a part more important than noble in great 
events; who, by powerful talents, captiva- 
ting manners, and accommodating opinions, 
— by a quick discernment of critical mo- 
ments in the rise and fall of parties, — by not 
deserting a cause till the instant before it is 
universally discovered to be desperate, and 
by a command of expedients and connec- 
tions which render them valuable to every 
new possessor of power, find means to cling 
to office or to recover it, and who, though 
they are the natural offspring of quiet and 
refinement, often creep through stormy revo- 
lutions without being crushed. Like the 
best and most prudent of his class, he ap- 
pears not to have betrayed the secrets of the 
friends whom he abandoned, and never to 
•have complied with more evil than was 
necessary to keep his power. His temper 
was without rancour ; and he must be acquit- 
ted of prompting, or even preferring the 
cruel acts which were perpetrated under his 
administration. Deep designs and premedi- 
tated treachery were irreconcilable both with 
his indolence and his impetuosity ; and there 
is some reason to believe, that in the midst 
of total indifference about religious opinions, 
he retained to the end some degree of that 
preference for civil liberty which he might 
have derived from the example of his ances- 
tors, and the sentiments of some of his early 
connections. 



* Temple, Memoirs, &c. part iii. 

+ " Lord Sunderland knows I have always been 
very kind to him." — Duke of York to Mr. Leg^e, 
23d July, 1679. Legge MSS. 

\ Some of Lord Sunderland's competitors in 
this province were not formidable. His successor. 
Lord Conway, when a foreign minister spoke to 
him of the Circles of the Empire, said, " he won- 
dered what circles should have to do with politics." 
35 



Lawrence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, the 
younger son of the Earl of Clarendon, was 
Lord Sunderland's most formidable competi- 
tor for the chief direction of public affairs. 
He owed this importance rather to his posi- 
tion and connections than to his abilities, 
which, however, were by no means con- 
temptible. He was the undisputed leader 
of the Tory party, to whose highest princi- 
ples in Church and State he showed a con- 
stant, and probably a conscientious attach- 
ment. He had adhered to James in every 
variety of fortune, and was the uncle of the 
Princesses Mary and Anne, who seemed like- 
ly in succession to inherit the crown. He was 
a fluent speaker, and appears to have pos- 
sessed some part of his father's talents as a 
writer. He was deemed sincere and upright; 
and his private life was not stained by any 
vice, except violent paroxysms of anger, 
and an excessive indulgence in wine, then 
scarcely deemed a fault. li His infirmities," 
says one of the most zealous adherents of 
his party, '• were passion, in which he would 
swear like a cutter, and the indulging him- 
self in wine. But his party was that of the 
Church of England, of whom he had the 
honour, for many years, to be accounted the 
head."* The impetuosity of his temper 
concurred with his opinions on government 
in prompting him to rigorous measures. He 
disdained the forms and details of business; 
and it was his maxim to prefer only Tories, 
without regard to their qualifications for 
office. ' ; Do you not think," said he to Lord 
Keeper Guildford, " that I could understand 
any business in England in a month'?" 
"Yes, .wy lord," answered the Lord Keeper, 
'•'• but I believe you would understand it bet- 
ter in two months." Even his personal de- 
fects and unreasonable maxims were calcu- 
lated to attach adherents to him as a chief; 
and he was well qualified to be the leader 
of a party ready to support all the pretensions 
of any king who spared the Protestant esta- 
blishment. 

Sir George Saville, created Marquis of 
Halifax by Charles II., claims the attention 
of the historian rather by his brilliant genius, 
by the singularity of his character, and by 
the great part which he acted in the events 
which preceded and followed, than by his 
political importance during the short period 
in which he held office uhder James. In his 
youth he appears to have combined the 
opinions of a republican!" with the most re- 
fined talents of a polished courtier. The 
fragments of his writings which remain show- 
such poignant and easy wit, such lively 
sense, so much insight info character, and 
so delicate an observation of manners, as 
could hardly have been surpassed by any of 
his contemporaries at Versailles. His politi- 
cal speculations being soon found incapable 



* North, p. 230. 

t " I have long looked upon Lord Halifax and 
Lord Essex as men who did not love monarchy, 
such as it is in England." — Duke of York to Mr. 
Legge, supra. 



274 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



of being reduced to practice, melted away 
in the royal favour: the disappointment of 
visionary hopes led him to despair of great 
improvements, to despise the moderate ser- 
vices which an individual may render to the 
community, and to turn with disgust from 
public principles to the 'indulgence of his 
own vanity ami ambition. The dread of his 
powers of ridicule contributed to force him 
into office,* and the attractions of his lively 
ami somewhat libertine conversation were 
amonii the means by which he maintained 
his ground with Charles II.; of whom it was 
said by Dryden, thai ■•whatever his favour- 
ites of stale mighi be, yet those of his af- 
fection were men of wit."t Though we 
have no remains of his speeches, we cannot 
doubt the eloquence of him who, on the Ex- 
clusion Bill, fought the battle of the Court 
against so great an orator as Shaftesbury. t 
Of these various means of advancement, he 
availed himself for a time with little scruple 
and with some success. But he never ob- 
tained an importance which bore any pro- 
portion to his great abilities; — a failure 
which, in the time of Charles II., may be in 
part ascribed to the remains of his opinions, 
but which, from its subsequent recurrence, 
must be still more imputed to the defects of 
his character. He had a stronger passion for 
praise than for power, and loved the display 
of talent more than the possession of autho- 
rity. The unbridled exercise of wit exposed 
him to lasting animosities, and threw a shade 
of levity over his character. He was too 
acute in discovering difficulties, — too inge- 
nious in devising objections. He had too 
keen a perception of human weakness and 
folly not to find many pretexts and tempta- 
tions for changing his measures, and desert- 
ing his connections. The subtilty of his 
genius tempted him to projects too refined 
to be understood or supported by numerous 
bodies of men. His appetite for praise, 
when sated by the admiration of his friends, 
was too apt to seek a new and more stimu- 
lating gratification in the applauses of his 
opponents. His weaknesses and even his 
talents contributed to betray him into incon- 
sistency ; which, if not the worst quality of a 
statesman, is the most fatal to his perma- 
nent importance. For one short period, in- 
deed, the circumstances of his situation suit- 
ed the peculiarities of his genius. In the last 
years of Charles his refined policy had found 
full scope in the arts of balancing factions, 
of occasionally leaning to the vanquished, 
and always tempering the triumph of the 
victorious party, by which that monarch then 

* Temple, Memoirs, part iii. 
t Dedication to King Arthur. 
$ Jotham, of piercing vvit and pregnant, thought, 
Endued by nature and by learning taught 
To move assemblies ; who but only tried 
The worse awhile, then chose the better side ; 
Nor chose alone, but turned the balance loo. 
Absalom and Achilophel. 
Lord Halifax says, "Mr. Dryden told me that 
be was offered money to write against me." — 
Fox MSS. 



consulted the repose of his declining years. 
Perhaps he satisfied himself with the reflec- 
tion, that his compliance with all the evil 
which was then done was necessary to enable 
him to save his country from the arbitrary and 
bigoted faction which was eager to rule it. 
We know from the evidence of the excel- 
lent Tillotson,* that Lord Halifax '■• showed a 
compassionate concern for Lord Russell, and 
all the readiness to save him that could be 
wished ;"' and that Lord Russell desired Til- 
lotson "to give thanks to Lord Halifax for 
his humanity and kindness:" and there is 
some reason to think that his intercession 
might have been successful, if the delicate 
honour of Lord Russell had not refused to 
second their exertions, by softening his 
language, on the lawfulness of resistance, a 
shade more than scrupulous sincerity would 
warrant.! He seems unintentionally to have 
contributed to the death of Sidney, \ by 
having procured a sort of confession from 
Monmouth, in order to reconcile him to his 
father, and to balance the influence of the 
Duke of York, by Charles' partiality for his 
son. The compliances and refinements of 
that period pursued him with, perhaps, too 
just a retribution during the remainder of 
his life. James was impatient to be rid of 
him who had checked his influence during 
the last years of his brother; and the friends 
of liberty could never place any lasting trust 
in the man who remained a member of the 
Government which put to death Russell and 
Sidney. 

The part pet formed by Lord Godolphin at 
this time was not so considerable as to re- 
quire a full account of his character. He 
was a gentleman of ancient family in Corn- 
wall, distinguished by the accomplishments 
of some of its members, and by their suffer- 
ings in the royal cause during the civil war. 
He held offices at Court before he was em- 
ployed in the service of the State, and he 
always retained the wary and conciliating 
manners, as well as the profuse dissipation 
of his original school. Though a royalist 
and a courtier he voted for the Exclusion 
Bill. At the accession of James, he was not 
considered as favourable to absolute depen- 
dence on Fiance, nor to the system of govern- 
ing without Parliaments. But though a 
member of the Cabinet, he was, during the 
whole of this reign, ralher a public officer, 
who confined himself to his own department, 
than a minister who took a part in the direc- 
tion of the Stated The habit of continuing 

* Lords' Journals. 20th Dec. 1689. The Duch- 
ess of Portsmouth said to Lord Montague, " that 
if others had been as earnest as my Lord Halifax 
with the King, Lord Russell might have been 
saved." — Fox MSS. Other allusions in these 
MSS., which I ascribe to Lord Halifax, show that 
his whole fault was a continuance in office after 
the failure ot his efforts to save Lord Russell. 

t Life of Lord Russell, by Lord John Russell, 
p. 215. 

t Evidence of Mr. Hampden and Sir James 
Forbes — Lords' Journals, 20ih Dec. 1689. 

$ "Milord Godolphin, quoiqu'il est du secret. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



TtC 



some officers in place under successive ad- 
ministrations, for the convenience' of busi- 
ness, then extended to higher persons than 
it has usually comprehended in more recent 
times. 

James had, soon after his accession, intro- 
duced into the Cabinet Sir George Jeffreys. 
Lord Chief Justice of England,* a person 
whose office did not usually lead to that sta- 
tion, and whose elevation to unusual honour 
and trust is characteristic of the Government 
which he served. His origin was obscure, 
his education scanty, his acquirements no 
more than what his vigorous understanding- 
gathered in the course of business, his pro- 
fessional practice low, and chiefly obtained 
from the companions of his vulgar excesses, 
whom he captivated by that gross buffoonery 
which accompanied him to the most exalted 
stations. But his powers of mind were ex- 
traordinary ; his elocution was flowing and 
spirited; and, after his highest preferment, 
in the few instances where he preserved 
temper and decency, the native vigour of his 
intellect shone forth in his judgments, and 
threw a transient dignity over the coarse- 
ness of his deportment. He first attracted 
notice by turbulence in the petty contests 
of the Corporation of London ; and having 
found a way to Court through some of 
those who ministered to the pleasures of 
the King, as well as to the more ignomi- 
nious of his political intrigues, he made his 
value known by contributing to destroy the 
charter of the capital of which he had been 
the chief law officer. His services as a 
counsel in the trial of Russell, and as a judge 
in that of Sidney, proved still more accepta- 
ble to his masters. On the former occasion, 
he caused a person who had collected evi- 
dence for the defence to be turned out of 
court, for making private suggestions. — pro- 
bably important to the ends of justice, — to 
Lady Russell, while she was engaged in her 
affecting duty.f The same brutal insolence 
shown in the trial of Sidney, was, perhaps, 
thought the more worthy of reward, because 
it was foiled by the calm heroism of that 
great man. The union of a powerful under- 
standing with boisterous violence and the 
basest subserviency singularly fitted him to 
be the tool of a tyrant. He wanted, indeed, 
the aid of hypocrisy, but he was free from 
its restraints. He had that reputation for 
boldness which many men preserve, as long 
as they are personally safe, by violence in 
their counsels and in their language. If he 
at last feared danger, he never feared shame, 
which much more frequently restrains the 



n'a pas grand credit, et songe seulement a se con- 
server par une conduite sage et moderee. Je ne 
pense pas que s'll en etoit cru, on prit des liaisons 
avee V. M. qui pussent aller a se passer entiere- 
ment de parlement, et a. rompre nettement avec 
le Prince d' Orange." — Barillon to the King, 16th 
April. 1685. Fox, History of James II., app. Ix. 

* North, p. 231. (After the Northern Circuit, 
1684, — in our computation. 1685.) 

t Examination of John Tisard. — Lords' Jour- 
nals, 20,h Dec. 1690. 



powerful. Perhaps the unbridled fury of' 
his temper enabled him to threaten and in- '^ 
timidate with more effect than a man of 
equal wickedness, with a cooler character. 
His religion, which seems to have consisted 
in hatred to Nonconformists, did not hinder 
him from ptofaneness. His native fierceness 
was daily inflamed by debauchery; his ex- 
cesses were too gross and outrageous for the 
decency of historical relation ;* and his court 
was a continual scene of scurrilous invective, 
from which none were exempted but his su- 
periors. A contemporary, of amiable dispo- 
sition and Tory principles, who knew him 
well, sums up his character in few words, — 
''he was by nature cruel, and a slave of the 
Court."! 

It was after the defeat of Monmouth that 
James gave full scope to his policy, and be- 
gan that system of measures which charac- 
terises his reign. Though Feversham was, 
in the common intercourse of life, a good- 
natured man, his victory at Sedgemoor was 
immediately followed by some of those acts 
of military license which usually disgrace 
the suppression of a revolt, when there is no-' 
longer any dread of retaliation, — when the 
conqueror sees a rebel in every inhabitant, 
and considers destruction by the sword as 
only anticipating legal execution, and when 
he is generally well assured, if not positively 
instructed, that he can do nothing more ac- 
ceptable to his superiors than to spread a 
deep impression of terror through a disaf- 
fected province. A thousand were slain in 
a pursuit of a small body of insurgents for a 
few miles. Feversham marched into Bridge- 
water on the morning after the battle (July 
7th), with a considerable number tied to- 
gether like slaves; of whom twenty-two - 
were hanged by his orders on a sign-post 
by the road-side, and on gibbets which he 
caused to be erected for the occasion. One 
of them was a wounded officer, named Ad- 
lam, who was already in the agonies of 
death. Four were hanged in chains, with a ' 
deliberate imitation of (he barbarities of re- 
gular Jaw. One miserable wretch, to whom 
life had been promised on condition of his' 
keeping pace for half a mile with a horse at 
full speed (to which he was fastened by a. 
rope which went round his neck), was exe- 
cuted in spite of his performance of the feat. 
Feversham was proceeding thus towards dis- 
armed enemies, to whom he had granted 
quarter, when Ken, the bishop of the diocese, . 
a zealous royalist, had the courage to rush 
into the midst of this military execution, 1 
calling out, "My Lord, this is murder in law. 

* See the account of his behaviour at a ball in 
the city, soon after Sidney's condemnation ; Eve- 
lyn, vol. i. p. 53) ; and at the dinner at Dun- 
coinbe's, a rich citizen, where the Lord Chancel- 
lor (Jeffreys) and the Lord Treasurer (Rochester) 
were with difficulty prevented from appearing na- 
ked in a balcony, to drink loyal toasts, Reresby. 
Memoirs, p. 231, and of his " flaming" drunken- 
ness at the Privy Council, when the King was 
present. — North, p. 250. 

t Evelyn, vol. i. p. 579. 



276 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



These poor wretches, now the battle is over, 
must be tried before they can be put to 
death."* The interposition of this excellent 
prelate, however, only suspended the cruel- 
ties of the conquerors. Feversham was 
called to court to receive the thanks and 
honours dueto his services. 

Kirke, whom he was directed to leave with 
detachments at Pridgewater and Taunton,! 
imitated, if he did not surpass, the lawless 
violence of his commander. When he en- 
tered the latter town, on the third day after 
the battle, he put to death at least nine of 
his prisoners, with so little sense of impro- 
priety or dread of disapprobation, that they 
were entered by name as executed for high 
treason in the parish register of their inter- 
ment.! Of the other excesses of Kirke we 
have no satisfactory account. The experi- 
ence of like cases, however, renders the tra- 
dition not improbable, that these acts of law- 
less violence were accompanied by the in- 
sults and mockeries of military debauchery. 
The nature of the service in which the de- 
tachment was principally engaged, required 
more than common virtue in a commander 
to contain the passions of the soldiery. It 
was his principal duty to search for rebels. 
He was urged to the performance of this 
odious task by malicious or mercenary in- 
formers. The friendship, or compassion, or 
political zeal of the inhabitants, was active 
in favouring escapes, so that a constant and 
cruel struggle subsisted between the sol- 
diers and the people abetting the fugitives. § 
Kirke's regiment, when in garrison at Tan- 
gier, had had the figure of a lamb painted 
on their colours as a badge of their warfare 
against the enemies of the Christian name. 
The people of Somersetshire, when they 
saw those who thus bore the symbols of 
meekness and benevolence engaged in the 
performance of such a task, vented the bit- 
terness of their hearts against the soldiers, 
by giving them the ironical name of Kirke's 
"lambs." The unspeakable atrocity impu- 
puted to him, of putting to death a person 
whose life he had promised to a young wo- 
man, as the price of compliance with his 
desires, it is due to the honour of human na- 

* For the principal part of the enormities of Fe- 
versham, we have the singular advantage of the 
testimony of two eye-witnesses, — an officer in the 
royal army, Kennet, History of England, vol. iii. 
p. 432, and Oldmixon, History of England, vol. 
i. p- 704. See also Locke's Western Rebellion. 

t Lord Sunderland's letter to Lord Feversham, 
8th July. — State Paper Office. 

t Toulmin's Taunton, by Savage, p. 522, where, 
alter a period of near one hundred and forty years, 
the authentic evidence of /this fact is for the first 
time published, together with other important par- 
ticulars of Monmouth's revolt, and of (ho military 
and judicial cruelties which followed it. These nine 
are by some writers swelled to nineteen, probably 
from confounding them with that number executed 
at Taunton by virtue of Jeffreys' judgments. The 
number of ninety mentioned on this occasion by 
others seems to be altogether an exaggeration. 

5 Kirke to Lord Sunderland. Taunton, 12th 
Aug.— State Paper Office. 



ture to disbelieve, until more satisfactory 
evidence -be produced than that on which it 
has hitherto rested.* He followed the ex- 
ample of ministers and magistrates in sell- 
ing pardons to the prisoners in his district; 
which, though as illegal as his executions, 
enabled many to escape from the barbarities 
which were to come. Base as this traffic 
was, it would naturally lead him to threaten 
more evil than he inflicted. It deserves to be 
remarked, that, five years after his command 
at Taunton, the inhabitants of that place gave 
an entertainment, at the public expense, to 
celebrate his success. This fact seems to 
countenance a suspicion that we ought to 
attribute more to the nature of the service 
in which he was engaged than to any pre- 
eminence in criminality, the peculiar odium 
which has fallen on his name, to the ex- 
clusion of other officers, whose excesses ap- 
pear to have been greater, and are certainly 
more satisfactorily attested. But whatever 
opinion may be formed of the degree of 
Kirke's guilt, it is certain that he was rather 
countenanced than discouraged by the Gov- 
ernment. His illegal executions were early 
notorious in London. t The good Bishop 
Ken, who then corresponded with the King 
himself, on the sufferings of his diocese.j 
could not fail to remonstrate against those 
excesses, which he had so generously inter- 
posed to prevent; and if the accounts of 
the remonstrances of Lord Keeper Guildford, 
against the excesses of the West, have any 
foundation, § they must have related exclu- 
sively to the enormities of the soldiery, for 
the Lord Keeper died at the very opening 
of Jeffreys' circuit. Yet, with this know- 
ledge, Lord Sunderland instructed Kirke "to 
secure such of his prisoners as had not been 



* This story is told neither by Oldmixon nor Bur- 
net, nor by the humble writers of the Bloody Assi- 
zesor the Quadrienmum Jacobi. Echard and Ken- 
net, who wrote long after, mentioned it only as a 
report. It first appeared in print in 1699, in Pom- 
fret's poem of Cruelty and Lust. The next men- 
tion is in the anonymous Life of William III., 
published in 1702. A story very similar is told 
by St. Augustine of a Roman officer, and in the 
Spectator, No. 491, of a governor of Zealand, 
probably from a Dutch chronicle or legend. The 
scene is laid by some at Taunton, by others at 
Exeter. The person executed is said by some to 
be the father, by others to be the husband, and 
by others again to be the brother of the unhappy 
young woman, whose name it has been found im- 
possible to ascertain, or even plausibly to conjec- 
ture. The tradition, which is still said to prevail 
at Taunton, may well have originated in a publi- 
cation of one hundred and twenty years old. 

t Narcissus Luttrell, MS. Diary, 15th July; 
six days after their occurrence. 

t Ken's examination before the Privy Council, 
in 1696. — Biographia Britannica, Article Ken. 

§ North, p. 260. This inaccurate writer refers 
the complaint to Jeffrevs' proceedings, which is 
impossible, since Lord Guildford died in Oxford- 
shire, on the 5th September, after a long illness. 
Lady Lisle, was executed on the 3 I ; and her exe- 
cution, the only one which preceded the death of 
the Lord Keeper, could scarcely have reached him 
in his dying moments. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



277 



executed, in order to trial,"* at a time when 
there had been no legal proceedings, and 
when all the executions to which he adverts, 
without disapprobation, must have been con- 
trary to law. Seven days after, Sunderland 
informed Kirke that his letter had been 
communicated to the King, i: who was very 
well satisfied with the proceedings. "f In 
subsequent despatches,}: he censures Kirke 
for setting some rebels at liberty (alluding, 
doubtless, to those who had purchased their 
lives) j but he does not censure that officer 
for having put others to death. Were it not 
for these proofs that the King knew the acts 
of Kirke, and that his Government officially 
sanctioned them, no credit would be due to 
the declarations afterwards made by such a 
man, that his severities fell short of the 
orders which he had received. § Nor is this 
the only circumstance which connects the 
Government with these enormities. On the 
10th of August, Kirke was ordered to come 
to court to give information on the state of 
the West. His regiment was soon after- 
wards removed ; and he does not appear to 
have been employed there during the re- 
mainder of that season. II 

Colonel Trelawney succeeded ; but so little 
was Kirke's conduct thought to be blama- 
ble, that on th« 1st of September three per- 
sons were executed illegally at Taunton for 
rebellion, the nature and reason of their 
death openly avowed in the register of their 
interment. IT In military executions, how- 
ever atrocious, some allowance must be 
made for the passions of an exasperated 
soldiery, and for the habits of officers accus- 
tomed to summary and irregular acts, who 
have not been taught by experience that the 
ends of justice cannot be attained otherwise 
than by the observance of the rules of law.** 
The lawless violence of an army forms no 
precedent for the ordinary administration of 
public affairs ; and the historian is bound to 
relate with diffidence events which are gen- 
erally attended with confusionftnd obscurity, 
which are exaggerated by the just resent- 
ment of an oppressed party, and where we 
can seldom be guided by the authentic evi- 
dence of records. Neither the conduct of a 
Government which approves these excesses, 

* 14th July.— State Paper Office. 

t 21st July.— Ibid. 

X 25th and 28th July, and 3d August.— State 
Paper Office. 

§ Oldmixon, vol. i. p. 705. 

II Papers in the War Office. MS. 

If Savage, p. 525. 

** Two years after the suppression of the West- 
ern revolt, we find Kirke treated wiih favour by 
the King. — ,; Colonel Kirke is made housekeeper 
of Whitehall, in the room of his kinsman, de- 
ceased." — Narcissus Luttrell, Sept. 1687. lie was 
nearly related to, or perhaps the son of George 
Kirke, groom of the bedchamber to Charles I., 
one of whose beautiful daughters. Mary, a maid 
of honour, was the Warmesire of Count Hamil- 
ton, (Noies to Memoires de Grammnnt), and the 
other, Diana, was the wife of the last Earl of Ox- 
ford, of the house of De Vere. — Dugdale's Ba- 
ronage, tit. Oxford. 



however, nor that of judges who imitate or 
surpass them, allows of such extenuations or 
requires such caution in relating and cha- 
racterising facts. The judicial proceedings 
which immediately followed these military 
atrocities may be related with more confi- 
dence*, and must be treated with the utmost 
rigour of historical justice. 

The commencement of proceedings on the 
Western Circuit, which comprehends the 
whole scene of Monmouth's operations, was 
postponed till the other assizes were con- 
cluded, in order that four judges, who were 
joined with Jeffreys in the commission, might 
be at liberty to attend him.* An order was 
also issued to all officers in the West, "to 
furnish such parties of horse and foot, as 
might be required by the Lord Chief Justice 
on his circuit, for securing prisoners, and to 
perform that service in such manner as he 
should direct."! After these unusual and 
alarming preparations, Jeffreys began his 
circuit at Winchester, on the 27th of August, 
by the trial of Mrs. Alicia Lisle, who was 
charged with having sheltered in her house, 
for one night, two fugitives from Monmouth's 
routed army, — an office of humanity which 
then was and still is treated as high treason 
by the law of England. This lady, though 
unaided by counsel, so deaf that she could 
very imperfectly hear the evidence, and oc- 
casionally overpowerrd by those lethargic 
slumbers which are incident to advanced 
age, defended herself with a coolness which 
formed a striking contrast to the deportment 
of her judge. X The principal witness, a man 
who had been sent to her to implore shelter 
for one Hickes, and who guided him and 
Nelthrope to her house, betrayed a natural 
repugnance to disclose facts likely to affect 
a life which he had innocently contributed 
to endanger. Jeffreys, at the suggestion of 
the counsel for the crown, took upon himself 
the examination of this unwilling witness, and 
conducted it with a union of artifice, men- 
ace, and invective, which no well-regulated 
tribunal would suffer in the advocate of a 
prisoner, when examining the witness pro- 
duced by the accuser. Willi solemn ap- 
peals to Heaven for his own pure intentions, 
he began in the language of candour and 
gentleness to adjure the witness to discover 
all that he knew. His nature, however, 
often threw off this disguise, and broke out 
into the ribaldry and scurrility of his accus- 
tomed style. The Judge and three counsel 
poured in questions upon the poor rustic hi 
rapid succession. Jeffreys said that he trea- 
sured up vengeance for such men, and added, 
" It is infinite mercy that for those falsehoods 



* Lord Chief Baron Montague, Levison, Wat- 
kins, and Wright, of whom the three former sat 
on the subsequent trials of Mr. Cornish and Mrs. 
Gaunt. 

t This order was dated on the 24th August, 
1685. — Papers in the War Office. From this cir- 
cumstance originated the story, that Jeffreys had 
a commission as Commanaer-in-Chief. 

X State TriaU, vol. xi. p. 298. 
Y 



270 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



•of thine, God does not immediately strike 
thee into hell." Wearied, overawed, and 
overwhelmed by such an examination^ the 
witness at length admitted some facts which 
afforded reason to suspeqt, rather than to 
believe, thai the unfortunate lady knew the 

men whom sh 1 to be fugitives 

from ! h's army. She said in her 

.defence, that she knew Mr. Hickes to be a 
Presbyterian minister, and thought he ab- 
sconded because there were warrants out 
against him on that account. All the pre- 
cautions for concealment which were urged 
as proofs of her intentional breach of law 
were reconcilable with this defence. Orders 
had been issued at the beginning of the 
revolt to seize all ''disaffected and suspi- 
cious persons, especially all Nonconformist 
ministers;"* and Jeffreys himself unwil- 
lingly strengthened her case by declaring 
his conviction, that all Presbyterians had 
ja. hand in the rebellion. He did not go 
through the formality of repeating so pro- 
bable a defence to the jury. They how- 
ever hesitated : they asked the Chief Justice, 
whether it were as much treason to receive 
Hickes before as after conviction ? He told 
them that it was, which was literally true; 
but he wilfully concealed from them that by 
the law, such as it was, the receiver of a 
traitor could not be brought to trial till the 
principal traitor had been convicted or out- 
lawed ; — a provision, indeed, so manifestly- 
necessary to justice, that without the obser- 
vance of it Hickes might be acquitted of 
treason after Mrs. Lisle had been execu- 
ted for harbouring him as a traitor. t Four 
judges looked silently on this suppression of 
truth, which produced the same effect with 
positive falsehood, and allowed the limits of 
a barbarous law to be overpassed, in order 
to destroy an aged woman for an act of 
charity. The jury retired, and remained so 
long in deliberation, as to provoke the wrath 
of the Chief Justice. When they returned 
into court, they expressed their doubt, 
whether the prisoner knew that Hickes had 
been in Monmouth's army: the Chief Jus- 
tice assured them that the proof was com- 
plete. Three times they repeated their 
doubt : the Chief Justice as often reiterated 
his declaration with growing impatience and 
rage. At this critical moment of the last 
appeal of the jury to the Court, the defence- 
less female at the bar made an effort to 
speak. Jeffreys, taking advantage of for- 
malities, instantly silenced her, and the jury 
were at length overawed into a verdict of 
"guilty." He then broke out into a need- 
less insult to the strongest affections of 
•nature, saying to the jury, "Gentlemen, had 
I been among you, and if she had been 
my own mother, I should have found her 
guilty." On the next morning, when he 



* Despatch from Lord Sunderland to Lord- 
fjteotenanls of Counties. 20th June, 1685. 

t Hale, Pleas of the Crown, part i. c. 22. 
poster, Discourse on Accomplices, chap. I. 



had to pronounce sentence of death, he could 
not even then abstain from invectives against 
Presbyterians, of whom he supposed Mrs. 
Lisle to be one; yet mixing artifice with his 
fury, he tried to lure her into discoveries, by r 
wus phrases, which might excite her 
hopes of life without pledging him to obtain 
pardon. He directed that she should be 
burnt alive in the afternoon of the same 
day; but the clergy of the cathedral of 
Winchester successfully interceded for an 
interval of three days. This interval gave 
time for an application to the King; and that 
application was made by persons, and with 
circumstances, which must have strongly 
called his attention to the case. Mrs. Lisle 
was the widow of Mr. Lisle, who was one 
of the judges of Charles the First; and this 
circumstance, which excited a prejudice 
against her, served in its consequences to 
show that she had powerful claims on the 
lenity of the King. Lady St. John and Lady 
Abergavenny wrote a letter to Lord Claren- 
don, then Privy Seal, which he read to the 
King, bearing testimony, " that she had been 
a favourer of the King's friends in their 
greatest extremities during the late civil 
war," and among others, of these ladies 
themselves; and on these grounds, as well 
as for her general loyalty, earnestly recom- 
mending her to pardon. Her son had served 
in the King's army against Monmouth; she 
often had declared that she shed more tears 
than any woman in England on the day of 
the death of Charles the First ; and after 
the attainder of Mr. Lisle, his estate was 
granted to her at the intercession of Lord 
Chancellor Clarendon, for her excellent con- 
duct during the prevalence of her husband's 
party. Lord Feversham, also, who had been 
promised a thousand pounds for her pardon, 
used his influence to obtain it. But the King 
declared that he would not reprieve her for 
one day. It is said, that he endeavoured to 
justify himself, by alleging a promise to 
Jeffreys that Mrs. Lisle should not be 
spared ; — a fact which, if true, shows tht; 
conduct of James to have been as deliberate 
as it seems to be, and that the severities of 
the circuit arose from a previous concert be- 
tween him and Jeffreys. On the following 
day the case was again brought before him 
by a petition from Mrs. Lisle, praying that 
her punishment might be changed into be- 
heading, in consideration of her ancient and 
honourable descent. After a careful search 
for precedents, the mind of James was once 
more called to the fate of the prisoner by 
the signature of a warrant to authorise the 
infliction of the mitigated punishment. This 
venerable matron accordingly suffered death 
on the 2d of September, supported by that 
piety which had been the guide of her life. 
Her understanding was so undisturbed, that 
she clearly instanced the points in which she 
had been wronged. No resentment troubled 
the composure of her dying moments; and 
she carried her religious principles of alle- 
giance and forgiveness so far, as to pray on 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



279 



the scaffold for the prosperity of a prince 
from whom she had experienced neither 
mercy, gratitude, nor justice. The trial of 
Mrs. Lisle is a sufficient specimen of the 
proceeding's of this circuit. When such 
was the conduct of the judges in a single 
trial of a lady of distinction for such an 
offence, with a jury not regardless of justice, 
where there was lull leisure for the consi- 
deration of every question of fact and law, and 
where every circumstance was made known 
to the Government and the public, it is easy 
to imagine what the demeanour of the same 
tribunal must have been in the trials of seve- 
ral hundred insurgents of humble condition, 
crowded into so short a time that the wisest 
and most upright judges could hardly have 
distinguished the innocent from the guilty.* 
As the movements of Monmoutlvs army 
had been confined to Dorset and Somerset, 
the acts of high treason were almost entirely 
committed there, and the prisoners appre- 
hended elsewhere were therefore removed 
for trial to these counties.! That unfortu- 
nate district was already filled with dismay 
and horror by the barbarities of the troops; 
the roads leading to its principal towns 
were covered with prisoners under military 
guards; and the display and menace of war- 
like power were most conspicuous in the 
retinue of insolent soldiers and trembling 
culprits who followed the march of the 
judges, forming a melancholy contrast to the 
parental confidence which was wont to per- 
• vade the administration of the unarmed 
laws of a free people. Three hundred and 
twenty prisoners were arraigned at Dor- 
chester, of whom thirty-five pleaded " not 
guilty;" and on their trial five were acquit- 
ted and thirty were convicted. The Chief 
Justice caused some intimation to be con- 
veyed to the prisoners that confession was 
the only road to mercy; and to strengthen 
the effect of this hint, he sent twenty-nine 
of the persons convicted to immediate exe- 
cution, — though one of them at least was so 

* By the favour of the clerk of assize, I have 
before me many of the original records of this 
circuit. The account of it by Lord Lonsdale w'as 
written in 1688. The Bloody Assizes, and the 
Life of Jeffreys, were published in 16S9. They 
were written by one Shirley, a compiler, and by 
Pitts, a surgeon in Monmouth's army. Six thou- 
sand copies of the latter were sold. — Life of John 
Dunton, vol. i. p. 184. Roger Coke, a contem- 
porary, and Oldmixon, almost an eye-witness, 
vouch for their general fairness ; and I have found 
an unexpected degree of coincidence between 
them and the circuit records. Burnet came to 
reside at Salisbury in 1689, and he and Kennet 
began to relate the facts about seventeen years 
after they occurred. Father Orleans, and the 
writer of James' Life, admit the cruelties, while 
they vainly strive to exculpate the King from any 
share in them. From a comparison of those 
original authorities, and from the correspondence, 
hitherto unknown, in the State Paper Office, the 
narrative of the text has been formed. 

t There were removed to Dorchester ninety- 
fourfrom Somerset, eighty-nine from Devon, fifiy- 
five from Wilts, and twenty-three from London. — 
Circuit Records. 



innocent that had there been time to examine 
his case, he might even then have been par- 
doned.* The intimation illustrated by such 
a commentary produced the intended ( fleet : 
two hundred and eight at once confe 
Eighty persons were, according to contem- 
porary accounts, executed at Dorchester; 
and though the records state only the execu- 
tion of fifty, yet as they contain no entry of 
judgment in two hundred and fifty cases, 
their silence affords no presumption against 
the common accounts. 

The correspondence of Jeffreys with the 
King and the minister appears to have begun 
at Dorchester. From that place he wrote 
on the 8th of September, in terms of enthu- 
siastic gratitude to Sunderland, to return 
thanks for the Great Seal. J: Two days after- 
wards he informed Sunderland, that though 
"tortured by the stone," he had that day 
"despatched ninety-eight rebels. "§ Sunder- 
land assured him in answer, that the King 
approved all his proceedings, of which very 
minute accounts appear to have been con- 
stantly transmitted by Jeffreys directly to the 
King himseifill In the county of Somerset 
more than a thousand prisoners were ar- 
raigned for treason at Taunton and Wells, of 
whom only six ventured to put themselves 
on their trial by pleading "not guilty." A 
thousand and forty confessed themselves to 
be guilty; — a proportion of confessions so 
little corresponding to the common chances 
of precipitate arrests, of malicious or mis- 
taken charges, and of escapes on trial, — all 
which were multiplied in such violent and 
hurried proceedings, — as clearly to show that 
the measures of the circuit had already ex- 
tinguished all expectation that the judges 
would observe the rules of justice. Submis- 
sion afforded some chance of escape : from 
trial the most innocent could no longer have 
any hope. Only six days were allowed in 
this county to find indictments against a thou- 
sand prisoners, to arraign them, to try the few 
who still ventured to appeal to law, to record 
the confessions of the rest, and to examine 
the circumstances which ought, in each case, 
to aggravate or extenuate the punishment. 
The names of two hundred and thirty-nine 
persons executed there are preserved :1F but 
as no judgments are entered,** we do not 
know how many more may have suffered. 
In order to diffuse terror more widely, these 
executions were directed to take place in 
thirty-six towns and villages. Three were 
executed in the village of Wrington, the birth- 
place of Mr. Locke, whose writings were one 



* Biagg, an attorney. Bloody Assizes. Western 
Rebellion. 

t Calendar for Dorsetshire summer assizes, 
1685. 

t The Great Seal had only been vacant three 
dny-s as Lord Keeper Guildford died at his seat 
at YVroxton, on the 5th. 

§ 8th and 10th Sept.— State Paper Office. 

II Windsor, 14th Sept. — Ibid. 

IT Life and Death of George Lord Jeffreys. 
(London, 1689.) 

** Circuit Records. 



280 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



day to lessen the misery suffered by man- 
kind from cruel laws and unjust judges. 
The general consternation spread by these 
proceedings has prevented a particular ac- 
count of many of the cases from reaching 
us. In some of those more conspicuous in- 
stances which have been preserved, we see 
what so great a body of obnoxious culprits 
must have suffered in narrow and noisome 
prisons, where they were often destitute of 
the common necessaries of life, before a 
judge whose native rage and insolence were 
Btimulated by daily intoxication, and in- 
flamed by the agonies of an excruciating dis- 
temper, from the brutality of soldiers, and 
the cruelty of slavish or bigoted magistrates; 
while one part of their neighbours were hard- 
ened against them by faction, and the other 
deterred from relieving them by fear. The 
ordinary executioners, unequal to so exten- 
sive a slaughter, were aided by novices, whose 
unskilfulness aggravated the horrors of that 
death of torture which was then the legal 
punishment of high treason. Their lifeless 
remains were treated with those indignities 
and outrages which still* continue to disgrace 
the laws of a civilized age. They were be- 
headed and quartered, and the heads and 
limbs of the dead were directed to be placed 
on court-houses, and in all conspicuous ele- 
vations in streets, high roads, and churches. 
The country was filled with the dreadful 
preparations necessary to fit these inanimate 
members for such an exhibition ; and the 
roads were covered by vehicles conveying 
them to great distances in every direction. t 
There was not a hamlet in which the poor 
inhabitants were not doomed hourly to look 
on the mangled remains of a neighbour or a 
relation. "All the high roads of the country 
were no longer to be travelled, while the 
horrors of so many quarters of men and the 
offensive stench of them lasted. "t 

While one of the most fertile and cheerful 
provinces of England was thus turned into a 
scene of horror by the mangled remains of 
the dead, the towns resounded with the cries, 
and the streets streamed with the blood of 
men, and even women and children, who 
were cruelly whipped for real or pretended 
sedition. The case of John Tutchin, after- 
wards a noted political writer, is a specimen 
of these minor cruelties. He was tried at 
Dorchester, under the assumed name of 
Thomas Pitts, for having said that Hamp- 
shire was up in arms for the Duke of Mon- 



* 1822.— En. 

t " Nothing could be liker hell than these 
parts: cauldrons hissing, carcasses boiling, pitch 
and tar sparkling and glowing, bloody limbs boil- 
ing, and tearing, and mangling." — Bloody Assizes. 

England is now an Aceldama. The country 
for sixty miles, from Bristol to Exeter, had a new 
terrible sort of sign-posts, gibbets, heads and 
quarters of its slaughtered "inhabitants."— Old- 
mixon, vol. i. p. 707. 

t Lord Lonsdale, (Memoirs of the Reign of 
James II., p. 13,) confirms the testimony of the 
two former more ardent partisans, both of whom, 
however, were eye-witnesses. 



mouth, and, on his conviction, was sentenced 
to be whipped through every market town 
in the county for seven years. The females 
in court burst into tears; and even one of 
the officers of the court ventured to observe 
to the Chief Justice, that the culprit was very 
young, and that the sentence would reach 
to once a fortnight for seven years. These 
symptoms of pity exposed the prisoner to 
new brutality from his judge. Tutchin is 
said to have petitioned the King for the more 
lenient punishment of the gallows. He was 
seized with the small-pox in prison ; and, 
whether from unwonted compassion, or from 
the misnomer in the indictment, he appears 
to have escaped the greater part of the bar- 
barous punishment to which he was doomed.*' 

These dreadful scenes are relieved by 
some examples of generous virtue in indi- 
viduals of the victorious party. Harte, a 
clergyman of Taunton, following the excel- 
lent example of the Bishop, interceded for 
some of the prisoners with Jeffreys in the 
full career of his cruelty. The intercession 
was not successful ; but it compelled him to 
honour the humanity to which he did not 
yield, for he soon after preferred Harte to 
be a prebendary of Bristol. Both Ken and 
Harte, who were probably at the moment 
charged with disaffection, sacrificed at a sub- 
sequent period their preferments, rather than 
violate the allegiance which they thought 
still to be due to the King; while Mew, 
Bishop of Winchester, who was on the field 
of battle at Sedgemoor, and who ordered that 
his coach horses should drag forward the 
artillery of the royal army, preserved his rich 
bishopric by compliance with the govern- 
ment of King William. The army of Mon- 
mouth also afforded instructive proofs, that 
the most furious zealots are not always the 
most consistent adherents. Ferguson and 
Hooke, two Presbyterian clergymen in that 
army, passed most of their subsequent lives 
in Jacobite intrigues, either from incorrigible 
habits of conspiracy, or from resentment at 
the supposed ingratitude of their own party, 
or from the inconstancy natural to men of 
unbridled passions and distempered minds. 
Daniel De Foe, one of the most original 
writers of the English nation, served in the 
army of Monmouth ; but we do not know 
the particulars of his escape. A great satirist 
had afterwards the baseness to reproach 
both Tutchin and De Foe with sufferings, 
which were dishonourable only to those who 
inflicted them.f 

In the mean time, peculiar circumstances 
rendered the correspondence of Jeffreys in 
Somersetshire with the King and his minister 
more specific and confidential than it had 
been in the preceding parts of the circuit. 
Lord Sunderland had apprised Jeffreys of the. 
King's pleasure to bestow a thousand con- 



* Savage, p. 509. Western Rebellion. Dor- 
chester Calendar, summer assizes, 1685. 

t " Earless on high stood unabashed De Foe, 
And Tutchin flagrant from the scourge 
below.'' Dunciad, book ii. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



281 



victs on several courtiers, and one hundred 
on a favourite of the Queen,* on these per- 
sons finding security that the prisoners should 
be enslaved for ten years in some West India 
island ; — a limitation intended, perhaps, only 
to deprive the convicts of the sympathy of 
the Puritan colonists of New England, but 
which, in effect, doomed them to a miserable 
and lingering death in a climate where field- 
labour is fatal to Europeans. Jeffreys, in 
his answer to the King, remonstrates against 
this disposal of the prisoners, who, he says, 
would be worth ten or fifteen pounds a- 
piece ;t and, at the same time, returns thanks 
for his Majesty's gracious acceptance of his 
services. In a subsequent letter from Bristol,}: 
he yields to the distribution of the convicts; 
boasts of his victory over that most factious 
city, where he had committed the mayor and 
an alderman, under pretence of their having 
sold to the plantations men whom they had 
unjustly convicted with a view to such a 
sale; and pledges himself "that Taunton, 
and Bristol, and the county of Somerset, 
should know their duty both to God and 
their King before he leaves them." He 
entreats the King not to be surprised into 
pardons. 

James, being thus regularly apprised of 
the most minute particulars of Jeffreys' pro- 
ceedings, was accustomed to speak of them 
to the foreign ministers under the name of 
"Jeffreys' campaign. "§ He amused himself 
with horse-races at Winchester, the scene of 
the recent execution of Mrs. Lisle, during 
the hottest part of Jeffreys' operations.il He 
was so fond of the phrase of "Jeffreys' cam- 
paign," as to use it twice in his correspond- 
ence with the Prince of Orange ; and, on the 
latter occasion, in a tone of exultation ap- 
proaching to defiance. IT The excellent Ken 
had written to him a letter of expostulation 
on the subject. On the 30th of September, 
on Jeffreys' return to court, his promotion to 
the office of Lord Chancellor was announced 
in the Gazette, with a panegyric on his ser- 
vices very unusual in the cold formalities of 
official appointment. Had James been dis- 
satisfied with the conduct of Jeffreys, he had 
the means of repairing some part of its con- 
sequences, for the executions in Somerset- 
shire were not concluded before the latter 
part of November; and among the persons 
who suffered in October was Mr. Hickes, 
a Nonconformist clergyman, for whom his 
brother, the learned Dr. Hickes. afterwards 
a sufferer in the cause of James, sued in 



* 14th and 15th Sept.— State Paper Office. 200 
to Sir Robert White, 200 to Sir William Booth, 
100 to Sir G. Musgrave, 100 to Sir W. Stapleton, 

100 to J. Kendall, 100 to Triphol, 100 to a 

merchant. " The Queen has asked 100 more of 
the rebels." 

t Taunton, 19th Sept.— Ibid. 

t 22d Sept.— Ibid. 

§ Burnet, History of his Own Time, (fol.) vol. i. 
p. 648. 

II 14th to 18th Sept. — London Gazettes. 

H 10th and 24th Sept.— Dalrymple, Memoirs of 
Great Britain, appendix to part i. book ii. 
36 



vain for pardon.* Some months after, when 
♦Jeffreys had brought on a fit of dangerous 
illness by one of his furious debauches, the 
King expressed great concern, and declared 
that his loss could not be easily repaired.! 

The public acts and personal demeanour 
of the King himself agreed too well with 
the general character of these judicial se- 
verities. An old officer, named Holmes, 
who was taken in Monmouth's army, being 
brought up to London, was admitted to an 
interview with the King, who offered to spare 
his life if he would promise to live quietly. 
He answered, that his principles had been 
and still were " republican," believing that 
form of government to be the best ; and that 
he was an old man, whose life was as little 
worth asking as it was worth giving, — an 
answer which so displeased the King, that 
Holmes was removed to Dorchester, where 
he suffered death with fortitude and piety. { 
The proceedings on the circuit seem, indeed, 
to have been so exclusively directed by the 
King and the Chief Justice, that even Lord 
Sunderland, powerful as he was, could not 
obtain the pardon of one delinquent. Yet 
the case was favourable, and deserves to be 
shortly related, as characteristic of the times. 
Lord Sunderland interceded repeatedly§ with 
Jeffreys for a youth named William Jenkins, 
who was executedll in spite of such powerful 
solicitations. He was the son of an eminent 
Nonconformist clergyman, who had recently 
died in Newgate after a long imprisonment, 
inflicted on him for the performance of his 
clerical duties. Young Jenkins had distri- 
buted mourning rings, on which was inscribed 
"'William Jenkins, murdered in Newgate." 
He Avas in consequence imprisoned in the 
jail of Ilchester, and, being released by 
Monmouth's army, he joined his deliverers 
against his oppressors. 



* The Pure d' Orleans, who wrote under the 
eye of James, in 1695, mentions the displeasure 
of the King at the sale of pardons, and seems to 
refer to Lord Sunderland's letter to Kirke, who, 
we know from Oldmixon, was guilty of that prac- 
tice; and, in other respects, rather attempts to 
account for, than to denv, the acquiescence of the 
King in the. cruelties. — Revolutions d'Angleterre, 
ltv. xi. The testimony of Roaer North, if it has 
any foundation, cannot be applied to this part of 
the subject. The part of the Life of James II. 
which relates to it is the work only of the anony- 
mous bioajrapher, Mr. Dicconson of Lancashire, 
and abounds with "the grossest mistakes. The 
assertion of Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham in 
the Account of the Revolution, that Jeffreys dis- 
obeyed James' orders, is disproved by the corres- 
pondence already quoted. There is, on the whole, 
no colour for the assertion of Macpherson, (His- 
tory of Great Britain, vol. i. p. 453), or for the 
doubts of Dalrvmp'e. 

t Barillon. 4th Feb. 1686.— Fox MSS. 

t Lord Lonsdale, p. 12. Calendar for Dorset- 
shire. Bloody Assizes. The account of Colonel 
Holmes by the anonymous biooraplipr (Life of 
James TI. vol. ii. p. 43.) is contradicted by all these 
authorities. It is utterly improbable, and is not 
more honourable to James than that here adopted. 

$ Lord Sunderland to Lord Jeffreys, 12th Sept. 
— State Paper Office. 

II At Taunton, 30th Sept. — Western Rebellion. 
Y 2 



282 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



Vain attempts have been made to excul- 
pate James, by throwing part of the blame 
of these atrocities upon Pollexfen,an eminent 
Whig lawyer, who was leading counsel in 
the prosecutions;*— a wretched employment, 
which he probably owed, as a matter of 
. to his rank as senior King's counsel 
on the circuit. His silent acquiescence in 
the illegal proceedings against Mrs. Lisle 
must, indeed, brand his memory with in- 
delible infamy; but, from the King's perfect 
knowledge of the circumstances of that case, 
it seems to be evident that Pollexfen's inter- 
position would have been unavailing: and 
the subsequent proceedings were carried on 
with such utter disregard of the forms, as 
well as the substance of justice, that counsel 
had probably no duty to perform, and no op- 
portunity to interfere. To these facts may 
be added, what, without such preliminary 
evidence, would have been of little weight, 
the dying declaration of Jeffreys himself, 
who, a few moments before he expired, said 
to Dr. Scott, an eminent divine who attended 
him in the Tower, " Whatever I did then I 
did by express orders; and I have this farther 
to say for myself, that I was not half bloody 
enough for him who sent me thither. "t 

Other trials occurred under the eye of 
James in London, where, according to an 
ancient and humane usage, no sentence of 
death is executed till the case is laid before 
the King in person, that he may determine 
whether there be any room for mercy. Mr. 
Cornish, an eminent merchant, charged with 
a share in the Rye House Plot, was appre- 
hended, tried, and executed within the space 
of ten days, the court having refused him 
the time which he alleged to be necessary 
to bring up a material witness.! Colonel 
Rumsey, the principal witness for the Crown, 
owned that on the trial of Lord Russell he 
had given evidence which directly contra- 
dicted his testimony against Cornish. This 
avowal of perjury did not hinder his convic- 
tion and execution ; but the scandal was so 
great, that James was obliged, in a few days, 
to make a tardy reparation for the precipi- 
tate injustice of his judges. The mutilated 
limbs of Cornish were restored to his rela- 
tions, and JRumsey was confined for life to 
St. Nicholas' Island, at Plymouth,§ a place 
of illegal imprisonment, still kept up in defi- 
ance of the Habeas Corpus Act. This vir- 
tual acknowledgment by the King of the 
falsehood of Rumsey's testimony assumes an 
importance in history, when it is considered 
as a proof of the perjury of one of the two 



* Life of James II., vol. li. p. 44. 

t Burnet (Oxford. 1823), vol. iii. p. 61. Speaker 
Onslow's Note. Onslow received this informa- 
tion from Sir J. Jekyll, who heard it from Lord 
Somers, to whom it was communicated by Dr. 
Scott. The account of Tutchin, who stated that 
Jeffreys had made the same declaration to him in 
the Tower, is thus confirmed by indisputable evi- 
dence. 

t State Trials, vol. xi. p. 382. 

$ Narcissus Luttrell, 19th April, 1686. 



witnesses against Lord Russell, — the man of 
most unspotted virtue who ever suffered on 
an English scaffold. Ring, Fernley, and 
Elizabeth (Jaunt, persons of humble condi- 
tion in life, were tried on the same day with 
Cornish, for harbouring some fugitives from 
Monmouth's army. One of the persons to 
whom Ring afforded shelter was his near 
kinsman. Fernley was convicted on the sole 
evidence of Burton, whom he had concealed 
from the search of the public officers. When 
a witness was about to be examined for 
Fernley, the Court allowed one of their own 
officers to cry out that the witness was a 
Whig; while one of the judges, still more 
conversant with the shades of party, sneered 
at another of his witnesses as a Trimmer. 
When Burton was charged with being an 
accomplice in the Rye House Plot, Mrs. 
Gaunt received him, supplied him with 
money, and procured him a passage to Hol- 
land. After the defeat of Monmouth, with 
whom he returned, he took refuge in the 
house of Fernley, where Mrs. Gaunt visited 
him, again supplied him with money, and 
undertook a second time to save his life, by 
procuring the means of his again escaping 
into Holland. When Burton was appre- 
hended, the prosecutors had their choice, if 
a victim was necessary, either of proceed- 
ing against him, whom they charged with 
open rebellion and intended assassination, or 
against Mrs. Gaunt, whom they could ac- 
cuse only of acts of humanity and charity 
forbidden by their laws. They chose to 
spare the wretched Burton, in order that he 
might swear away the lives of others for 
having preserved his own. Eight judges, 
of whom Jeffreys was no longer one, sat on 
these deplorable trials. Roger North, known 
as a contributor to our history, was an active 
counsel against the benevolent and courage- 
ous Mrs. Gaunt. William Penn was present 
when she was burnt alive,* and having 
familiar access to James, is likely to have 
related to him the particulars of that and of 
the other executions at the same time. At 
the stake, she disposed the straw around her, 
so as to shorten her agony by a strong and 
quick fire, with a composure which melted 
the spectators into tears. She thanked God 
that he had enabled her to succour the deso- 
late ; that " the blessing of those who were 
ready to perish" came upon her ; and that, 
in the act for which she was doomed by men 
to destruction, she had obeyed the sacred 
precepts which commanded her " to hide the 
outcast, and not to betray him that wander- 
eth." Thus was this poor and uninstructed 
woman supported under a death of cruel 
torture, by the lofty consciousness of suffer- 
ing for righteousness, and by that steadfast 
faith in the final triumph of justice which 
can never visit the last moments of the op- 
pressor. The dying speeches of the prisoners 
executed in London were suppressed, and 
the outrages offered to the remains of the 



* Clarkson, Life of Penn, vol. i. p. 448. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



283 



dead were carried to an unusual degree.* 
The body of Richard Rumbold, who had 
been convicted and executed at Edinburgh, 
under a Scotch law. was brought up to Lon- 
don. The sheriffs of London were com- 
manded, by a royal warrant, to set up one of 
the quarters on one of the gates of the city, 
and to deliver the remaining three to the 
sheriff of Hertford, who was directed by 
another warrant to place them at or near 
Rumbold's late residence at the Rye House jf 
— impotent but studied outrages, which often 
manifest more barbarity of nature than do 
acts of violence to the living. 

The chief restraint on the severity of Jef- 
freys seems to have arisen from his rapacity. 
Contemporaries of all parties agree that there 
were few gratuitous pardons, and that wealthy 
convicts seldom sued to him in vain. Kiffin, 
a Nonconformist merchant, had agreed to 
give 3000Z. to a courtier for the pardon of 
two youths of the name of Luson, his grand- 
sons, who had been in Monmouth's army. 
But Jeffreys guarded his privilege of selling 
pardons, by unrelenting rigour towards those 
prisoners from whom mercy had thus been 
sought through another channel. t He was 
attended on his circuit by a buffoon, to whom, 
as a reward for his merriment in one of his 
hours of revelry, he tossed the pardon of a 
rich culprit, expressing his hope that it might 
turn to good account. But this traffic in 
mercy was not confined to the Chief Justice : 
the King pardoned Lord Grey to increase the 
value of the grant of his life-estate, which 
had been made to Lord Rochester. The 
young women of Taunton, who had pre- 
sented colours and a Bible to Monmouth, 
were excepted by name from the general 
pardon, in order that they might purchase 
separate ones. To aggravate this indecency, 
the money to be thus extorted from them 
was granted to persons of their own sex. — 
the Queen's maids of honour; and it must 
be added with regret, that William Penn, 
sacrificing other objects to the hope of ob- 
taining the toleration of his religion from the 
King's favour, was appointed an agent for the 
maids of honour, and submitted to receive 
instructions "to make the most advantage- 
ous composition he could in their behalf."§ 
The Duke of Somerset in vain attempted to 
persuade Sir Francis Warre, a neighbouring 
gentleman, to obtain 7000Z. from the young 
women, without which, he said, the maids 
of honour were determined to prosecute 
them to outlawry. Roger Hoare. an eminent 
trader of Bridgewater, saved his life by the 
payment to them of 1000L ; but he was kept 
in suspense respecting his pardon till he came 



* Narcissus Luttrell, 16th Nov., 1685. 

t Warrants, 27th and 28th October, 1685. — State 
Paper Office. One quarter was to be put up at 
Aldgate ; the remaining three at Hoddesdon, the 
Rye, and Bishop's Stortford. 

t Kiffin's Memoirs, p. 54. See answer of Kiffin 
to .lames, ibid. p. 159. 

§ Lord Sunderland to William Penn, 13th Feb. 
1686.— State Paper Office. 



to the foot of the gallows, for no other con- 
ceivable purpose than that of extorting the 
largest possible sum. This delay caused the 
inseition of his execution in the first narra- 
tives of these events : but he lived to take 
the most just revenge on tyrants, by con- 
tributing, as representative in several Par- 
liaments for his native town, to support that 
free government which prevented the re- 
storation of tyranny. 

The same disposition was shown by the 
King and his ministers in the case of Mr. 
Hampden, the grandson of him who. forty 
years before, had fallen in battle for the lib- 
erties of his country. Though this gentle- 
man had been engaged in the consultations 
of Lord Russell and Mr. Sidney, yet there 
being only one witness against him, he was 
not tried for treason, but was convicted of a 
misdemeanor, and on the evidence of Lord 
Howard condemned to pay a fine of 40,000L 
His father being in possession of the family 
estate, he remained in prison till after Mon- 
mouth's defeat, when he was again brought 
to trial for the same act as high treason, 
under pretence that a second witness had 
been discovered.* It had been secretly ar- 
ranged, that if he pleaded guilty he should 
be pardoned on paying a large sum of money 
to two of the King's favourites. At the ar- 
raignment, both the judges and Mr. Hamp- 
den performed the respective parts which 
the secret agreement required ; he humbly 
entreating their intercession to obtain the 
pardon which he had already secured by 
more effectual means, and they extolling the 
royal mercy, and declaring that the prisoner, 
by his humble confession, had taken the best 
means of qualifying himself to receive it. 
The result of this profanation of the forms 
of justice and mercy was, that Mr. Hampden 
was in a few months allowed to reverse his 
attainder, on payment of a bribe of 60007. 
to be divided between Jeffreys and Father 
Petre, the two guides of the King in the per- 
formance of his duty to God and his people. t 

Another proceeding, of a nature still more 
culpable, showed the same union of merce- 
nary with sanguinary purposes in the King 
and his ministers. Prideaux, a gentleman 
of fortune in the West of England, was ap- 
prehended on the landing of Monmouth, for 
no other reason than that his father had been 
attorney-general under the Commonwealth 
and the Protectorate. Jeffreys, actuated 
here by personal motives, employed agents 
through the prisons to discover evidence 
against Prideaux. The lowest prisoners 
were offered their lives, and a sum of 500Z. 
if they would give evidence against him. 
Such, however, was the inflexible morality 
of the Nonconformists, who formed the bulk 
of Monmouth's adherents, that they remained 
unshaken by these offers, amidst the military 

* State Trials, vol. xi. p. 479. 

t Lords' Journals, 20th Dec. 1689. This docu- 
ment has been overlooked by all historians, who, 
in consequence, have misrepresented the conduct 
of Mr. Hampden. 



284 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



violence which surrounded them, and in spite 
of the judicial rigours which were to follow. 
Prideaux was enlarged. Jeffreys himself, 
however, was able to obtain some informa- 
tion, though not upon oath, from two convicts 
under the influence of the terrible proceed- 
ings at Dorchester;* and Prideaux was again 
apprehended. The convicts were brought 
to London ; and one of them was conducted 
to a private interview with the Lord Chan- 
cellor, by Sir Roger L'Estrange, the most 
noted writer in the pay of the Court. Pri- 
deaux, alarmed at these attempts to tamper 
with witnesses, employed the influence of 
his friends to obtain his pardon. The motive 
for Jeffreys' unusual activity was then dis- 
covered. Prideaux's friends were told that 
nothing could be done for him, as (: the King 
had given him" (the familiar phrase for a 
grant of an estate either forfeited or about to 
be forfeited) to the Chancellor, as a reward 
for his services. On application to one Jen- 
nings, the avowed agent of the Chancellor 
for the sale of pardons, it was found that 
Jeffreys, unable to procure evidence on 
which he could obtain the whole of Pri- 
deaux's large estates by a conviction, had 
now resolved to content himself with a bribe 
of 10,000Z. for the deliverance of a man so 
innocent, that by the formalities of law, per- 
verted as they then were, the Lord Chancel- 
lor could not effect his destruction. Payment 
of so large a sum was at first resisted ; but 
to subdue this contumacy, Prideaux's friends 
were forbidden to have access to him in pri- 
son, and his ransom was raised to 15,0007. 
The money was then publicly paid by a 
banker to the Lord Chancellor of England by 
name. Even in the administration of the 
iniquitous laws of confiscation, there are 
probably few instances where, with so much 
premeditation and effrontery, the spoils of 
an accused man were promised first to the 
judge, who might have tried him, and after- 
wards to the Chancellor who was to advise 
the King in the exercise of mercy .f 

Notwithstanding the perjury of Rumsey in 
the case of Cornish, a second experiment 
was made on the effect of his testimony by 
producing him, together with Lord Grey and 
one Saxton, as a witness against Lord Bran- 
don on a charge of treason.! The accused 
was convicted, ami Rumsey was still allowed 
to correspond confidentially with the Prime 
Minister^ to whom he even applied for 
money. But when the infamy of Rumsey 
became notorious, and when Saxton had per- 
jured himself on the subsequent trial of Lord 
Delamere. it was thought proper to pardon 
Lord Brandon, against whom no testimony 
remained but that of Lord Grey, who, when 

* Sunderland to Jeffreys, 14th Sept. 1685.— 
State Paper Office. 

t Commons' Journals, 1st May, 1689. 

X Narcissus Luttrell, 25;h Nov., 1685; which, 
though very short, is more full than any published 
account of Lord Brandon's trial. 

$ Rumsey to Lord Sunderland, Oct. 1685, and 
Jan. 1686.— State Paper Office. 



he made his confession, is said to have stipu- 
lated that no man should be put to death on 
his evidence. But Brandon was not enlarged 
on bail till fourteen months, nor was his par- 
don completed till two years after his trial.* 

The only considerable trial which remained 
was that of Lord Delamere, before the Lord 
Steward (Jeffreys) and thirty peers. Though 
this nobleman was obnoxious and formidable 
to the Court, the proof of the falsehood and 
infamy of Saxton, the principal witness 
against him, was so complete, that he was 
unanimously acquitted ; — a remarkable and 
almost solitary exception to the prevalent 
proceedings of courts of law at that time, 
arising partly from a proof of the falsehood 
of the charge more clear than can often be 
expected, and partly perhaps from the fel- 
low-feeling of the judges with the prisoner, 
and from the greater reproach to which an 
unjust judgment exposes its authors, when 
in a conspicuous station. 

The administration of justice in state pro- 
secutions is one of the surest tests of good 
government. The judicial proceedings which 
have been thus carefully and circumstantially 
related afford a specimen of those evils from 
which England was delivered by the Revo- 
lution. As these acts were done with the 
aid of juries, and without the censure of Par- 
liament, they also afford a fatal proof that 
judicial forms and constitutional establish- 
ments may be rendered unavailing by the 
subserviency or the prejudices of those who 
are appointed to carry them into effect. The 
wisest institutions may become a dead letter, 
and may even, for a time, be converted into 
a shelter and an instrument of tyranny, when 
the sense of justice and the love of liberty 
are weakened in the minds of a people. 



CHAPTER II. 

Dismissal of Halifax. — Meeting of Parlia- 
ment. — Debates on the Address. — Proroga- 
tion of Parliament. — Habeas Corpus Act. — 
State of the Catholic Party. — Character of 
the Queen. — Of Catherine Sedley. — Attempt 
to Support tli.c Dispensing Power by a Judg- 
ment of a Court of Law. — Godden V. Hales. 
— Consideration of the Arguments. — Attack 
on the Church. — Establishment of the Court 
of Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes. — 
Advancement of Catholics to Offices. — Inter- 
course with Ro7iic. 

The general appearance of submission 
which followed the suppression of the revolt, 
and the punishment of the revolters, encour- 
aged the King to remove from office the 
Marquis of Halifax, with whose liberal opi- 
nions he had recently as well as early been 
dissatisfied, and whom he suffered to remain 
in place at his accession, only as an example 
that old opponents might atone for their of- 

* Narcissus Luttrell, Jan. and Oct. 1687. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



285 



fences by compliance.* A different policy 
was adopted in a situation of more strength. 
As the King found that Halifax would not 
comply with his projects, he determined 
to dismiss him before the meeting of Par- 
liament; — an act of vigour which it was 
thought would put an end to division in his 
councils, and prevent discontented ministers 
from countenancing a resistance to his mea- 
sures. When he announced this resolution 
to Barillon, he added, that "his design was 
to obtain a repeal of the Test and Habeas 
Corpus Acts, of which the former was de- 
structive of the Catholic religion, and the 
other of the royal authority ; that Halifax 
had not the firmness to support the good 
cause, and that he would have less power 
of doing harm if he were disgraced."! James 
had been advised to delay the dismissal till 
after the session, that the opposition of Hali- 
fax might be modeiated, if not silenced, by 
the restraints of high office; but he thought 
that his authority would be more strength- 
ened, by an example of a determination to 
keep no terms with any one who did not 
show an unlimited compliance with his 
wishes. "I do not suppose," said the King 
1o Barillon with a smile, '-'that the King your 
master will be sorry for the removal of Hali- 
fax. I know that it will mortify the minis- 
ters of the allies." Nor was he deceived in 
either of these respects. The news was 
received with satisfaction by Louis, and with 
dismay by the. ministers of the Empire, of 
Spain, and of Holland, who lost their only 
advocate in the councils of England.!' It 
excited wonder and alarm among those Eng- 
lishmen who were zealously attached to their 
religion and liberty. § Though Lord Halifax 
had no share in the direction of public affairs 
sinoe the King's accession, his removal was 
an important event in the eye of the public, 
and gave him a popularity which he pre- 
served by independent and steady conduct 
during the sequel of James' reign. 

It is remarkable that, on the meeting of 
Parliament (9th November) little notice was 
taken of the military and judicial excesses 
in the West. Sir Edward Seymour applaud- 
ed the punishment of the rebels ; and Wal- 
ler alone, a celebrated wit, an ingenious 
poet ; the father of parliamentary oratory, and 
one of the refiners of the English language, 
thouah now in his eightieth year, arraigned 
the violence of the soldiers with a spirit stdl 
unextinguished. He probably intended to 
excite a discussion which might gradually 
have reached the more deliberate and inex- 
cusable faults of the judges^ But the opi- 
nions and policy of his audience defeated his 
generous purpose. The prevalent party look- 
ed with little disapprobation on severities 
which fell on Nonconformists and supposed 



* Barillon. 5th March, 1685. — Fox.app. p. xlvii. 
[\n these dales the new style only is observed. — 
Ed.] 

t Barillon, 20th October. — Ibid. p. cxxvii. 

t Barillon, 5th November. — Ibid. p. cxxx. 

^ Barillon> 1st March. — Ibid. p. xxxviii. 



Republicans. Many might be base enough 
to feel little compassion for sufferers in the 
humbler classes of society; some were pro- 
bably silenced by a pusillanimous dread of 
being said to be the abbettors of rebels; and 
all must have been, in some measure, influ- 
enced by an undue and excessive degree of 
that wholesome respect for judicial proceed- 
ings, which is one of the characteristic vir- 
tues of a free country. This disgraceful 
silence is, perhaps, somewhat extenuated by 
the slow circulation of intelligence at that 
period ; by the censorship which imposed 
silence on the press, or enabled the ruling 
party to circulate falsehood through its 
means ; and by the eagerness of all parties 
for a discussion of the alarming tone and 
principles of the speech from the throne. 

The King began his speech by observing 
that the late events must convince every 
one that the militia was not sufficient, and 
that nothing but a good force of well-disci- 
plined troops, in constant pay, could secure 
the government against enemies abroad and 
at home; and that for this purpose he had 
increased their number, and now asked a 
supply for the great charge of maintaining 
them. "Let no man take exception," he 
continued, "that there are some officers in 
the army not qualified, according to the late 
tests, for their employments ; the gentlemen 
are, I must tell you, most of them well known 
to me: they have approved the loyalty of 
their principles by their practice : and I will 
deal plainly with you, that after having had 
the benefit of their services in such a time 
of need and danger, I will neither expose 
them to disgrace, nor myself to the want of 
them, if there should be another rebellion to 
make them necessary to me." Nothing but 
the firmest reliance on the submissive dis- 
position of the Parliament could have induced 
James to announce to them his determina- 
tion to bid defiance to the laws. He probably 
imagined that the boldness with which he 
asserted the power of the crown would be 
applauded by many, and endured by most 
of the members of such a Parliament. But 
never was there a more remarkable example 
of the use of a popular assembly, however 
ill composed, in extracting from the disunion, 
jealousy, and ambitition of the victorious 
enemies of liberty, a new opposition to the 
dangerous projects of the Crown. The vices 
of politicians were converted into an imper- 
fect substitute for virtue; and though the 
friends of the constitution were few and fee- 
ble, the inevitable divisions of their oppo- 
nents in some degree supplied their place. 

The disgrace of Lord Halifax disheartened 
and evenoffended some supporters of Go- 
vernment. Sir Thomas Clarges, a determin- 
ed Tory, was displeased at the merited re- 
moval of his nephew, the Duke of Albemarle, 
from the command of the army against Mon- 
mouth. Nottingham, a man of talent and 
ambition, more a Tory than a courtier, was 
dissatisfied with his own exclusion from 
office, and jealous of Rochester's ascendency 



286 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



over the Church party. His relation Finch, 
though solicitor-general, took a part against 
the Court. The projects of the Crown were 
thwarted by the friends of Lord Danby, who 
had forfeited all hopes of the King's favour 
by communicating the Popish Plot to the 
House of Commons, and by his share in the 
marriage of the Princess Mary with the 
Prince of Orange. Had the King's first at- 
tack been made on civil liberty, the Oppo- 
sition might have been too weak to embolden 
all these secret and dispersed discontents to 
display themselves, and to combine together. 
But the attack on the exclusive privileges of 
the Church of England, while it alienated 
the main force of the Crown, touched a point 
on which all the subdivisions of discontented 
Tories professed to agree, and afforded them 
a specious pretext for opposing the King, 
without seeming to deviate from their an- 
cient principles. They were gradually dis- 
posed to seek or accept the assistance of the 
defeated Whigs, and the names of Sir Rich- 
ard Temple, Sir John Lowther, Sergeant 
Maynard. and Mr. Hampden, appear at last 
more and more often in the proceedings. 
Thus admirably does a free constitution not 
only command the constant support of the 
wise and virtuous, but often compel the low 
jealousies and mean intrigues of disappointed 
ambition to contend for its preservation. The 
consideration of the King's speech was post- 
poned for three days, in spite of a motion for 
its immediate consideration by Lord Preston, 
a secretary of state. 

In the committee of the whole House on 
the speech, which occurred on the 12th, two 
resolutions were adopted, of which the first 
was friendly, and the second was adverse, 
to the Government. It was resolved "that 
a supply be granted to his Majesty," and 
"that a bill be brought in to render the 
militia more useful." The first of these 
propositions has seldom been opposed since 
the government has become altogether de- 
pendent on the annual grants of Parliament ; 
it was more open to debate on a proposal for 
extraordinary aid, and it gave rise to some 
important observations. Clarges declared he 
had voted against the Exclusion, because he 
did not believe its supporters when they fore- 
told that a Popish king would have a Popish 
army. "I am afflicted greatly at this breach 
of our liberties ; what is struck at here is our 
all." Sir Edward Seymour observed, with 
truth, that to dispense with the Test was to re- 
lease the King from all law. Encouraged by 
the bold language of these Tories, old Serjeant 
Maynard said, that the supply was asked for 
the maintenance of an army which was to be 
officered against a law made, not for the pun- 
ishment of Papists, but for the defence of Pro- 
testants. The accounts of these important 
debates are so scanty, that w : e may, without 
much presumption, suppose the venerable 
lawyer to have at least alluded to the recent 
origin of the Test (to which the King had dis- 
paragingly adverted in his speech), as the 
strongest reason for its strict observance. Had 



it been an ancient law, founded on general 
considerations u( policy, it might have been 
excusable to relax its rigour from a regard to 
the circumstances and feelings of the King. 
But having been recently provided as a 
security against the specific dangers appre- 
hended from his accession to the throne, it 
was to the last degree unreasonable to re- 
move or suspend it at the moment when 
those very dangers had reached their highest 
pitch. Sir Richard Temple spoke warmly 
against standing armies, and of the necessity 
of keeping the Crown dependent on parlia- 
mentary grants. He proposed the resolution 
for the improvement of ihe militia, with 
which the courtiers concurred. Clarges 
moved as an amendment on the vote of sup- 
ply, the words, for the additional forces," — 
to throw odium on the ministerial vote ; but 
this adverse amendment was negatived by a 
majority of seventy in a house of three hun- 
dred and eighty-one. On the 13th, the minis- 
ters proposed to instruct the committee of the 
whole House on the King's speech, to con- 
sider, first, the paragraph of the speech which 
contained the demand of supply. They 
were defeated by a majority of a hundred 
and eighty-three to a hundred and eighty- 
two ; and the committee resolved to take 
into consideration, first, the succeeding para- 
graph, which related to the officers illegally 
employed.* On the 16th, an address was 
brought up from the committee, setting forth 
the legal incapacity of the Catholic officers, 
which could only be removed by an Act of 
Parliament, offering to indemnify them from 
the penalties they had incurred, but, as their 
continuance would be taken to be a dis- 
pensing with the law, praying that the King 
would be pleased not to continue thtm in 
their employments. The House, having 
substituted the milder words, "that he would 
give such directions therein as that no ap- 
prehensions or jealousies might remain in 
the hearts of his subjects," unanimously 
adopted the address. A supply of seven 
hundred thousand pounds was voted : — a 
medium between twelve hundred thousand 
required by ministers, and two hundred 
thousand proposed by the most rigid of their 
opponents. The danger of standing armies 
to liberty, and the wisdom of such limited 
grants as should compel the Crown to recur 
soon and often to the House of Commons, 
were the general arguments used for the 
smaller sum. The courtiers urged the ex- 



* " The Earl of Middleton, ihen a secretary of 
state, seeing many go out upon the division against 
the Court who were in the service of Government, 
went down to the bar and reproached them to 
their faces for voting as they did. He said to a 
Captain Kendal, ' Sir, have you not a troop of 
horse in his Majesty's service?' ' Yes, sir,' said 
the other: 'but my brother died last night, and 
tins left me seven hundred pounds a year.' This 
I had from my uncle, ihe first Lord Onslow, who 
was then a member of the House, and present. 
This incident upon one vote very likely saved ihe 
nation.— Burnet (Oxford, 1823), vol.' hi. p. 86. 
Note by Speaker Onslow. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



287 



ample of the late revolt, the superiority of 
disciplined troops over an inexperienced 
militia, the necessity arising from the like 
practice of all other states, and the revolution 
in the art of war. which had rendered pro- 
ficiency in it unattainable, except by tliose 
who studied and practised it as the profes- 
sion of their lives. The most practical ob- 
servation was that of Sir William Trumbull. 
who suggested that the grant should be 
annual, to make the existence of the army 
annually dependent on the pleasure of Par- 
liament. The ministers, taking advantage 
of the secrecy of foreign negotiations, ven- 
tured to assert that a formidable army in the 
hands of the King was the only check on the 
ambition of France ; though they knew that 
their master was devoted lo Louis XIV., to 
whom he had been recently suing for a 
secret subsidy in the most abject language 
of supplication.* When the address was pre- 
sented, the King answered, with a warmth 
and anger very unusual on such occasions,! 
that "he did not expect such an address; 
that he hoped his reputation would have 
inspired such a confidence in him ; but that, 
whatever they might do, he should adhere 
to all his promises." The reading of this 
answer in the House the next day produced 
a profound silence for some minutes. A 
motion was made by Mr. Wharton to take it 
into consideration, on which Mr. John Cooke 
said, "We are Englishmen, and ought not to 
be frightened from our duty by a few hard 
words. "t Both these gentlemen were Whigs, 
who were encouraged to speak freely by the 
symptoms of vigour which the House had 
shown ; but they soon discovered that they 
had mistaken the temper of their colleagues; 
for the majority, still faithful to the highest 
pretensions of the Crown whenever the Esta- 
blished Church was not averse to them, com- 
mitted Mr. Cooke to the Tower, though he 
disavowed all disrespectful intention, and 
begged pardon of the King and the House. 
Notwithstanding the King's answer, they 
proceeded to provide means of raising the 
supply, and they resumed the consideration 
of a bill for the naturalisation of French Pro- 
testants, — a tolerant measure, the introduc- 
tion of which the zealous partisans of the 
Church had, at first, resisted, as they after- 
wards destroyed the greater part of its bene- 
fit by confining it to those who should con- 
form to the Establishment. § The motion 
for considering the King's speech was not 
pursued, which, together with the proceed- 
ing on supply, seemed to imply a submission 

* Barillon, 16rh Julv. 1685. — Fox, app p. cix. 
" Le Roi me dit que si V. M. avoit quelque chose 
a desirer de Jui. il iroit au devant de tout ce qui 
pent plaire a V. 7VT. ; qu'il avoit eie eleve en 
France, et mange le pain de V. M. ; que son camr 
etoit Francois" Only six weeks before (30th 
Mav), James had tnld his parliament that " he 
had a true English heart." 

t Rereshv, p. 218. Sir John Reresbv, being a 
memher of ihe Hmise, was prnhably present. 

\ Commons' Journals. 18'h Nov. 

i Ibid., 16th June, 1st July. 



to the menacing answer of James ; arising 
principally from the subservient character 
of the majority, but, probably, in some, from 
a knowledge of the vigorous measures about 
to be proposed in the House of Lords. 

At the opening of the Session, that House 
had contented themselves withgeneral thanks 
to the King for his speech, without any allu- 
sion to its contents. Jeffreys, in delivering 
Ihe King's answer, affected to treat this par- 
liamentary courtesy as an approval of the 
substance of the speech. Either on that or 
on the preceding occasion, it was said by 
Lord Halifax or Lord Devonshire (for it is 
ascribed to both), "that they had now more 
reason than ever to give thanks to his Majesty 
for having dealt so plainly with them." The 
House, not called upon to proceed as the 
other House was by the demand of supply, 
continued inactive for a few days, till they 
were roused by the imperious answer of the 
King to the Commons. On the 19th, the 
day of that answer, Lord Devonshire moved 
to take into consideration the dangerous con- 
sequences of an army kept up against law. 
He was supported by Halifax, by Notting- 
ham, and by Anglesea, who, in a very ad- 
vanced age, still retained that horror of the 
yoke of Rome, which he had found means 
to reconcile with frequent acquiescence in 
the civil policy of Charles and James. Lord 
Mordaunt, more known as Earl of Peter- 
borough, signalised himself by the youthful 
spirit of his speech. "Let us not," he said, 
" like the House of Commons, speak of jea- 
lousy and distrust : ambiguous measures in- 
spire these feelings. What we now see is 
not ambiguous. A standing army is on foot, 
filled with officers, who cannot be allowed 
to serve without overthrowing the laws. To 
keep up a standing army when there is 
neither civil nor foreign war, is to establish 
that arbitrary government which Englishmen 
hold in such just abhorrence." Compton, 
Bishop of London, a prelate of noble birth 
and military spirit, who had been originally 
an officer in the Guards, spoke for the mo- 
tion in the name of all his brethren on the 
episcopal bench, who considered the security 
of the Church as involved in the issue of the 
question. He was influenced not only by the 
feelings of his order, but by his having been 
the preceptor of the Princesses Mary and 
Anne, who were deeply interested in the 
maintenance of the Protestant Church, as 
well as conscientiously attached to it. Jef- 
freys was the principal speaker on the side 
of the Court. He urged the thanks already 
voted as an approval of Ihe speech. His scur- 
rilous invectives, and the tones and gestures 
of menace with which he was accustomed 
to overawe juries, roused the indignation, in- 
stead of commanding the acquiescence, of 
the Lords. As this is a deporlment which 
cuts off all honourable retreat, the contempo- 
rary accounts are very probable which repre- 
sent him as sinking at once from insolence 
to meanness. His defeat must have been 
signal ; for, in an unusually full House of 



288 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



Lords,* after so violent an opposition by the 
Chancellor of England, the motion for taking 
the address into consideration was, on the 
23d, carried without a division.! 

On the next day the King prorogued the 
Parliament; which never again, was assem- 
bled but for the formalities of successive 
prorogations, by which its legal existence 
was prolonged for two years. By this act 
he lost the subsidy of seven hundred thou- 
sand pounds : but his situation had become 
difficult. Though money was employed to 
corrupt some of the opponents of his mea- 
sures, the Opposition was daily gaining 
strength.} By rigorous economy, by divert- 
ing- parliamentary aids from the purposes for 
which they were granted, the King had the 
means of maintaining the army, though his 
ministers had solemnly affirmed that he had 
not.§ He was full of maxims for the neces- 
sity of firmness and the dangers of conces- 
sion, which were mistaken by others, and 
perhaps by himself, for proofs of a vigorous 
character. He had advanced too far to re- 
cede with tolerable dignity. The energy 
manifested by the House of Lords would 
have compelled even the submissive Com- 
mons to co-operate with them, which might 
have given rise to a more permanent coalition 
of the High Church party with the friends of 
liberty. A suggestion had been thrown out in 
the Lords to desire the opinion of the judges 
on the right of the King to commission the Ca- 
tholic officers;!! and it was feared that the 
terrors of impeachment might, during the sit- 
ting of Parliament, draw an opinion from these 
magistrates against the prerogative, which 
might afterwards prove irrevocable. To re- 
concile Parliament to the officers became 



* The attendance was partly caused by a call of 
the House, ordered for the trials of Lords Stam- 
ford and Delamere. There were present on the 
19ih November, seventy-five temporal and twenty 
spiritual lords. On the call, two days before, it 
appeared that forty were either minors, abroad, or 
confined by sickness ; six had sent proxies; two 
were prisoners for treason ; and thirty absent with- 
out any special reason, of whom the great majority 
were disabled as Catholics : so that very few peers, 
legally and physically capable of attendance, were 
absent. 

t Barillon, 3d Dec— Fox MSS. This is the 
only distinct narrative of the proceedings of this 
important and decisive day. Burnet was then on 
the Continent, but I have endeavoured to com- 
bine his account with that of Barillon. 

t Barillon, 26th Nov. — Fox, app. p. exxxix. 

$ Barillon, 13th Dec— Fox MSS. The expen- 
ses of the army of Charles had been 280,000/.; 
that of James was 600,000/. The difference of 
320 000/ was, according to Barillon, thus provided 
for: 100.000Z., the income of James as Duke of 
York, which he still preserved ; 800.000/. granted 
to pay the debts of Charles, which, as the King 
wan to pay the dtbtx an he thought fit. would yield 
for some years 100.000/.; 800^000/. granted for the 
navy and ihe arsenals, on which the King might 
proceed slowly, or even do 7iolhing; 400.000/. for 
the suppression of the rebellion. As these Inst 
'funds were not to come into the Exchequer for 
some years, they were estimated as producing an- 
nually more than sufficient to cover the deficiency. 

II Barillon, lOih Dec— Fox MSS. 



daily more hopeless : to sacrifice those who 
had adhered to the King in a time of need 
appeared to be an example dangerous to all 
his projects, whether of enlarging his pre- 
rogative, or of securing, and, perhaps, finally 
establishing, his religion. 

Thus ended the active proceedings of a 
Parliament which, in all that did not concern 
Ihe Church, justified the most sanguine hopes 
that James could have formed of their sub- 
mission to the Court, as well as their attach- 
ment to the monarchy. A body of men so 
subservient as that House of Commons could 
hardly be brought together by any mode of 
election or appointment; and James was 
aware that, by this angry prorogation, he 
had rendered it difficult for himself for a long 
time to meet another Parliament. The Ses- 
sion had lasted only eleven days; during 
which the eyes of Europe had been anxious- 
ly turned towards their proceedings. Louis 
XIV., not entirely relying on the sincerity or 
steadiness of James, was fearful that he might 
yield to the Allies or to his people, and in- 
structed Barillon in that case to open a negoti- 
ation with leading members of the Commons, 
that they might embarrass the policy of the 
King, if it became adverse to France.* Spain 
and Holland, on the other hand, hoped, that 
any compromise between the King and Par- 
liament would loosen the ties that bound the 
former to France. It was even hoped that 
he might form a triple alliance with Spain 
and Sweden, and large sums of money were 
secretly offered to him to obtain his acces- 
sion to such an alliance.! Three days before 
the meeting of Parliament, had arrived in 
London Monsignor D'Adda, a Lombard pre- 
late of distinction, as the known, though then 
unavowed, minister of the See of Rome,t 
which was divided between the interest of 
the Catholic Church of England and the ani- 
mosity of Innocent XL against Louis XIV. 
All these solicitudes, and precautions, and 
expectations, were suddenly dispelled by 
the unexpected rupture between James and 
his Parliament. 

From the temper and opinions of that Par- 
liament it is reasonable to conclude, that the 
King would have been rnoae successful if he 
had chosen to make his first attack on the 
Habeas Corpus Act, instead of directing it 
against the Test. Both these laws were then 
only of a few years' standing; and he, as 
well as his brother, held them both in ab- 
horrence. The Test gave exclusive privi- 
leges to the Established Church, and was, 
therefore, dear to the adherents of that pow- 
erful body. The Habeas Corpus Act was 
not then the object of that attachment and 
veneration which experience of its unspeaka- 
ble benefits for a hundred and fifty years has 
since inspired. The most ancient of our 
fundamental laws had declared the princi- 



* Louis to Barillon, 19th Nov. — Fox, app. p. 
exxxvi. 

t Barillon, 26th Nov. — Fox, app. p. exxxix. 

t D'Adda to the Pope 19th Nov.— D'Adda 
MSS. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



289 



pie that no freeman could be imprisoned 
without legal authority.* The immemorial 
antiquity of the writ of Habeas Corpus, — an 
order of a court of justice to a jailer to bring 
the body of a prisoner before them, that 
there might be an opportunity of examining 
whether his apprehension and detention 
were legal, — seems to prove that this princi- 
pal was coeval with the law of England. In 
irregular times, however, it had been often 
violated; and the judges under Charles I. 
pronounced a judgment,! which, if it had 
not been condemned by the Petition of 
Right,t would have vested in the Crown a 
legal power of arbitrary imprisonment. By 
the statute which abolished the Star Cham- 
ber, the Parliament of 1641§ made some im- 
portant provisions to facilitate deliverance 
from illegal imprisonment. For eleven years 
Lord Shaftesbury struggled to obtain a law 
which should complete the securities of per- 
sonal liberty ; and at length that great though 
not blameless man obtained the object of his 
labours, and bestowed on his country the most 
perfect security against arbitrary imprison- 
ment which has ever been enjoyed by any 
society of men. II It has banished that most 
dangerous of all modes of oppression from 
England. It has effected that great object 
as quietly as irresistibly; it has never in a 
single instance been resisted or evaded ; and 
it must be the model of all nations who aim 
at securing that personal liberty without 
which no other liberty can subsist. But in 
the year 1685, it appeared to the predominant 
party an odious novelty, an experiment un- 
tried in any other nation, — carried throuah, 
in a period of popular frenzy, during the short 
triumph of a faction hostile to Church and 
State, and by him who was the most ob- 
noxious' of all the demagogues of the age. 
There were then, doubtless, many, — perhaps 
the majority, — of the partisans of authority 
who believed, with Charles and James, that 
to deprive a government of all power to im- 
prison the suspected and the dangerous, un- 
less there was legal ground of charge against 
them, was incompatible with the peace of 
society; and this opinion was the more dan- 
gerous because it was probably conscien- 
tious.1T In this state of things it may seem 
singular that James did not first propose the 
repeal of the Habeas Corpus Act, by which 

* Magna Charta, c. 29. 

t The famous case of commitments " by the 
special command of the King," which last words 
the Court of King's Bench determined to be a suf- 
ficient cause for detaining a prisoner in custody, 
without any specification of an offence. — State 
Trials, vol. iii. p. 1. 

X 3 Car. I. c i. $ 16 Car. I. c. 10. 

1131 C. II. c. 2. 

IT James retained this opinion till his death. — 
"It was a great misfortune to the people, as well 
as to the Crown, the passing of the Habeas Cor- 
pus Act, since it obliges the Crown to keep a 
greater force on foot to preserve the government, 
and encourages disaffected, turbulent, and unquiet 
spirits to carry on their wicked designs : it was 
contrived and carried on by the Earl of Shaftes- 
bury to that intent." — Life, vol. ii. p. 621. 
37 



he would have gained the means of silencing 
opposition to all his other projects. What the 
fortunate circumstances were which poitited 
his attack against the Test, we are not en- 
abled by contemporary evidence to ascertain. 
He contemplated that measure with peculiar 
resentment, as a personal insult to himself, 
and as chiefly, if not solely, intended as a 
safeguard against the dangers apprehended 
from h s succession. He considered it as the 
most urgent object of his policy to obtain a 
repeal of it; which would enable him to put 
the administration, and especially the army, 
into the hands of those who were devoted 
by the strongest of all ties to his service, and 
whose power, honour, and even safety, were 
involved in his success. An army composed 
of Catholics must have seemed the most 
effectual of all the instruments of power in 
his hands ; and it is no wonder that he should 
hasten to obtain it. Had he been a lukewarm 
or only a professed Catholic, an armed force, 
whose interests were the same with his own, 
might reasonably have been considered as 
that which it was in the first place necessary 
to secure. Charles II., with a loose belief in 
Popery, and no zeal for it, was desirous of 
strengthening its interests, in order to enlarge 
his own power. As James was a conscien- 
tious and zealous Catholic, it is probable that 
he was influenced in every measure of his 
government by religion, as well as ambition. 
Both these motives coincided in their object : 
his absolute power was the only security for 
his religion, and a Catholic army was the most 
effectual instrument for the establishment of 
absolute power. In such a case of combined 
motives, it miaht have been difficult for him- 
self to determine which predominated on any 
single occasion. Sunderland, whose sagacity 
and religious indifference are alike unques- 
tionable, observed to Barillon, that on mere 
principles of policy James could have no 
object more at heart than to strengthen the 
Catholic religion ;* — an observation which, 
as long as the King himself continued to be 
a Catholic, seems, in the hostile temper which 
then prevailed among all sects, to have had 
great weight. 

The best reasons for human actions are 
often not their true motives : but. in spite of 
the event, it does not seem difficult to de- 
fend the detetmination of the King on those 
grounds, merely political, which, doubtless, 
had a considerable share in producing it. It 
is not easy to ascertain how far his plans in 
favour of his religion at that time extended. 
A great division of opinion prevailed among 
the Catholics themselves on this subject. 
The most considerable and opulent laymen 
of that communion, willing to secure mode- 
rate advantages, and desirous to employ their 
superiority with such forbearance as might 
provoke no new severities under a Protestant 
successor, would have been content with a 
repeal of the penal laws, without insisting 
on an abrogation of the Test. The friends 

* Barillon, 16th Julv. — Fox, app. p. ciii. 
Z 



290 



.MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



of Spain and Austria, with all the enemies 
oi' the French connection, inclined strongly 
to a policy which, by preventing a rupture 
between the King and Parliament, might 
enable, and. perhaps, dispose him to espouse 
the cause of European independence. The 
Sovereign Pontiff himself was of this party; 
and the war) politicians of the court of Rome 
ed then- English friends to calm and 
slow proceedings : though the Papal minister, 
with a circumspection and reserve required 
by the combination of a theological with a 
diplomatic character, abstained from taking 
any open pari in the division, where it would 
have been hard lor him to escape the impu- 
tation of being either a lukewarm Catholic 
or an imprudent counsellor. The Catholic 
lords who were ambitious of office, the 
Jesuits, and especially the King's confessor, 
together with all the partisans of France, 
supported extreme counsels better suited to 
the temper of James, whose choice of poli- 
tical means was guided by a single maxim, 
— that violence (which he confounded with 
vigour) was the only safe policy for an Eng- 
lish monarch. Their most specious argument 
was the necessity of taking such decisive 
measures to strengthen the Catholics during 
the King's life as would effectually secure 
them against the hostility of his successor.* 
The victory gained by this party over the 
moderate Catholics, as well as the Protestant 
Tories, was rendered more speedy and deci- 
sive by some intrigues of the Court, which 
have not hitherto been fully known to histo- 
rians. Mary of Este, the consort of James, 
was married at the age of fifteen, and had 
been educated in such gross ignorance, that 
she never had heard of the name of England 
until it was made known to her on that occa- 
sion. She had been trained to a rigorous ob- 
servance of all the practices of her religion, 
which sunk more deeply into her heart, and 
more constantly influenced her conduct, than 
was usual among the Italian princesses. On 
her arrival in England, she betrayed a child- 
ish aversion to James, which was quickly 
converted into passionate fondness. But nei- 
ther her attachment nor her beauty could fix 
the heart of that inconstant prince, who re- 
conciled a warm zeal for his religion with an 
habitual indulgence in those pleasures which 
it most forbids. Her life was embittered by 
the triumph of mistresses, and by the fre- 
quency of her own perilous and unfruitful 
pregnancies. Her most formidable rival, at the 
period of the accession, was Catherine Sedley. 
a woman of few personal attractions,! who 
inherited the wit and vivacity of her father, 



* Barillon, 12th Nov. — Fox. app. p. cxxxiv. — 
Barillon, 31st Dec— Fox MSS. Burnet, vol. i. p. 
661. The coincidence of Burnet with the more 
ample account of Barillon is an additional confir- 
mation of the substantial accuracy of the honest 
prelate. 

t " Flic a hcaucoup d'esprit et d,e la vivacite, 
mais elle n'a plus aucune beaute, et esi d'une ex- 
treme maigreur." Barillon, 7th Feb. 1686.— Fox 
MSS. The insinuation of decline is somewhat 
singular, as her father was then only forty-six. 



Sir Charles Sedley, which she unsparingly 
exercised on the priests and opinions of hen 
royal lover. Her character was frank, her 
deportment bold, and her pleasantries more 
amusing than refined.* Soon after his ac- 
cession. James was persuaded to relinquish 
his intercourse with her; and, though she 
retained her lodgings in the palace, he did not 
see her for several months. The connection 
was then secretly renewed, and, in the first 
fervour of a revived passion, the King offered 
to give her the title of Countess of Dorches- 
ter. She declined this invidious distinction, 
assuring him that, by provoking the anger 
of the Queen and of the Catholics, it would 
prove her ruin. He, however, insisted; and 
she yielded, upon condition that, if he was 
ever again prevailed upon to dissolve their 
connection, he should come to her to an- 
nounce his determination in person. t The 
title produced the effects she had foreseen. 
Mary, proud of her beauty, still enamoured 
of her husband, and full of religious horror 
at the vices of Mrs. Sedley. gave way to the 
most clamorous excesses of sorrow and anger 
at the promotion of her competitor. She 
spoke to the King with a violence for which 
she long afterwards reproached herself as a 
grievous fault. At one time she said to him, 
;c Is it possible that you are ready to sacrifice 
a crown for your faith, and cannot discard a 
mistress for it ? Will you for such a passion 
lose the merit of your sacrifices?" On an- 
other occasion she exclaimed, "Give me my 
dowry, make her Queen of England, and let 
me never see her more.' ; J Her transports 
of grief sometimes betrayed her to foreign 
ministers; and she neither ate nor spoke 
with the King at the public dinners of the 
Court. § The zeal of the Queen for the Ca- 
tholic religion, and the profane jests of Lady 
Dorchester against its doctrines and minis- 
ters, had rendered them the leaders of the 
Popish and Protestant parties at Court. The 
Queen was supported by the Catholic clergy, 
who, with wdiatever indulgence their order 
had sometimes treated regal frailty, could 
not remain neuter in a contest between an 
orthodox Queen and an heretical mistress. 
These intrigues early mingled with the de- 
signs of the two ministers, who still appeared 



* These defects are probably magnified in the 
verses of Lord Dorset : 

" Dorinda's sparkling wit and eyes 
United, cast too fierce a light, 
Which blazes high, but quickly dies, 
Pains not the heart, but hurts the sight. 

" Love is a calmer, gentler joy ; 

Smooth are his looks, and soft his pace : 
Her Cupid is a blackguard boy, 

That runs his link full in your face." 

t D' Adda to Cardinal Cybo, 1st Feb.— D'Adda 
MSS. f 

% Memoires Historiques de la Reine d'Angle- 
terre, a MS. formerly in possession of the nuns 
of Chaillot, since in the Archives Generates de 
France. 

% Bonrepaux, 7th Feb. 1686, MSS. Evelyn,, 
vol. i. p. 584. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



291 



to have equal influence in the royal counsels. 
Lord Rochester, who had felt the decline 
of the King's confidence from the day of 
Monmouth's defeat, formed the project of 
supplanting Lord Sunderland, and of reco- 
vering - his ascendant in public affairs through 
the favour of the mistress. Having lived in 
a court of mistresses, and maintained him- 
self in office by compliance with them,* he 
thought it unlikely that wherever a favourite 
mistress existed she could fail to triumph 
over a queen. As the brother of the first 
Duchess of York, Mary did not regard him 
with cordiality : as the leader of the Church 
party, he 'was still more obnoxious to her. 
He and his lady were the principal counsel- 
lors of the mistress. They had secretly ad- 
vised the King to confer on her the title of 
honour, — probably to excite the Queen to 
such violence as might widen the rupture 
between her and the King; and they de- 
clared so openly for her as to abstain for 
several days, during the heat of the contest, 
from paying their respects to the Queen ; — 
a circumstance much remarked at a time 
when the custom w r as still observed, which 
had been introduced by the companionable 
humour of Charles, for the principal nobility 
to appear almost daily at Court. Sunder- 
land, already connected with the Catholic 
favourites, was now more than ever com- 
pelled to make common cause with the 
Queen. His great strength lay in the priests; 
but he also called in the aid of Madame 
Mazarin, a beautiful woman, of weak under- 
standing, but practised in intrigue, who had 
been sought in marriage by Charles II. dur- 
ing his exile, refused by him after his Resto- 
ration, and who, on her arrival in England, 
ten years after, failed in the more humble 
attempt to become his mistress. 

The exhortations of the clergy, seconded 
by the beauty, the affection, and the tears 
of the Queen, prevailed, after a severe strug- 
gle, over the ascendant of Lady Dorchester. 
James sent Lord Middlelon, one of his secre- 
taries of state, to desire that she would leave 
Whitehall, and go to Holland, to which coun- 
try a yacht was in readiness to convey her. 
In a letter written by his own hand, he ac- 
knowledged that he violated his promise ; 
but excused himself by saying, that he w r as 
conscious of not possessing firmness enough 
to stand the test of an interview. She im- 
mediately retired to her house in St. James' 
Square, and offered to go to Scotland or Ire- 
land, or to her father's estate in Kent ; but 
protested against going to the Continent, 
where means might be found of immuring 
her in a convent for life. When threatened 
with being forcibly carried abroad, she ap- 
pealed to the Great Charter against such an 
invasion of the liberty of the subject. The 
contest continued for some time; and the 
King's advisers consented that she should 

* Carte, Life of Ormonde, vol. ii. p. 553. The 
old duke, high-minded as he was, commended 
the prudent accommodation of Rochester. 



go to Ireland, where Rochester's brother was 
Lord Lieutenant. She warned the King of 
his danger, and freely told him, that, if he 
followed the advice of Catholic zealots, he 
would lose his crown. She represented her- 
self as the Protestant martyr; and boasted, 
many years afterwards, that she had neither 
changed her religion, like Lord Sunderland, 
nor even agreed to be present at a disputa- 
tion concerning its truth, like Lord Roches- 
ter.* After the complete victory of the 
Queen, Rochester still preserved his place, 
and affected to represent himself as wholly 
unconcerned in the affair. Sunderland kept 
on decent terms with his rival, and dissem- 
bled his resentment at the abortive intrigue 
for his removal. But the effects of it were 
decisive : it secured the power of Sunder- 
land, rendered the ascendency of the Ca- 
tholic counsellors irresistible, gave them a 
stronger impulse towards violent measures, 
and struck a blow at the declining credit of 
Rochester, from which it never recovered. 
The removal of Halifax was the first step 
towards the new system of administration; 
the defeat of Rochester was the second. In 
the course of these contests, the Bishop of 
London was removed from the Privy Coun- 
cil for his conduct in the House of Peers; 
several members of the House of Commons 
were dismissed from military as well as civil 
offices for their votes in Parliament ; and the 
place of Lord President of the Council was 
bestowed on Sunderland, to add a dignity 
which was then thought wanting to his effi- 
cient office of Secretary of State. t 

The Government now attempted to obtain, 
by the judgments of courts of law, that power 
of appointing Catholic officers which Parlia- 
ment had refused to sanction. Instances had 
occurred in which the Crown had dispensed 
with the penalties of certain laws ; and the 
recognition of this dispensing power, in the 
case of the Catholic officers, by the judges. 
appeared to be an easy mode of establishing 
the legality of their appointments. The King 
was to grant to every Catholic officer a dis- 
pensation from the penalties of the statutes 
which, when adjudged to be agreeable to- 
law by a competent tribunal, might supply 
the place of a repeal of the Test Act. To 
obtain the judgment, it was agreed that an 
action for the penalties should be collusively 
brought against one of these officers, which 
would afford an opportunity to the judges to 
determine that the dispensation was legal. 
The plan had been conceived at an earlier 
period, since (as has been mentioned) one 
of the reasons of the prorogation was an. 



* Halifax MSS. 

t These intrigues are very fully related by Bon- 
repaux, a French minister of talent, at that time 
sent on a secret mission to London, and by Barii- 
lon in his ordinary communications to the King. 
The despatches of the French ministers afford a 
new proof of the good information of Burnet; but 
neither he nor Reresby was aware of the connec- 
tion of the intrigue with the triumph of Sunder 
land over Rochester. 



292 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



apprehension lest the terrors of Parliament 
might obtain from the judges an irrevocable 
opinion against the prerogative. No doubt 
seems to have been entertained of the com- 
pliance of magistrates, who owed their sta- 
tion to the King, who had recently incurred 
so much odium in his service, and who were 
removable at his pleasure.* He thought it 
necessary, however, to ascertain their senti- 
ments. His expectations of their unanimity 
were disappointed. Sir Johjn Jones, who had 
presided at the trial of Mrs. Gaunt, Mon- 
tague who had accompanied Jeffreys in his 
circuit. Sir Job Charlton, a veteran royalist 
of approved zeal for the prerogative. .together 
with Neville, a baron of the Exchequer, de- 
clared their inability to comply with the de- 
sires of the King. Jones answered him with 
dignity worthy of more spotless conduct: — 
"I am not sorry to be removed. It is a re- 
lief to a man old and worn out as I am. But 
I am sorry that your Majesty should have 
expected a judgment from me which none 
but indigent, ignorant, or ambitious men 
could give." James, displeased at this 
freedom, answered, that he would find 
twelve judges of his opinion. "Twelve 
judges, Sir," replied Jones, "you may find ; 
but hardly twelve law r yers." However 
justly these judges are to be condemned 
for their former disregard to justice and hu- 
manity, they deserve great commendation 
for having, on this critical occasion, retained 
their respect for law. James possessed that 
power of dismissing his judges which Louis 
XIV. did not enjoy; and he immediately 
•exercised it by removing the uncomplying 
magistrates, together with two others who 
held the same obnoxious principles. On the 
21st of April, the day before the courts were 
to assemble in Westminster for their ordi- 
nary term, the new judges were appointed ; 
among whom, by a singular hazard, was 
a brother of the immortal John Milton, 
named Christopher, then in the seventieth 
year of his age, who is not known to have 
had any other pretension except that of 
having secretly conformed to the Church of 
Rome.t 

Sir Edward Hales, a Kentish gentleman 
who had been secretly converted to Popery 
at Oxford by his tutor, Obadiah Walker, of 
University College (himself a celebrated 
convert), was selected to be the principal 
actor in the legal pageant for which the 
Bench had been thus prepared. He was 
publicly reconciled to the Church of Rome 

* " Los jnges declareronl qu'il est la preroga- 
tive du Roi de dispenser des peine* portees par la 
loi." Barilloti, 3d Dec— Fox MSSj 

t The conversion of Sir Christopher is, indeed, 
denied by Dodd. ihe very accurate historian of the 
English Catholics. — Church History, vol. iii. p. 
416. To the former concurrence of all contempo- 
ran :s we may now add that of Evelyn (vol. i. p. 
590,) and Narcissus Luttrell. " All the judges," 
says the latter, "except Mr. Baron Milton, took 
the oaths in the Court of Chancery. But he. it 
sail, owns himself a Roman Catholic"— MSS. 
Diary, 8th June. 



on the 11th of November, 1685;* he was 
appointed to the command of a regiment on 
the 28th of the same month; and a dispen- 
sation passed the Great Seal on the 9th of 
January following, to enable him to hold his 
commission without either complying with 
the conditions or incurring the penalties of 
the statute. On the 16th of June, the case 
was tried in the Court of King's Bench in 
the form of an action brought against him 
by Godden, his coachman, to recover the 
penalty granted by the statute to a common 
informer, for holding a military commission 
without having taken the oaths or the sacra- 
ment. The facts were admitted ; the de- 
fence rested on the dispensation, and the 
case turned on its validity. Norlhey, the 
counsel for Godden, argued the case so faintly 
and coldly, that he scarcely dissembled his 
desire and expectation of a judgment against 
his pretended client. Sir Edward Herbert, 
the Chief Justice, a man of virtue, but with- 
out legal experience or knowledge, who had 
adopted the highest monarchical principles, 
had been one of the secret advisers of the 
exercise of the dispensing power: in his 
court he accordingly treated the validity of 
the dispensation as a point of no difficulty, 
but of such importance that it was proper 
for him to consult all the other judges re- 
specting it. On the 21st of June, after only 
five days of seeming deliberation had been 
allowed to a question on the decision of 
which the liberties of the kingdom at that 
moment depended, he delivered the opinion 
of all the judges except Street, — who finally 
dissented from his brethren, — in favour of 
the dispensation. At a subsequent period, 
indeed, two other judges, Powell and Atkyns, 
affirmed that they had dissented, and another, 
named Lutwych, declared that he had only 
assented with limitations. t But as these 
magistrates did not protest at the time against 
Herbert's statement, — as they delayed their 
public dissent until it had become dishonour- 
able, and perhaps unsafe, to have agreed with 
the majority, no respect is due to their con- 
ductive!) if their assertion should be believed. 
Street, who gained great popularity by his 
strenuous resistance,! remained a judge du- 
ring the whole reign of James; he was not 
admitted to the presence of King William, § 
nor re-appointed after the Revolution : — cir- 
cumstances which, combined with some 
intimations unfavourable to his general cha- 
racter, suggest a painful suspicion, that the 
only judge who appeared faithful to his trust 
was, in truth, the basest of all, and that his dis- 
sent was prompted or tolerated by the Court, 

* Dodd, vol. iii. p. 451. 

t Commons' Journals, 18th June, 1689. 

t " Mr. Justice Street has lately married a 
wife, with a good fortune, since his opinion on 
t lie dispensing power." — Narcissus Luttrell, Oct. 
1686. 

$ " The Prince of Orange refused to 6ee Mr. 
Justice Street. Lord Coote said he was a very 
ill man." — Clarendon, Diary, 27ih December, 
1688. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



293 



in order to give a false appearance of inde- 
pendence to the acts of the degraded judges. 
In shortly stating the arguments which 
were employed on both sides of this ques- 
tion, it is not within the province of the his- 
torian to imitate the laborious minuteness 
of a lawyer: nor is it consistent with the 
faith of history to ascribe reasons to the 
parties more refined and philosophical than 
could probably have occurred to them, or 
influenced the judgment of those whom 
they addressed. The only specious argu- 
ment of the advocates of prerogative arose 
from certain cases in which the dispensing 
power had been exercised by the Crown 
and apparently sanctioned by courts of jus- 
tice. The case chiefly relied on was a dis- 
pensation from the ancient laws respecting 
the annual nomination of sheriffs; the last 
of which, passed in the reign of Henry VI.,* 
subjected sheriffs, who continued in office 
longer than a year, to certain penalties, and 
declared all patents of a contrary tenor, even 
though they should contain an express dis- 
pensation, to be void. Henry VII., in defi- 
ance of this statute, had granted a patent to 
the Earl of Northumberland to be sheriff of 
that county for life; and the judges in the 
second year of his reign declared that the 
Earl's appointment was valid. It has been 
doubted whether there was any such deter- 
mination in that case ; and it has been urged, 
with great appearance of reason, that, if 
made, it proceeded on some exceptions in 
the statute, and not on the unreasonable 
doctrine, that an Act of Parliament, to which 
the King was a party, could not restrain his 
prerogative. These are, however, conside- 
rations which are rather important to the 
character of those ancient judges than to the 
authority of the precedent. If they did 
determine that the King had a right to dis- 
pense with a statute, which had by express 
words deprived him of such a right, so egre- 
giously absurd a judgment, probably pro- 
ceeding from base subserviency, was more 
fit to be considered as a warning, than as a 
precedent by the judges of succeeding times. 
Two or three subsequent cases were cited in 
aid of this early precedent. But they either 
related to the remission of penalties in of- 
fences against the revenue, which stood on 
a peculiar ground, or they were founded on 
the supposed authority of the first case, and 
must fall with that unreasonable determina- 
tion. Neither the unguarded expressions of 
Sir Edward Coke, nor the admissions inci- 
dentally made by Serjeant Glanville, in 
the debates on the Petition of Right, on 
a point not material to his argument, could 
deserve to be seriously discussed as authori- 
ties on so momentous a question. Had the 
precedents been more numerous, and less 
unreasonable, — had the opinions been more 
deliberate, and more uniform, they never 
could be allowed to decide such a case. 
Though the constitution of England had been 

* 23 Hen. VI. c. 7. 



from the earliest times founded on the prin- 
ciples of civil and political liberty, the prac- 
tice of the government, and even the admi- 
nistration of the law had often departed very 
widely from these sacred principles. In the 
best times, and under the most regular go- 
vernments, we find practices to prevail which 
cannot be reconciled with the principles of a 
free constitution. During the dark and tu- 
multuous periods of English history, kings 
had been allowed to do many acts, which, 
if they were drawn into precedents, would 
be subversive of public liberty. It is by an 
appeal to such precedents, that the claim to 
dangerous prerogatives has been usually jus- 
tified. The partisans of Charles I. could not 
deny that the Great Charter had forbidden 
arbitrary imprisonment, and levy of money 
without the consent of Parliament. But in 
the famous cases of imprisonment by the 
personal command of the King, and of levy- 
ing a revenue by writs of Ship-money, they 
thought that they had discovered a means, 
without denying either of these principles, 
of universally superseding their application. 
Neither in these great cases, nor in the 
equally memorable instance of the dispensing 
power, were the precedents such as justified 
the conclusion. If law could ever be allowed 
to destroy liberty, it would at least be neces- 
sary that it should be sanctioned by clear, 
frequent, and weighty determinations, by 
general concurrence of opinion after free and 
full discussion, and by the long usage of 
good times. But, as in all doubtful cases 
relating to the construction of the most un- 
important statute, we consider its spirit and 
object; so, when the like questions arise on 
the most important part of law, called the 
constitution, we must try obscure and con- 
tradictory usage by constitutional principles, 
instead of sacrificing these principles to such 
usage. The advocates of prerogative, in- 
deed, betrayed a consciousness, that they 
were bound to reconcile their precedents 
with reason ; for they, too, appealed to prin- 
ciples which they called "constitutional." 
A dispensing power, they said, must exist 
somewhere, to obviate the inconvenience 
and oppression which might arise from the 
infallible operation of law; and where can 
it exist but in the Crown, which exercises 
the analogous power of pardon ? It was 
answered, that the difficulty never can exist 
in the English Constitution, where all neces- 
sary or convenient powers may be either ex- 
ercised or conferred by the supreme authority 
of Parliament. The judgment in favour of 
the dispensing power was finally rested by 
the judges on still more general propositions, 
which, if they had any- meaning, were far 
more alarming than the judgment itself. 
They declared, that "the Kings of England 
are sovereign princes; that the laws of Eng- 
land are the King's laws; that, therefore, it 
is an inseparable prerogative in the King of 
England to dispense with penal laws in par- 
ticular cases, and on particular necessary 
reasons, of which reasons and necessities he 
z 2 



294 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



is the sole judge; that this is not a trust 
I in the King, but the ancient remains 
of the sovereign power of the Kings of Eng- 
land, which never yet was taken from them, 
nor can be.-"* These propositions had either 
no meaning pertinent to the case, or they led 
to the establishment of absolute monarchy. 
i ,\ s were, indeed, said to be the King's, 
inasmuch as he was the chief and repi 
tative of the commonwealth — as they were 
contradistinguished from those of any other 
Slate,— and as he had a principal part in 
their enactment, and the whole trust of their 
execution. These expressions were justi- 
fiable and innocent, as long as they were 
employed to denote that decorum and cour- 
tesy which arc due to the regal magistracy : 
but if they are considered in any other light, 
they proved much more than the judges 
dared to avow. If the King might dispense 
with the laws, because they were his laws, 
he might for the same reason suspend, re- 
peal, or enact them. The application of 
these dangerous principles to the Test Act 
was attended with the peculiar absurdity of 
.attributing to the King a power to dispense 
with provisions of a law, which had been 
framed for the avowed and sole purpose of 
limiting his authority. The law had not 
hitherto disabled a Catholic from filling the 
throne. As soon, therefore, as the next per- 
son in succession to the Crown was discovered 
to be a Catholic, it was deemed essential to 
the safety of the Established religion to take 
away from the Crown the means of being 
served by Catholic ministers. The Test Act 
was passed to prevent a Catholic successor 
from availing himself of the aid of a party, 
whose outward badge was adherence to the 
Roman Catholic religion, and who were se- 
conded by powerful allies in other parts of 
Europe, in overthrowing the Constitution, the 
Protestant Church, and at last even the li- 
berty of Protestants to perform their worship 
and profess their faith. To ascribe to that 
very Catholic successor the right of dispen- 
sing with all the securities provided against 
such dangers arising from himself, was to 
impute the most extravagant absurdity to 
the laws. It might be perfectly consistent 
with the principle of the Test Act, which 
was intended to provide against temporary 
dangers, to propose its repeal under a Pro- 
testant prince: but it is altogether impossible 
that its framers could have considered a 
power of dispensing with its conditions as 
being vested in the Catholic successor whom 
it was meant to bind. Had these objections 
been weaker, the means employed by the 
King to obtain a judgment in his favour 
rendered the whole of this judicial proceed- 
ing a gross fraud, in which judges professing 
impartiality had been named by one of the 
parties to a question before them, after he 
had previously ascertained their partiality to 
him, and effectually secured it by the ex- 
ample of the removal of more independent 

* State Trials, vol. xi. p. 1199. 



ones. The character of Sir Edward Herbert 
makes it painful to disbelieve his assertion, 
that he was unacquainted with these undue 
practices : but the notoriety of the facts seem 
to render it quite incredible. In the same 
defence of his conduct which contains this 
assertion, there is another unfortunate de- 
parture from fairness. He rests his defence 
entirely on precedents, and studiously keeps 
out of view the dangerous principles which 
he had laid down from the bench as the 
foundation of his judgment. Public and 
selemn declarations, which ought to be the 
most sincere, are, unhappily, among the most 
disingenuous of human professions. This cir- 
cumstance, which so much weakens the 
bonds of faith between men, is not so much 
to be imputed to any peculiar depravity in 
those who conduct public affairs, as to the 
circumstances in which official declarations 
are usually made. They are generally re- 
sorted to in times of difficulty, if not of 
danger, and are often sure of being counte- 
nanced for the time by a numerous body of 
adherents. Public advantage covers false- 
hood with a more decent disguise than mere 
private interest can supply; and the vague- 
ness of official language always affords the 
utmost facilities for reserve and equivocation. 
But these considerations, though they may, 
in some small degree, extenuate the disin- 
genuousness of politicians, must, in the same 
proportion, lessen the credit which is due to 
their affirmations.* 

After this determination, the judges on 
their circuit were not received with the ac- 
customed honours.! Agreeably to the me- 
morable observations of Lord Clarendon in 
the case of Ship-money, they brought dis- 
grace upon themselves, and weakness upon 
the whole government, by that base com- 
pliance which was intended to arm the 
monarch with undue and irresistible strength. 
The people of England, peculiarly distin- 
guished by that reverence for the law, and 
its upright ministers, which is inspired by 
the love of liberty, have always felt the most 
cruel disappointment, and manifested the 
warmest indignation, at seeing the judges 
converted into instruments of oppression or 
usurpation. These proceedings were viewed 
hi a very different light by the ministers of 
absolute princes. D'Adda only informed the 
Papal Court that the King had removed from 
office some contumacious judges, who had 
refused to conform to justice and reason on 
the subject of the King's dispensing power ;t 
and so completely was the spirit of France 
then subdued, that Barillon, the son of the 
President of the Parliament of Paris, — the 

* The arguments on this question are contained 
in the tracts of Sir Edward Herbert, Sir Robert 
Atkyns, and Mr. Attwood, published after the 
Revolution.— State Trials, vol. xi. p. 1200. That 
of Attwood is the most distinguished for acute- 
ness and research. Sir Edward Herbert's is 
feebly reasoned, though elegantly written. 

t Narcissus LuttrelT, 16th August, 1686. 

t D'Adda, 3d May— MS. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



295 



native of a country where the independence 
of the great tribunals had survived every 
other remnant of ancient liberty, — describes 
the removal of judges for their legal opinions 
as coolly as if he were speaking of the dis- 
missal of an exciseman.* 

The King, having, by the decision of the 
judges, obtained the power of placing the 
military and civil authority in the hands of 
his own devoted adherents, now resolved to 
exercise that power, bynominatingCatholies 
to stations of high trust, and to reduce the 
Church of England to implicit obedience by 
virtue of his ecclesiastical supremacy. Both 
these measures were agreed to at Hampton 
Court on the 4th of July ; at which result he 
showed the utmost complacency. t It is 
necessary to give some explanation of the 
nature of the second, which formed one of 
the most effectual and formidable measures 
of his reign. 

When Henry VIII. was declared at the 
Reformation to be the supreme head of the 
Church of England, no attempt was made to 
define, with any tolerable precision, the au- 
thority to be exercised by him in that cha- 
racter. The object of the lawgiver was to 
shake off the authority of the See of Rome, 
and to make effectual provision that all ec- 
clesiastical power and jurisdiction should be 
administered, like every other part of the 
public justice of the kingdom, in the name 
and by the authority of the King. That ob- 
ject scarcely required more than a declaration 
that the realm was as independent of foreign 
power in matters relating to the Church as 
in any other branch of its legislation.!: That 
simple principle is distinctly intimated in 
several of the statutes passed on that occa- 
sion, though not consistently pursued in any 
of them. The true principles of ecclesiasti- 
cal polity were then nowhere acknowledged. 
The Court of Rome was far from admitting 
the self-evident truth, that all coercive and 
penal jurisdiction exercised by the clergy 
was, in its nature, a branch of the civil 
power delegated to them by the State, and 
that the Church as such could exercise only 
that influence (metaphorically called <: au- 
thority") over the understanding and con- 
science which depended on the spontaneous 
submission of its members : the Protestant 
sects were not willing to submit their pre- 
tensions to the control of the magistrate: 
and even the Reformed Church of England, 
though the creature of statute, showed, at 
various times, a disposition to claim some 
rights under a higher title. All religious 
communities were at that time alike intole- 
rant, and there was, perhaps, no man in 
Europe who dared to think that the State 
neither possessed, nor could delegate, nor 
could recognise as inherent in another body 
any authority over religious opinions. Nei- 

* Barillon, 29th April.— Fox MSS. 

t D'Adda, 20th July.— MS. 

t 24 Hen. VIII. c. 12. 25 Hen. VIII. c. 21. 
See especially the preambles to these two sta- 
tutes. 



ther was any distinction made in the laws 
to which we have adverted, between the ec- 
clesiastical authority which the King might 
separately exercise and that which required 
the concurrence of Parliament. From igno- 
rance, inattention, and timidity, in regard to 
these important parts of the subject, arose 
the greater part of the obscurity which still 
hangs over the limits of the King's ecclesi- 
astical prerogative and the means of carrying- 
it into execution. The statute of the first of 
Elizabeth, which established the Protestant 
Church of England, enacted that the Crown 
should have power, by virtue of that act, to 
exercise its supremacy by Commissioners 
for Ecclesiastical Causes, nominated by the 
sovereign, and vested with uncertain and 
questionable, but very dangerous powers, for 
the execution of a prerogative of which nei- 
ther law nor experience had defined the 
limits. Under the reigns of James and 
Charles this court had become the auxiliary 
and rival of the Star Chamber; and its abo- 
lition was one of the wisest of those mea- 
sures of reformation by which the Parliament 
of 1641 had signalised the first and happiest 
period of their proceedings.* At the Resto- 
ration, when the Church of England was re- 
established, a part of the Act for the Aboli- 
tion of the Court of High Commission, taking 
away coercive power from all ecclesiastical 
judges and persons, was repealed ; but the 
clauses for the abolition of the obnoxious 
court) and for prohibiting the erection of any 
similar court, were expressly re-affirmed. t 
Such was the state of the law on this sub- 
ject when James conceived the design of em- 
ploying his authority as head of the Church 
of England, as a means of subjecting that 
Church to his pleasure, if not of finally de- 
stroying it. It is hard to conceive how he 
could reconcile to his religion the exercise 
of supremacy in a heretical sect, and thus 
sanction by his example the usurpations of 
the Tudors on the rights of the Catholic 
Church. It is equally difficult to conceive 
how he reconciled to his morality the em- 
ployment, for the destruction of a commu- 
nity, of a power with which he was intrusted 
by that community for its preservation. But 
the fatal error of believing it to be lawful to 
use bad means for good ends was not pecu- 
liar to James, nor to the zealots of his com- 
munion. He, indeed, considered the eccle- 
siastical supremacy as placed in his hands 
by Providence to enable him to betray the 
Protestant establishment. "God," said he 
to Barillon, "has permitted that all the laws 
made to establish Protestantism now serve 
as a foundation for my measures to re-esta- 
blish true religion, and give me a right to 
exercise a more extensive power than other 
Catholic princes possess in the ecclesiastical 
affairs of their dominions."!: He found legal 
advisers ready with paltry expedients for 
evading the two statutes of 1641 and 1660, 

* 17 Car. I. c. 11. t 13 Car. II. c. 12. 

I Barillon, 22d July, 1686.— Fox MSS. 



296 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



under the futile pretext that they forbad only 
a court vested with such powers of corporal 
punishment as had been exercised by the 
old Court of High Commission; and in con- 
formity to their pernicious counsel, he issued, 
in July, a commission to certain ministers, 
prelates, and judges, to act as a Court of 
Commissioners in Ecclesiastical Causes. The 
first purpose of this court was to enforce di- 
rections to preachers, issued by the King, 
enjoining them to abstain from preaching on 
controverted questions. It must be owned 
that an enemy of the Protestant religion, 
placed at the head of the Church, could not 
adopt a more perfidious measure. He well 
knew that the Protestant clergy alone could 
consider his orders as of any authority : those 
of his own persuasion, totally exempt from 
his supremacy, would pursue their course, 
secure of protection from him against the 
dangers of penal law. The Protestant clergy 
were forbidden by their enemy to maintain 
their religion by argument, when they justly 
regarded it as being in the greatest danger : 
they disregarded the injunction, and carried 
on the controversy against Popery with equal 
ability and success. 

Among many others, Sharpe, Dean of 
Norwich, had distinguished himself; and he 
was selected for punishment, on pretence 
that he had aggravated his disobedience by 
intemperate language, and by having spoken 
contemptuously of the understanding of all 
who could be .seduced by the arguments 
for Popery, including of necessity the King 
himself, — as if it were possible for a man 
of sincerity to speak on subjects of the deep- 
est importance without a correspondent zeal 
and warmth. The mode of proceeding to 
punishment was altogether summary and ar- 
bitrary. Lord Sunderland communicated to 
the Bishop of London the King's commands, 
to suspend Sharpe from preaching. The 
Bishop answered that he could proceed only 
in a judicial manner, — that he must hear 
Sharpe in his defence before such a suspen- 
sion, but that Sharpe was ready to give 
every proof of deference to the King. The 
Court, incensed at the parliamentary conduct 
of the Bishop, saw, with great delight, that 
he had given them an opportunity to humble 
and mortify him. Sunderland boasted to the 
Papal minister, that the case of that Bishop 
would be a great example.* He was sum- 
moned before the Ecclesiastical Commission, 
and required to answer why he had not 
obeyed his Majesty's commands to suspend 
Sharpe for seditious preaching. f The Bishop 
conducted himself with considerable add ress. 
After several adjournments he tendered a 
plea to the jurisdiction, founded on the ille- 



* "II Re, sommamt'nte intento a levare gli os- 
tacoli, clip possono impedire I'avanzamento dHla 
religions Catlolica, a irovato il mezzo pin atto a 
mpriificare il mnltalento di Veseovo di Londra. 
Sara un gran buono e un gran esempio, come mi 
ha dcito Milord Sunderland." D'Adda, 12th 
July.— MSS. 

t State Trials, vol. xi. p. 1158. 



gality of their commission ; and he was 
heard by his counsel in vindication of his 
refusal to suspend an accused clergyman 
until he had been heard in his own defence. 
The King took a 'warm interest in the pro- 
ceedings, and openly showed his joy at be- 
ing in a condition to strike bold strokes of 
authority. He received congratulations on 
that subject with visible pleasure, and assured 
the French minister that the same vigorous 
system should be inflexibly pursued.* He 
did not conceal his resolution to remove any 
of the commissioners who should not do " his 
duty."f The princess of Orange interceded in 
vain with the King for her preceptor, Comp- 
ton. The influence of the Church party was 
also strenuously exerted for that prelate. 
They were not, indeed, aided by the Primate 
Bancroft, who, instead of either attending as 
a commissioner to support the Bishop of 
London, or openly protesting against the 
illegality of the court, petitioned for and 
obtained from the King leave to be excused 
from attendance on the ground of age and 
infirmities.! By this irresolute and equivocal 
conduct the Archhishop deserted the Church 
in a moment of danger, and yet incurred the 
displeasure of the King. Lord Rochester re- 
sisted the suspension, and was supported by 
Spratt, Bishop of Rochester, and Sir Edward 
Herbert. Even Jeffreys, for the first time, 
inclined towards the milder opinion; for nei- 
ther his dissolute life, nor his judicial cruelty, 
however much at variance with the princi- 
ples of religion, were, it seems, incompatible 
with that fidelity to the Church, which on 
this and some subsequent occasions prevailed 
over his zeal for prerogative. A majority of 
the commissioners were for some time fa- 
vourable to Compton : Sunderland, and Crew, 
Bishop of Durham, were the only members 
of the commission who seconded the projects 
of the King.§ The presence or protest of the 
Primate might have produced the most de- 
cisive effects. Sunderland represented the 
authority of Government as interested in the 
judgment, which, if it were not rigorous, 
would secure a triumph to a disobedient 
prelate, who had openly espoused the cause 
of faction. Rochester at length yielded, in 
the presence of the King, to whatever his Ma- 
jesty might determine, giving it to be under- 
stood that he acted against his own convic- 



* Barillon, 29th July— Fox MSS. 

t Barillon, 1st August. — Fox MSS. 

X This petition (in the appendix to Clarendon's 
Diary) is without a date; but it is a formal one, 
which seems to imply a regular summons. No 
such summons could have issued before the 14th 
July, on which day Evelyn, as one of the Com- 
missioners of the Privy Seal, affixed it to the 
Ecclesiastical Commission. Sancroft's ambigious 
peti'ion was therefore subsequent to his knowledge 
of Compton's danger, so that the excuse of Dr. I 
D'Oyley (Life of Sancroft, vol. i. p. 225,) cannot 
be allowed. 

§ " L'Archevesque de Canterbury s'etoit ex- 
cuse de se trouver a la Commission Ecclesiastique 
sur sa mauvaise same et son grand age. On a 
pris aussi ce pretexte pour l'exclure de la seance 
de conseil." Barillon, 21st Oct.— Fox MSS. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



297 



tion.* His followers made no longer any stand, 
after seeing the leader of their party, and the 
Lord High Treasurer of England, set the ex- 
ample of sacrificing his opinion as a judge, in 
favour of lenity, to the pleasure of the King; 
and the court finally pronounced sentence of 
suspension on the Bishop against the declared 
opinion of three fourths of its members. 

The attempts of James to bestow tolera- 
tion on his Catholic subjects would, doubt- 
less, in themselves, deserve high commenda- 
tion, if we could consider them apart from 
the intentions which they manifested, and 
from the laws of which they were a contin- 
ued breach. But zealous Protestants, in the 
peculiar circumstances of the time, were, 
with reason, disposed to regard them as 
measures of hostility against their religion ; 
and some of them must always be consid- 
ered as daring or ostentatious manifestations 
of a determined purpose to exalt prerogative 
above law. A few days after the resolution 
of the Council for the admission of Catholics 
to high civil trust, the first step was made to 
its execution by the appointment of the Lords 
Powys, Arundel, Bellasis. and Dover to be 
Privy Councillors. In a short time afterwards 
the same honour was conferred on Talbot, who 
was created Earl of Tyrconnel, and destined 
to be the Catholic Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. 
Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, a man who pro- 
fessed indifference in religion, but who ac- 
quiesced in all the worst measures of this 
reign, was appointed a member of the Ec- 
clesiastical Commission. t Cartwright, Dean 
of Ripon, whose talents were disgraced by 
peculiarly infamous vices, was raised to the 
vacant bishopric of Chester, in spite of the 
recommendation of Sancroft, who, when con- 
sulted by James, proposed Jeffreys, the Chan- 
cellor's brother, for that See.;' But the merit 
of Cartwright, which prevailed even over that 
connection, consisted in having preached a 
sermon, in which he inculcated the courtly 
doctrine, that the promises of kings were 
declarations of a favourable intention, not to 
be considered as morally binding. A reso- 
lution was taken to employ Catholic minis- 
ters at the two important stations of Paris 
and the Hague; — "it being." said James to 
Barillon, u almost impossible to find an Eng- 
lish Protestant who had not too great a con- 
sideration for the Prince of Orange. "§ White, 
an Irish Catholic of considerable ability, who 
had received the foreign title of Marquis 
D' Abbeville, was sent to the Hague, partly, 
perhaps, with a view to mortify the Prince 
of Orange. It was foreseen that the known 
character of this adventurer would induce 
the Prince to make attempts to gain him ; 



* Barillon. 16th Sept. and 23d Sept.— Fox MSS.; 
a full and apparently accurate account of these 
divisions among the commissioners. 

t D'Adda, in his letter, 1st Nov. represents 
Mulgrave as favourable to the Catholics. — MS. 

+ D'Oyley, Life of Sancroft, vol. i. p. 235, 
where the Archbishop's letter to the King (dated 
29th July, 1685.) is printed. 

§ Barillon, 22d July.— Fox MSS. 
38 



but Barillon advised his master to make 
liberal presents to the new minister, who 
would prefer the bribes of Louis, because 
the views of that monarch agreed with those 
of his own sovereign and the interests of the 
Catholic religion.* James even proposed to 
the Prince of Orange to appoint a Catholic 
nobleman of Ireland, Lord Carlingford, to 
the command of the British regiments: — 
a proposition, which, if accepted, would em- 
broil that Prince with all his friends in Eng- 
land, and if rejected, as it must have been 
known that it would be, gave the King a 
new pretext for displeasure, to be avowed at 
a convenient season. 

But no part of the foreign policy of the 
King is so much connected with our present 
subject as the renewal of that open inter- 
course with the See of Rome which was pro- 
hibited by the unrepealed laws passed in the 
reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth. D'Adda 
had arrived in England before the meeting 
of Parliament, as the minister of the Pope, 
but appeared at court, at first, only as a pri- 
vate gentleman. In a short time, James in- 
formed him that he might assume the public 
character of his Holiness' minister, with the 
privilege of a chapel in his house, and the 
other honours and immunities of that cha- 
racter, without going through the formalities 
of a public audience. The assumption of 
this character James represented as the more 
proper, because he was about to send a 
solemn embassy to Rome as his Holiness' 
most obedient son.t D'Adda professed great 
admiration for the pious zeal and filial obedi- 
ence of the King, and for his determination, 
as far as possible, to restore religion to her 
ancient splendour;! but he dreaded the pre- 
cipitate measures to which James was 
prompted by his own disposition and by 
the party of zealots who surrounded him. 
He did not assume the public character till 
two months afterwards, when he received in- 
structions to that effect from Rome. Hitherto 
the King had coloured his interchange of 
ministers with the Roman Court under the 
plausible pretext of maintaining diplomatic 
intercourse with the government of the Ec- 
clesiastical State as much as with the other 
princes of Europe. But his zeal soon be- 
came impatient of this slight disguise. In a 
few days after D'Adda had announced his 
intention to assume the public character 
of a minister, Sunderland came to him to 
convey his Majesty's desire that he might 
take the title of Nuncio, which would, in 

* " M. le Prince d' Orange fera ce qu'il pourra 
pour la gager ; mais je suis persuade qu'il aimera 
mieux etre dans les interets de voire Mnjesie, 
sachant bien qu'ils sont conlormes a ceux du Roi 
son maitre, et que e'est l'avantage de la religion 
Catholique." Four thousand livres, which Ba- 
rillon calculates as then equivalent to three hun- 
dred pounds sterling, were given to D'Abbevillo 
in London. Two thousand more were to be ad- 
vanced to him at the Hague. Barillon, 2d Sept. 
—Fox MSS. 

t D'Adda 14th Dec. 1685.— MS. 

X Ibid. 31st. Dec. 



298 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



a more formal and solemn manner, dis- 
tinguish him from other ministers as the 
ientativeof the Apostolic See. D'Adda 
was surprised at this rash proposal ;* about 
which the Court of Rome long hesitated. 
from aversion to the foreign policy of James, 
from a wish to moderate rather than encou- 
rage the precipitation of his domestic coun- 
sels, and from apprehension of the insults 
which might be offered to the Holy See, in 
the sacred person of his Nuncio, by the tur- 
bulent and heretical populace of London. 

The King had sent the Earl of Castlemaine, 
the husband of the Duchess of Cleveland, as 
his ambassador to Rome. "It seemed sin- 
gular," said Barillon, < : that he should have 
chosen for such a mission a man so little 
known on his own account, and too well 
known on that of his wife."! The ambas- 
dor, who had been a polemical writer in the 
defence of the Catholics,! and who was 
almost the only innocent man acquitted on 
the prosecutions for the Popish Plot, seems 
to have listened more to zeal and resentment 
than to discretion in the conduct of his deli- 
cate negotiation. He probably expected to 
find nothing but religious zeal prevalent in 
the Papal councils : but Innocent XL was 
influenced by his character as a temporal 
sovereign. He considered James not solely 
as an obedient son of the Church, but rather 
as the devoted or subservient ally of Louis 
XIV. As Prince of the Roman state, he re- 
sented the outrages offered to him by that 
monarch, and partook with all other states 
the dread justly inspired by his ambition and 
his power. Even as head of the Church, the 
merits of Louis as the persecutor of the Pro- 
testants§ did not, in the eye of Innocent, atone 
for his encouraging the Gallican Church in 
their recent resistance to the unlimited au- 
thority of the Roman Pontiff. These dis- 
cordant feelings and embroiled interests, 
which it would have required the utmost ad- 
dress and temper to reconcile, were treated 
by Castlemaine with the rude hand of an 
inexperienced zealot. Hoping, probably, to 
be received with open arms as the forerun- 
ner of the reconciliation of a great kingdom, 
he was displeased at the reserve and cold- 
ness with which the Pontiff treated him : 
and instead of patiently labouring to over- 
come obstacles which he ought to have fore- 
seen, he resented them with a violence more 
than commonly foreign to the decorum of 
the Papal court. He was instructed to so- 
licit a cardinal's hat for Prince Rinaldo of 
Este, the Queen's brother; — a moderate suit. 

* D' Adda, 22d Feb. 1686. " Io resto alquanto 
sorpreso da questa ambasciata." 

t Barillon, 29ih Oct. 1685. — Fox, app. p. cxxii. 

t Dodd, vol. iii. p. 450. 

$ It appears by the copy of a letter in my pos- 
session from Don Pedro Ronquillo, the Spanish 
ambassador in London, to Don Francesco Ber- 
nado de Quixos, (dated 5th April, 1686,) that In- 
nocent, though he publicly applauded the zeal of 
Louis, did not in truth approve the revocation of 
the Edict of Nantes. 



the consent to which was for a considerable 
time retarded by an apprehension of strength- 
ening the French interest in the Sacred Col- 
lege. Th" second request was that the Pope 
would confer a titular bishopric* on Edward 
Petre, an English Jesuit of noble family, 
who, though not formally the King's con- 
fessor,! had more influence on his mind 
than any other ecclesiastic. This honour 
was desired in order to qualify this gentle- 
man for performing with more dignity the 
duties of Dean of the Chapel Royal. Inno- 
cent declined, on the ground that the Jesuits 
were prohibited by their institution from ac- 
cepting bishopricks, and that he would sooner 
make a Jesuit a cardinal than a bishop. But 
as the Popes had often dispensed with this 
prohibition, Petre himself rightly conjectured 
that the ascendant of the Austrian party at 
Rome, — who looked on him with an evil eye 
as a partisan of France, — was the true cause 
of the refusal.}: The King afterwards so- 
licited for his favourite the higher dignity of 
cardinal : but he was finally refused, though 
with profuse civility,^ from the same mo- 
tive, but under the pretence that there had 
been no Jesuit cardinal since Bellarmine, the 
great controversialist of the Roman Catholic 
Church. II Besides these personal objects, 
Castlemaine laboured to reconcile the Pope to 
Louis XIV., and to procure the interposition 
of Innocent for the preservation of the gen- 
eral peace. But of these objects, specious 
as they were, the attainment of the first 
would strengthen France, and that of the 
second imported a general acquiescence in 
her unjust aggrandizement. Even the tri- 
umph of monarchy and Popery in England, 
together with the projects already enter- 
tained for the suppression of the " Northern 
heresy," as the Reformation was then called, 
and for the conquest of Holland, which was 
considered as a nest of heretics, could not 
fail to alarm the most zealous of those Ca- 
tholic powers who dreaded the power of 
Louis, and who were averse to strengthen 
his allies. It was impossible that intelli- 
gence of such suggestions at Rome should 
not immediately reach the courts of Vienna 
and Madrid, or should not be communicated 
by them to the Prince of Orange. Castle- 
maine suffered himself to be engaged in 
contests for precedency 7 with the Spanish 
minister, which served, and were perhaps 
intended, to embroil him more deeply with 
the Pope. James at first resented the re- 
fusal to promote Petre,! and for a time 
seemed to espouse the quarrel of his am- 
bassador. D'Adda was obliged, by his sta- 
tion, and by his intercourse with Lord Sun- 



* In partibus infidelium," as it is called. Baril- 
lon, 27th June.— Fox MSS. 

t This office was held by a learned Jesuit, 
named Warner. — Dodd, vol. iii. p. 491. 

t Barillon, 20ih Dec. 1686.— Fox MSS. 

§ Dodd, vol. iii. p. 511, where the official cor- 
respondence in 1687 is published. 

II D'Adda, 8th August, 1687.— MS. 

IT Barillon, 2d Dec^ 1686.— Fox MSS. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



299 



derland, to keep up friendly appearances 
with Petre ; but Barillon easily discovered 
that the Papal minister disliked that Jesuit 
and his order, whom he considered as de- 
voted to France.* The Pope instructed 
his minister to complain of the conduct of 
Castlemaine, as very ill becoming the repre- 
sentative of so pious and so prudent a king: 
and D'Adda made the representation to 
James at a private audience where the 
Queen and Lord Sunderland were present. 
That zealous princess, with more fervour 
than dignity, often interrupted his narrative 
by exclamations of horror at the liberty with 
which a Catholic minister had spoken to the 
successor of St. Peter. Lord Sunderland said 
to him, i: The King will do whatever you 
please." James professed the most un- 
bounded devotion to the Holy See, and as- 
sured D'Adda that he would write a letter 
to his Holiness, to express his regret for the 
unbecoming conduct of his ambassador. t 
When this submission was made, Innocent 
formally forgave Castlemaine for his indis- 
creet zeal in promoting the wishes of his 
sovereign;! and James publicly announced 
the admission of his ambassador at Rome 
into the Privy Council, both to console the 
unfortunate minister, and to show the more 
how much he set at defiance the laws which 
forbade both the embassy and the prefer- 
ment. § 



CHAPTER III. 

State of the Army. — Attempts of the King to 
Convert it. — The Princess Anne. — Dryden. 
— Lord Middleton and others. — Revocation 
of the Edict of Nantes. — Attempt to convert 
Rochester. — Conduct of the Queen. — Religi- 
ous Conference. — Failure of the attempt. — 
His Dismissal. 

During the summer of 1686, the King had 
assembled a body of 15,000 troops, who were 
encamped on Hounslow Heath ; — a spectacle 
new to the people of England, who, though 
full of martial spirit, have never regarded 
with favour the separateprofessionofarms.il 

* Barillon, 17th Jnne, 1686,— 10th March, 
1687— Fox MSS. 

t D'Adda, 30th May,— 6th June, 1687.— MS. 

t Letter of Innocent to James, 16th Aug. — 
Dodd, vol. iii. p. 511. 

§ London Gazette, 26th Sept. 

II The army, on the 1st of January, 1685, 
amounted to 19,979. — Accounts in the War Of- 
fice. The number of the army in Great Britain 
in 1824 is 22,019 (Army Estimates), the population 
being 14,391,681 (Population Returns); which 
gives a proportion of nearly one out of every 654 
persons, or of one soldier out of every 160 men 
of the fighting age. The population of England 
and Wales, in 1685, not exceeding five millions, 
the proportion of the army to it was one soldier to 
every 250 persons, or of one soldier to every sixty- 
five men of the fighting age. Scotland, in 1685, 
had a separate establishment. The army of James, 
at his accession, therefore, was more than twice 



He viewed this encampment with a compla- 
cency natural to princes, and he expressed 
his feelings to the Prince of Orange in a tone 
of no friendly boast.* He caressed the offi- 
cers, and he openly declared that he should 
keep none but those on whom he could rely.f 
A Catholic chapel was opened in the camp, 
and missionaries were distributed among the 
soldiers. The numbers of the army rendered 
it an object of very serious consideration. 
Supposing them to be only 32.000 in England 
and Scotland alone, they were twice as many 
as were kept up in Great Britain in the year 
1792, when the population of the island had 
certainly more than doubled. As this force 
was kept on foot without the consent of Par- 
liament, there was no limit to its numbers, 
but the means of supporting it possessed by 
the King ; which might be derived from the 
misapplication of funds granted for other 
purposes, or be supplied by foreign powers 
interested in destroying the liberties of the 
kingdom. The means of governing it were 
at first a source of perplexity to the King, 
but, in the sequel, a new object of apprehen- 
sion to the people. The Petition of Right. J: 
in affirmance of the ancient laws, had for- 
bidden the exercise of martial law within 
the kingdom ; and the ancient mode of esta- 
blishing those summary jurisdictions and 
punishments which seem to be necessary 
to secure the obedience of armies was. in a 
great measure, wanting. The servile inge- 
nuity of aspiring lawyers was, therefore, set 
at work to devise some new expedient for 
more easily destroying the constitution, ac- 
cording to the forms of law. For this purpose 
they revived the provisions of some ancient 
statutes,§ which had made desertion a capital 
felony; though these were, in the opinion of 
the best lawyers, either repealed, or confined 
to soldiers serving in the case of actual or 
immediately impending hostilities. Even 
this device did not provide the means of 
punishing the other military offences, which 
are so dangerous to the order of armies, that 
there can be little doubt of their having been 
actually punished by other means, however 
confessedly illegal. Several soldiers were 
tried, convicted, and executed for the felony 
of desertion ; and the scruples of judges on 
the legality of these proceedings induced the 
King more than once to recur to his ordinary 
measure for the purification of tribunals by 
the removal of the judges. Sir John Holt, 
who was destined, in better times, to be one 
of the most inflexible guardians of the laws, 
was also then dismissed from the recorder- 
ship of London. 

and a halt greater in comparison with the popula- 
tion than the present force (1822). The compara- 
tive wealth, if it could be estimated, would proba- 
bly afford similar results. 

* James to the Prince of Orange, 29th June. — 
Dalrymple, app. to books iii. & iv. 

t Barillon, 8th July. Ibid. 

\ 3 Car. I. c. 1. 

§ 7 Hen. VII. c. 1. 3 Hen. VIII. c. 5 ; & 2 <fe 
3 Edvv. VI. c. 2. See Hale, Pleas of the Crown, 
book i. c. 63. 



300 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



The only person who ventured to express 
the general feeling respecting the army was 
Mr. Samuel Johnson, who had been chaplain 
to Lord Russell,, and who was then in prison 
for a work which he had published some 
years before against the succession of James, 
under the title of "Julian the Apostate."* 
He now wrote, and sent to an agent to be 
dispersed (for there was no proof of actual 
dispersion or salet), an address to the army, 
expostulating with them on the danger of 
serving under illegally commissioned officers, 
and for objects inconsistent with the safety 
of their country. He also wrote another 
paper, in which he asserted that •' resistance 
may be used in case our religion or our rights 
should be invaded." For these acts he was 
tried, convicted, and sentenced to pay a 
small fine, to be thrice pilloried, and to be 
whipped by the common hangman from 
Newgate to Tyburn. For both these publica- 
tions, his spirit was, doubtless, deserving of 
the highest applause. The prosecution' in the 
first case can hardly be condemned, and the 
conviction still less : but the cruelty of the 
punishment reflects the highest dishonour on 
the judges, more especially on Sir Edward 
Herbert, whose high pretensions to morality 
and humanity deeply aggravate the guilt of 
his concurrence in this atrocious judgment. 
Previous to its infliction, he was degraded 
from his sacred character by Crew, Sprat, 
and White, three bishops authorised to exer- 
cise ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the diocese 
of London during the suspension of Compton. 
When, as part of the formality, the Bible 
was taken out of his hands, he struggled to 
preserve it, and bursting into tears, cried 
out, " You cannot take from me the consola- 
tion contained in the sacred volume." The 
barbarous judgment was "executed with 
great rigour and cruelty."]: In the course 
of a painful and ignominous progress of two 
miles through crowded streets, he received 
three hundred and seventeen stripes, inflicted 
with a whip of nine cords knotted. It will 
be a consolation to the reader, as soon as he 
has perused the narrative of these enormities, 
to learn, though with some disturbance of 
the order of time, that amends were in some 
measure made to Mr. Johnson, and that 
his persecutors were reduced to the bitter 
mortification of humbling themselves before 
their victim. After the Revolution, the judg- 
ment pronounced on him was voted by the 
House of Commons to be illegal and cruel. § 
Crew. Bishop of Durham, one of the com- 
missioners who deprived him, made him a 
considerable compensation in money ;|| and 

* State Trials, vol. xi. p. 1339. 

t In fact, however, many were dispersed. — 
Kennet, History, vol. iii. p. 450. 

t Commons' Journals, 24ih June, 1690. These 
are the words of the Report of a Committee who 
examined evidence on the case, and whose reso- 
lutions were adopted by the House. They suf- 
ficiently show that Echards extenuating state- 
ments are false. 

$ Ibid. 

II Narcissus Luttrell, February, 1690. 



Withins, the Judge who delivered the sen- 
tence, counterfeited a dangerous illness, and 
pretended that his dying hours were disturbed 
by the remembrance of what he had done ; 
in order to betray Johnson, through his hu- 
mane and Christian feelings, into such a 
declaration of forgiveness as might contribute 
to shelter the cruel judge from further ani- 
madversion.* 

The desire of the King to propagate his 
religion was a natural consequence of zealous 
attachment to it. But it was a very dangerous 
quality in a monarch, especially when the 
principles of religious liberty were not adopt- 
ed by any European government. The royal 
apostle is seldom convinced of thegeod faith 
of the opponent whom he has failed to con- 
vert : he soon persuades himself that the 
pertinacity of the heretic arises more from 
the depravity of his nature than from the 
errors of his judgment. He first shows dis- 
pleasure to his perverse antagonists; he then 
withdraws advantages from them ; he, in 
many cases, may think it reasonable to bring 
them to reflection by some degree of hard- 
ship ; and the disappointed disputant may at 
last degenerate into the furious persecutor. 
The attempt to convert the army was pecu- 
liarly dangerous to the King's own object. 
He boasted of the number of converts in one 
of his regiments of Guards, without consider- 
ing the consequences of teaching controversy 
to an army. The political canvass carried 
on among the officers, and the controversial 
sermons preached to the soldiers, probably 
contributed to awaken that spirit of inquiry 
and discussion in his camp which he ought 
to have dreaded as his most formidable 
enemy. He early destined the revenue of 
the Archbishop of York to be a provision for 
converts,t — being probably sincere in his 
professions, that he meant only to make it 
one for those who had sacrificed interest to 
religion. But experience shows how easily 
such a provision swells into a reward, and 
how naturally it at length becomes a pre- 
mium for hypocrisy. It was natural that his 
passion for making proselytes should show 
itself towards his own children. The Pope, 
in his conversations with Lord Castlemaine, 
said, that without the conversion of the Prin- 
cess Anne, no advantage obtained for the 
Catholic religion could be permanently se- 
cured.!: The King assented to this opinion,, 
and had, indeed, before attempted to dispose 
his daughter favourably to his religion, in- 
fluenced probably by the parental kindness, 
which was one of his best qualities. § He 
must have considered as hopeless the case 
of his eldest daughter, early removed from 
her father, and the submissive as well as 
affectionate wife of a husband of decisive 
character, who was also the leader of the 
Protestant cause. To Anne, therefore, his 
attention was turned : but with her he found 



* State Trials, vol. xi. p. 1354. 
t D'Adda, 10th May, 1686.— MS. 
t Barillon, 27th June.— Fox MSS. 
$ D'Adda, supra. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



301 



insurmountable difficulties. Both these prin- 
cesses, after their father had become a Ca- 
tholic, were, considered as the hope of the 
Protestant religion, and accordingly trained 
in the utmost honor of Popery. Their par- 
tialities and resentments were regulated by 
difference of religion , their political import- 
ance and their splendid prospects were de- 
pendent on the Protestant Church. Anne 
was surrounded by zealous Churchmen; she 
was animated by her preceptor Compton ; 
her favourites Lor6* and Lady Churchill had 
become determined partisans of Protestant- 
ism ; and the King found in the obstinacy of 
his daughter's character, a resistance hardly 
to be apprehended from a young princess of 
slight understanding.* Some of the reasons 
of this zeal for converting her clearly show 
that, whether the succession was actually 
held out to her as a lure or not, at least there 
was an intention, if she became a Catholic, 
to prefer her to the Princess of Orange. Bon- 
repos, a minister of ability, had indeed, at a 
somewhat earlier period, tried the effect of 
that temptation on her husband, Prince 
George. t He ventured to ask his friend the 
Danish envoy, " whether the Prince had any 
ambition to raise his consort to the throne at 
the expense of the Princess Mary, which 
seemed to be practicable if he became a 
Catholic." The envoy hinted this bold sug- 
gestion to the Prince, w r ho appeared to receive 
it well, and even showed a willingness to 
be instructed on the controverted questions. 
Bonrepos found means to supply the Princess 
Anne with Catholic books, which, for a mo- 
ment, she shpwed some willingness to con- 
sider. He represented her to his Court as 
timid and silent, but ambitious and of some 
talent, with a violent hatred for the Queen. 
He reported his attempts to the King, who 
listened to him with the utmost pleasure ; 
and the subtile diplomatist observes, that, 
though he might fail in the conversion, he 
should certainly gain the good graces of 
James by the effort, which his knowledge 
of that monarch's hatred of the Prince of 
Orange had been his chief inducement to 
hazard. 

The success of the King himself, hi his 
attempts to make proselytes, was less than 
might have been expected from his zeal and 
influence. Parker, originally a zealous Non- 
conformist, aftewards a slanderous buffoon, 
and an Episcopalian of persecuting principles, 
earned the bishopric of Oxford by showing 
a strong disposition to favour, if not to be 
reconciled to, the Church of Rome. Two 
bishops publicly visited Mr. Leyburn the 
Catholic prelate, at his apartments in St. 
James' Palace, on his being made almoner 
to the King, when it was, unhappily, impos- 
sible to impute their conduct to liberality or 
charity. t Walker, the Master of University 

* Barillon, supra. 

t Rnnrepos, 28th March.— Fox MSS. 

t D'Adda, 21st January, 1686,— MS. The 
King and Queen look ihe sacrament at St. James' 
Chapel " Monsig re Vescovo Leyburn, passato 



College in Oxford, and three of the fellows 
of that society, were the earliest and most 
noted of the tew open converts among the 
clergy. L'Estrange, though he had for five- 
and-twenty years written all the scurrilous 
libels of the Court, refused to abandon the 
Protestant Chinch. Dryden, indeed, con- 
formed to the doctrines of his master ;* and 
neither the critical time, nor his general cha- 
racter, have been sufficient to deter some of 
the admirers of that great poet from seriously 
maintaining that his conversion was real. 
The same persons who make this stand for 
the conscientious character of the poet of 
a profligate Court, have laboured with all 
their might to discover and exaggerate those 
human frailties from which fervid piety and 
intrepid integrity did not altogether preserve 
Milton, in the evil days of his age, and 
poverty, and blindness. t The King failed 
in a personal attempt to convert Lord Dart- 
mouth, whom he considered as his most 
faithful servant for having advised him to 
bring Irish troops into England, such being 
more worthy of trust than others ;i — a re- 
markable instance of a man of honour ad- 
hering inflexibly to the Church of England, 
though his counsels relating to civil affairs 
were the most fatal to public liberty. Mid- 
dleton, one of the secretaries of state, a man 
of ability, supposed to have no strong prin- 
ciples of religion, was equally inflexible. The 
Catholic divine who was sent to him began 
by attempting to reconcile his understanding 
to the mysterious doctrine of transubstantia- 
tion. " Your Lordship," said he, ' : believes 
the Trinity." — ;: Who told you so 1 " answer- 
ed Middleton ; u you are come here to prove 
your own opinions, not to ask about mine." 
The astonished priest is said to have imme- 
diately retired. Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, 
is also said to have sent away a monk who 
came to convert him by a jest upon the same 
doctrine: — "I have convinced myself," said 
he, " by much reflection that God made man ; 
but I cannot believe that man can make 
God." But though there is no reason to doubt 



da alcuni giomi nelP apanamento de St. James 
destinato al gran Elimosiniere de S. M. in habito 
lnngo nero portando la croce nera, si fa vedere in 
publico visitando i minisiri del Principe e altri : 
furono un giorno per fargli una visita due vescovi 
Protcsianti." As this occurred before the pro- 
motion of the two profligate prelates, Parker and 
Cartwright, one of these visitors must have been 
Crew, and the other was, too probably, Spratt. 
The former had been appointed Clerk of the 
Closet, and Dean of the Chapel Royal, a few- 
days before. 

* " Dryden, the famous play-writer, and his 
two sons, and Mrs. Nelly, were said to go to 
mass. Such proselytes were no great loss to the 
Church." Evelyn, vol. i. p. 594. The rumour, 
as far as it related to Mrs. Gwynne, was calumni- 
ous. 

t Compare Dr. Johnson's biography of Milton 
with his eenerallv excellent life of Dryden. 

t D'Adda. 10th May.— MS. " Diceva il Re 
che il detto Milord veramente gli aveva dato con 
sigli molto fedeli, uno di quelli era stato di far ve- 
nire trtippi Irlandesi in Inghilterra, nelli quail 
poteva S. M. meglio fidarsi cue negli altri." 
2A 



^02 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



his pleasantry or profaneness, his integrity 
is more questionable.* Colonel Kirke. from 
whom strong scruples were hardly to be ex- 
pected, is said to have answered the King's 
desire, that he would listen to Catholic di- 
vines, by declaring, that when he was at 
Tangier he had engaged himself to the Em- 
peror of Morocco, if ever he changed his 
religion, to become a Mahometan. Lord 
Churchill, though neither insensible to the 
kindness of James, nor distinguished by a 
strict conformity to the precepts of Religion, 
withstood the attempts of his generous bene- 
factor to bring him over to the Church of 
Rome. He said of himself, u that though he 
could not lead the life of a saint, he was re- 
solved, if there was ever occasion for it, to 
show the resolution of a martyr. "t So much 
constancy in religious opinion may seem 
singular among courtiers and soldiers: but 
it must be considered, that the inconsistency 
of men's actions with their opinions is more 
often due to infirmity than to insincerity ; 
that the members of the Protestant party 
were restrained from deserting it by princi- 
ples of honour ; and that the disgrace of de- 
sertion was much aggravated by the general 
unpopularity of the adverse cause, and by 
the violent animosity then raging between 
the two parties who divided England and 
Europe. 

Nothing so much excited the abhorrence 
of all Protestant nations against Louis XIV., 
as the measures which he adopted against 
his subjects of that religion. As his policy 
on that subject contributed to the downfall 
of James, it seems proper to state it more 
fully than the internal occurrences of a fo- 
reign country ought generally to be treated 
in English history. The opinions of the Re- 
formers, which triumphed in some countries 
of Europe, and were wholly banished from 
others, had very early divided France and 
Germany into two powerful but unequal 
parties. The wars between the princes of 
the Empire which sprung from this source, 
after a period of one hundred and fifty years, 
were finally composed by the treaty of West- 
phalia. In France, where religious enthusi- 
asm was exasperated by the lawless charac- 
ter and mortal animosities of civil war, these 

* He had been made Lord Chamberlain imme- 
diately after Jeffreys' circuit, and had been ap- 
pointed a member of the Ecclesiastical Commis- 
sion, in November, 1685, when Bancroft refused 
to act, in which last office he continued to the last. 
He held out hopes that he might be converted to 
a very late period of the reign, (Barillon, 30th 
August, 1687,) and he was employed by James to 
persuade Sir George Mackenzie to consent to the 
removal of the Test.— (Halifax MSS.) He brought 
a patent for a marquisate to the King half-an-hour 
before King James went away. — (Ibid.) In Oc- 
tober, 1688, he thought it necessary to provide 
against the approaching storm by obtaining a gene- 
ral pardon. Had not Lord Mnlgrave written some 
memoirs of his own time, his importance as a 
statesman would not have deserved so full an ex- 
posure of his political character. 

+ Coxe, Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborough, 
vol. i. p. 27. 



hostilities raged for nearly forty years with 
a violence unparalleled in any civilized age 
or country. As soon as Henry IV. had esta- 
blished his authority by conformity to the 
worship of the majority of his people, the 
first object of his paternal policy was to se- 
cure the liberty of the Protestants, and to 
restore the quiet of the kingdom by a general 
law on this equally arduous and important 
subject. The contending opinions in their 
nature admitted no negotiation or concession. 
The simple and effectual expedient of per- 
mitting them all to be professed with equal 
freedom was then untried in practice, and al- 
most unknown in speculation. The toleration 
of error, according to the received principles 
of that age, differed little from the permis- 
sion of crimes. Amidst such opinions it was 
extremely difficult to frame a specific law 
for the government of hostile sects: and the 
Edict of Nantes, passed by Henry for that 
purpose in the year 1598, must be consider- 
ed as honourable to the wisdom and virtue 
of his Catholic counsellors. This Edict,* 
saiii to be composed by the great historian 
De Thou, was based on the principle of a 
treaty of peace between belligerent parties, 
sanctioned and enforced by the royal autho- 
rity. Though the transaction was founded 
merely in humanity and prudence, without 
any reference to religious liberty, some of 
its provisions were conformable to the legiti- 
mate results of that great principle. All 
Frenchmen of the reformed religion were 
declared to be admissible to every office, 
civil and military, in the kingdom; and they 
were received into all schools and colleges 
without distinction. Dissent from the Esta- 
blished Church was exempted from all pen- 
alty or civil inconvenience. The public ex- 
ercise of the Protestant religion was confined 
to those cities and towns where it had been 
formerly granted, and to the mansions of the 
gentry who had seignorial jurisdiction over 
capital crimes. It might, however, be prac- 
tised in other places by the permission of the 
Catholics, who were lords of the respective 
manors. Wherever the worship of the Pro- 
testants was lawful, their religious books 
might freely be bought and sold. They 
might inhabit any part of the kingdom with- 
out molestation for their opinion ; and private 
worship was everywhere protected by the 
exemption of their houses from all legal 
search on account of religion. These restric- 
tions, though they show the Edict to have 
been a pacification between parties, with 
little regard to the conscience of individuals, 
yet do not seem in practice to have much 
limited the religious liberty of French Pro- 
testants. To secure an impartial adminis- 
tration of justice, Chambers, into which Pro- 
testants and Catholics were admitted in equal 
numbers, were established in the principal 
parliaments. t The Edict was declared to be 

* The original is to be found in Benoit, Histoire 
de l'Edit de Nantes, vol. i. app. pp. 62 — 85. 

t Paris, Toulouse, Grenoble, and Bordeaux. 
The Chamber of the Edict at Paris took cogni- 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



303 



a perpetual and irrevocable law. By a sepa- 
rate grant executed at Nantes, the King- 
authorised the Protestants, for eight years, 
to garrison the towns and places of which 
they were at that time in military possession, 
and to hold them under his authority and 
obedience. The possession of these places 
of security was afterwards continued from 
time to time, and the expense of their garri- 
sons defrayed by the Crown. Some cities ptlso, 
where the majority of the inhabitants were 
Protestants, and where the magistrates, by 
the ancient constitution, regulated the armed 
force, with little dependence on the Crown, 
such as Nismes, Rochelle, and Montauban,* 
though not formerly garrisoned by the Reform- 
ed, still constituted a part of their military se- 
curity for the observance of the Edict. An 
armed sect of dissenters must have afforded 
many plausible pretexts for attack; and Car- 
dinal Richelieu had justifiable reasons of 
policy for depriving the Protestants of those 
important fortresses, the possession of which 
gave them the character of an independent 
republic, and naturally led them into dan- 
gerous connection with Protestant and rival 
states. His success in accomplishing that 
important enterprise is one of the most splen- 
did parts of his administration; though he 
owed the reduction of Rochelle to the fee- 
bleness and lukewarmness, if not to the 
treachery, of the Court of England. Riche- 
lieu discontinued the practice of granting the 
royal licence to the Protestant body to hold 
political assemblies ; and he adopted it as a 
maxim of permanent policy, that the highest 
dignities of the army and the state should be 
granted to Protestants only in cases of ex- 
traordinary merit. In other respects that 
haughty minister treated them as a mild 
conqueror. When they were reduced to en- 
tire submission, in 1629, an edict of pardon 
was issued at Nismes, confirming all the 
civil and religious principles which had been 
granted by the Edict of Nantes. t At the 
moment that they were reduced to the situa- 
tion of private subjects, they disappear from 
the history of France. They are not men- 
tioned in the dissensions which disturbed 
the minority of Louis XIV., nor are they 
named by that Prince in the enumeration 
which he gives of objects of public anxiety 
at the period which preceded his assumption 
of the reins of government, in 1660. The 
great families attached to them by birth and 
honour during the civil wars were gradually 
allured to the religion of the Court ; while 
those of inferior condition, like the members 
of other sects excluded from power, applied 



zanre of all causes where Protestants were parties 
in Normandy and Brittany. 

* Cautionary Towns. — " La Rochelle surtout 
avait des traites avec les Rois de France qui la 
rendoient presque independante." — Benoit, vol. i. 
p. 251. 

t Benoit, vol. ii. app. 02. Madame de Duras, 
the sister of Turenne, was so zealous a Protestant 
that she wished to educate as a minister, her son, 
who afterwards went to England, and became 
Lord Feversham. — Vol. iv. p. 129, 



themselves to the pursuit of wealth, and 
were patronised by Colbert as the most in- 
genious manufacturers in France. A decla- 
ration, prohibiting the relapse of converted 
Protestants under pain of confiscation, indi- 
cated ;i disposition to persecute, which that 
prudent minister had the good fortune to 
check. An edict punishing emigration with 
death, though long after turned into the 
sharpest instrument of intolerance, seems 
originally to have flowed solely from the 
general prejudices on that subject, which 
have infected the laws and policy of most 
states. Till the peace of Nimeguen, when 
Louis had reached the zenith of his power, 
the 'French Protestants experienced only 
those minute vexations from which secta- 
ries, discouraged by a government, are sel- 
dom secure. 

The immediate cause of a general and 
open departure from the moderate system, 
under which France had enjoyed undis- 
turbed quiet for half a century, is to be dis- 
cerned only in the character of the King, 
and the inconsistency of his conduct with 
his opinions. Those conflicts between his 
disorderly passions and his unenlightened 
devotion, which had long agitated his mind, 
were at last composed under the ascendant 
of Madame de Maintenon ; and in this situ- 
ation he was seized with a desire of signal- 
izing his penitence, and atoning for his sins, 
by the conversion of his heretical subjects.* 
Her prudence as well as moderation prevent- 
ed her from counselling the employment of 
violence against the members of her former 
religion ; nor do such means appear to have 
been distinctly contemplated by the King; — 
still she dared not moderate the zeal on 
which her greatness was founded. But the 
passion for conversion, armed with absolute 
power, fortified by the sanction of mistaken 
conscience, intoxicated by success, exaspe- 
rated by resistance, anticipated and carried 
beyond its purpose by the zeal of subaltern 
agents, deceived by their false representa- 
tions, often irrevocably engaged by their 
rash acts, and too warm to be considerate in 
choosing means or weighing consequences, 
led the government of France, under a prince 
of no cruel nature, by an almost unconscious 
progress, in the short space of six years, 
from a successful system of toleration tojhe 
most unprovoked and furious persecution 
ever carried on against so great, so innocent, 
and so meritorious a body of men. The 
Chambers of the Edict were suppressed on 
general grounds of judicial reformation, and 
because the concord between the two reli- 
gions rendered them no longer necessary. 
By a series of edicts the Protestants were 
excluded from all public offices, and from 
all professions which were said to give them 
a dangerous influence over opinion. They 
were successively rendered incapable of 



* " Le Roi pense serieusement a la conver- 
sion des heretiques, et dans peu on y travaillera 
tout de bon.'' — Mad. de Maintenon, Oct. 28th, 
1679. 



304 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



being judges, advocates, attorneys, notaries, 
clerks, officers, or even attendants of courts 
of law. They were banished m multitudes 
from places in the revenue, to which their 
habit of method and calculation had directed 
tlu ir pursuits. They were forbidden to ex- 
ercise the occupation's of printers and book- 
sellers * Even the pacific and neutral pro- 
fession of medicine, down to its humblest 
branches, wasclosed to their industry. They 
were prohibited from intermarriage with 
Catholics, and from hiring Catholic domes- 
tics without exception of convenience or 
necessity. Multitudes of men were thus 
driven from their employments, without any 
regard to the habits, expectations, and plans, 
which the)' had formed on the faith of the 
laws. Besides the misery which immedi- 
ately flowed from these acts of injustice, 
they roused and stimulated the bigotry of 
those, who need only the slightest mark of 
the temper of government to inflict on their 
dissenting countrymen those minute but 
ceaseless vexations which embitter the daily- 
course of human life. 

As the Edict of Nantes had only permitted 
the public worship of Protestants in certain 
places, it had often been a question whether 
particular churches were erected conformably 
to that law. The renewal and multiplication 
of suits on this subject furnished the means of 
striking a dangerous blow against the Reform- 
ed religion. Prejudice and servile tribunals 
adjudged multitudes of churches to be demo- 
lished" by decrees which were often illegal, 
and always unjust. By these judgments a 
hundred thousand Protestants were, in fact, 
prohibited from the exercise of their religion. 
They were deprived of the means of educa- 
ting their clergy by the suppression of their 
flourishing colleges at Sedan, Saumur, and 
Montauban, which had long been numbered 
among the chief ornaments of Protestant 
Europe. Other expedients were devised to 
pursue them into their families, and harass 
them in those situations where the disturb- 
ance of quiet inflicts the deepest wounds on 
human nature. The local judges were au- 
thorised and directed to visit the death-beds 
of Protestants, and to interrogate them whe- 
ther they determined to die in obstinate 
heresy. Their children were declared com- 
petent to abjure their errors at the age of 
seven ; and by such mockery of conversion 
they might escape, at that age, from the 
affectionate care of their parents. Every 
childish sport was received as evidence of 
abjuration; and every parent dreaded the 
presence of a Catholic neighbour, as the 
means of ensnaring a child into irrevocable 
alienation. Each of these disabilities or se- 
verities was in Acted by a separate edict; 
and each was founded on the allegation of 
some special grounds, which seemed to 
guard against any general conclusion at va- 
riance with the privileges of Protestants. 



On the other hand, a third of the King's 
savings on his privy purse was set apart to 
recompense converts to the Established reli- 
gion. The new conveils were allowed a 
delay of three years for the payment of their 
debts : and they were exempted for the same 
period from the obligation of affording quar- 
ters to soldiers. This last privilege seems to 
have suggested to Louvois, a minister of 
great talent but of tyrannical character, a 
new and more terrible instrument of conver- 
sion. He despatched regiments of dragoons 
into the Protestant provinces, with instiuc- 
tions that they should be almost entirely 
quartered on the richer Protestants. This 
practice, which afterwards, under the name 
of " Draironnadcs," became so infamous 
throughout Europe, was attended by all the 
outrages and barbarities to be expected from 
a licentious soldiery let loose on those whom 
they considered as the enemies of their King, 
and the blasphemers of their religion. Its 
effects became soon conspicuous in the 
feigned conversion of great cities and ex- 
tensive provinces; which, instead of open- 
ing the eyes of the Government to the atro- 
city of the policy adopted under its sanction, 
served only to create a deplorable expecta- 
tion of easy, immediate, and complete suc- 
cess. At Nismes, 60,000 Protestants abjured 
their religion in three days. The King was 
informed by one despatch that all Poitou 
was converted, and that in some parts of 
Dauphin e the same change had been pro- 
duced by the terror of the dragoons without 
their actual presence* 

All these expedients of disfranchisement, 
chicane, vexation, seduction, and military 
license, almost amounting to military execu- 
tion, were combined with declarations of 
respect for the Edict of Nantes, and of reso- 
lutions to maintain the religious rights of the 
new churches. Every successive edict spoke 
the language of toleration and liberality: 
every separate exclusion was justified on a 
distinct ground of specious policy. The 
most severe hardships were plausibly repre- 
sented as necessarily arising from a just in- 
terpretation and administration of the law. 
Many of the restrictions were in themselves 
small; many tried in one province, and 
slowly extended to all; some apparently 
excused by the impatience of the sufferers 
under preceding restraints. In the end, 
however, the unhappy Protestants saw them- 
selves surrounded by a persecution which, 
in its full extent, had probably never been 
contemplated by the author; and, after all 
the privileges were destroyed, nothing re- 
mained but the formality of repealing the 
law by which these privileges had been con- 
ferred. 

At length, on the 18th of October, 1685, 
the Government of France, not unwillingly 



* Ii is singular that they were not excluded 
from the military service by sea or land. 



* Lemontey. Nouveaux Me moires He Dangeau, 
p 19 The fate of the province of Beam was 
peculiarly dreadful. It may be seen in Rnlhtere 
(Eclaircissemens, &c. chap, xv.), and Benoit, hv. 
xxii. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



305 



deceived by feigned conversions, and, as it 
now appears, actuated more by sudden im- 
pulse than long-premeditated design, revoked 
the Edict of Nantes. In the preamble of 
the edict of revocation it was alleged, that. 
as the better and greater part of those who 
professed the pretended Reformed religion 
had embraced the Catholic faith, the Edict 
of Nantes had become unnecessary. The 
ministers of the Reformed faith were banish- 
ed from France in fifteen days, under pain 
of the galleys. All Protestant schools were 
shut up ; and the unconverted children, at 
first allowed to remain in France without 
annoyance on account of their religion, were 
soon afterwards ordered to be taken from 
their parents, and committed to the care of 
their nearest Catholic relations, or, in default 
of such relations, to the magistrates. The 
return of the exiled ministers, and the at- 
tendance on a Protestant church for religious 
worship, were made punishable with death. 
Carrying vengeance beyond the grave, an- 
other edict enjoined, that if any new con- 
verts should refuse the Catholic sacraments 
on their death-bed, when required to receive 
them by a magistrate, their bodies should 
be drawn on a hurdle along the public way, 
and then cast into the common sewers. 

The conversion sought by James with most 
apparent eagerness was that of Lord Roches- 
ter. Though he had lost all favour,' and even 
confidence, James long hesitated to remove 
him from office. The latter was willing, but 
afraid to take a measure which would involve 
a final rupture with the Church of England. 
Rochester's connection with the family of 
Hyde, and some remains perhaps of gratitude 
for past services, and a dread of increasing 
the numbers of his enemies, together with 
the powerful influence of old habits of inti- 
macy, kept his mind for some time in a state 
of irresolution and fluctuation. His dissa- 
tisfaction with the Lord Treasurer became 
generally known in the summer, and appears 
to have been considerably increased by the 
supposed connection of that nobleman with 
the episcopalian administration in Scotland ; 
of whose removal it will become our duty 
presently to speak.* The sudden return of 
Lady Dorchester revived the spirits of his 
adherents. t But the Queen, a person of 
great importance in these affairs, was, on 
this occasion, persuaded to repress her anger, 
and to profess a reliance on the promise made 
by the King not to see his mistress. ''J' For- 
merly, indeed, the violence of the Queen's 
temper is said to have been one source of 
her influence over the King; and her as- 
cendency was observed to be always greatest 
after those paroxysms of rage to which she 
was excited by the detection of his infideli- 
ties. But, in circumstances so critical, her 
experienced advisers dissuaded her from re- 



* Barillon, 18th July.— Fox MSS. 
t Id. 2d Sept.— Ibid. 

t Report of an agent of Louis XIV. in London, 
in 1686, of which a copy is in my possession. 
39 



peating hazardous experiments;* and the 
amours of her husband are said, at this 
time, to have become so vulgar and obscure 
as to elude her vigilance. She was mild and 
submissive to him : but she showed her sus- 
picion of the motive of Lady Dorchester's 
journey by violent resentment against Cla- 
rendon, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whom 
she believed to be privy to it, and who in 
vain attempted to appease her anger by the 
most humble — not to say abject — submis- 
sions, t She at this moment seemed to have 
had more than ordinary influence, and was 
admitted into the secret of all affairs.} Sup- 
ported, if not instigated by her, Sunderland 
and Petre, with the more ambitious and tur- 
bulent part of the Catholics, represented to 
the King that nothing favourable to the 
Catholics was to be hoped from Parliament 
as long as his Court and Council were divi- 
ded, and as long as he was surrounded by a 
Protestant cabal, at the head of which was 
the Lord Treasurer, professing the most ex- 
travagant zeal for the English Church ; that, 
notwithstanding the pious zeal of his Ma- 
jesty, nothing important had yet been done 
for religion ; that not one considerable person 
had declared himself a Catholic ; that ho 
secret believer would avow himself, and no 
well-disposed Protestant would be reconciled 
to the Church, till the King's administration 
was uniform, and the principles of govern- 
ment more decisive ; and that the time was 
now come when it was necessary for his Ma- 
jesty to execute the intention which he had 
long entertained, either to bring the Treasu- 
rer to more just sentiments, or to remove 
him from the important office which he filled, 
and thus prove to the public that there was 
no means of preserving power or credit but 
by supporting the King's measures for the 
Catholic religion. § They reminded him of 
the necessity of taking means to perpetuate 
the benefits which he designed for the Catho- 
lics, and of the alarming facility with which 
the Tudor princes had made and subverted 
religious revolutions. Even the delicate 
question of the succession was agitated, 
and some had the boldness of throwing 
out suggestions to James on the most ef- 
fectual means of insuring a Catholic suc- 
cessor. These extraordinary suggestions 
appear to have been in some measure known 
to Van Citters, the Dutch minister, who ex- 

* In a MS. among the Stuart papers in posses- 
sion of his Majesty, which was written by Sheri- 
dan, Secretary for Ireland under Tyrconnel, we 
are told that Petre and Sunderland agreed to dis- 
miss Mrs. Sedley, under pretence of morality, but 
really because she was thought the support of Ro- 
chester ; and that it was effected by Lady Powis 
and Bishop C.ifTard, to the Queen's great joy.— 
See farther Barillon, 5th Sept.— Fox MSS. 

t Letters of Henry, Earl of Clarendon. 

I Barillon. 23d Sept.— Fox MSS. ^ 

i The words of Barillon, " pour I'etablissemeru 
de la religion Catholique," being capable of two 
senses, have been translated in the text in a man- 
ner which admits of a double interpretation. The 
context removes all ambiguity in this case. 
2 a 2 



306 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



pressed his fears that projects were forming 
against the rights of the Princess of Orange. 
The more atlhient and considerable Catho- 
lics themselves became alarmed, seeing, as 
clearly as their brethren, the dangers to 
which they might be exposed under a Pro- 
testant successor. But they thought it wiser 
to entitle themselves to his favour by a mo- 
derate exereise of their influence, than to 
provoke his hostility by precautions so un- 
likely to be effectual againsl his succession 
or his religion. Moderation had its usual 
fate: the faction of zealots, animated by the 
superstition, the jealous}-, and the violence 
of the Queen, became the most powerful. 
Even at this time, however, the Treasurer 
was thought likely to have maintained his 
ground for some time longer, if he had en- 
tirely conformed to the King's wishes. His 
friends Ormonde, Middleton, Feversham, 
Dartmouth, and Preston were not without 
hope that he might retain office. At last, in 
the end of October, James declared that Ro- 
chester must either go to mass, or go out of 
office.* His advisers represented to him 
that it was dangerous to leave this alterna- 
tive to the Treasurer, which gave him the 
means of saving his place by a pretended 
conformity. The King replied that he haz- 
arded nothing by the proposal, for he knew 
that Rochester would never conform. If 
this observation was sincere, it seems to have 
been rash; for some of Rochester's friends 
still believed he would do whatever was ne- 
cessary, and advised him to keep his office 
at any price. t The Spanish and Dutch am- 
bassadors expressed their fear of the fall of 
their last friend in the Cabinet;! and Louis 
XIV. considered the measure as certainly 
favourable to religion and to his policy, 
whether it ended in the conversion of Ro- 
chester or in his dismissal ; in acquiring a 
friend, or in disabling an enemy. § 

It was agreed that a conference on the 
questions in dispute should be held in the 
presence of Rochester, by Dr. Jane and Dr. 
Patrick on behalf of the Church of England, 
and by Dr. Giffard and Dr. Tilden II on the 
part oi the Church of Rome. It is not easy 
to believe that the King or his minister 
should have considered a real change of 
opinion as a possible result of such a dis- 
pute. Even if the influence of attachment, 
of antipathy, of honour, and of habit on the 
human mind were suspended, the conviction 
of a man of understanding on questions of 
great importance, then the general object of 
study and discussion, could hardly be con- 



* Barillon, 4th Nov. — Fox MSS. It is curious 
that the report of Rochester's dismissal is men- 
tioned hy Narcissus Luttrell on the same day on 
which Barillon's despatch is dated. 

t Id. 9th Dec— Ibid. 

t Id. ISth Nov.— Ibid. 

i The King to Barillon. Versailles, 19th Oct. — 
Ibid. 

II This peculiarly respectable divine assumed 
the name of Godden ; — a practice to which Catho- 
lic clergymen were then sometimes reduced to 
olude persecution. 



ceived to depend on the accidental superi- 
ority in skill and knowledge exhibited by 
the disputants of either party in the course 
of a single debate. But the proposal, if made 
by one parly, was too specious and popular 
to be prudently rejected by the other: they 
were alike interested in avoiding the impu- 
tation of shrinking from an argumentative 
examination of their faith. The King was 
desirous of being relieved from his own in- 
decision by a signal proof of Rochester's ob- 
stinacy : and in the midst of his fluctuations 
he may sometimes have indulged a linger- 
ing hope that the disputation might supply 
a decent excuse for the apparent conformity 
of his old friend and servant. In all pro- 
longed agitations of the mind, it is in succes- 
sion affected by motives not very consistent 
with each other. Rochester foresaw that 
his popularity among Protestants would be 
enhanced by his triumphant resistance to the 
sophistry of their adversaries; and he gave 
the King, by consenting to the conference, a 
pledge of his wish to carry compliance to the 
utmost boundaries of integrity. He hoped 
to gain time; he retained the means of pro- 
fiting by fortunate accidents; at least he 
postponed the fatal hour of removal : and 
there were probably moments in which his 
fainting virtue looked for some honourable 
pretence for deserting a vanquished party. 

The conference took place on the 30th of 
November.* Each of the contending par- 
ties, as usual, claimed the victory. The 
Protestant writers, though they agree that 
the Catholics were defeated, vary from each 
other. Some ascribe the victory to the two 
divines; others to the arguments of Roches- 
ter himself; and one of the disputants of the 
English Church said that it was unnecessary 
for them to do much. One writer tells us 
that the King said he never saw a good cause 
so ill defended; and all agree that Roches- 
ter closed the conference with the most de- 
termined declaration that he was confirmed 
in his religion. t» Giffard, afterwards a Catho- 
lic prelate of exemplary character, published 
an account of the particulars of the contro- 
versy, which gives a directly opposite account 
of it. In the only part of it which can in any 
degree be tried by historical evidence, the 
Catholic account of the dispute is more pro- 
bable. Rochester, if we may believe Giffard, 
at the end of the conference, said — " The 
disputants have discoursed learnedly, and I 
desire time to consider."! Agreeably to this 
statement, Barillon, after mentioning the 
dispute, told his Court that Rochester still 



* Dodd, vol. iii. p. 419. Barillon's short ac- 
count of the conference is dated on the 12th De- 
cember, which, after making allowance for the 
difference of calendars, makes the despatch to be 
written two days after the conference, which de- 
serves to be mentioned as a proof of Dodd's singu- 
lar exactness. 

t Burnet, Echard, and Kennet. There are other 
contradictions in the testimony of these historians, 
and it is evident that Burnet did not implicitly be- 
lieve Rochester's own story. 

t Dodd, vol. iii. p. 420. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



307 



showed a disposition to be instructed with 
respect to the difficulties which prevented 
him from declaring himself a Catholic, and 
added that some even then expected that he 
would determine for conformity.* This des- 
patch was written two days after the dispu- 
tation by a minister who could neither be 
misinformed, nor have any motive to deceive. 
Some time afterwards, indeed, Rochester 
made great efforts to preserve his place, and 
laboured to persuade the moderate party 
among the Catholics that it was their interest 
to support hihl.t He did not, indeed, offer 
to sacrifice his opinions: but a man who, after 
the loss of all confidence and real power, 
clung with such tenacity to mere office, 
under a system of which he disapproved 
every principle, could hardly be supposed 
to be unassailable. The violent or decisive 
politicians of the Catholic party dreaded that 
Rochester might still take the King at his 
word, and defeat all their plans by a feigned 
compliance. James distrusted his sincerity, 
suspected that his object was to amuse and 
temporise, and at length, weary of his own 
irresolution, took the decisive measure of re- 
moving the only minister by whom the Pro- 
testant party had a hold on his councils. 

The place of Lord Rochester was accord- 
ingly supplied on the 5th of January, 1687, 
by commissioners, of whom two were Catho- 
lics, Lord Bellasis of the cautious, and Lord 
Dover of the zealous party ; and the remain- 
ing three. Lord Godolphin, Sir John Ernley, 
and Sir Stephen Fox, were probably chosen 
for their capacity and experience in the af- 
fairs of finance. Two days afterwards Par- 
liament, in which the Protestant Tories, the 
followers of Rochester, predominated, was 
prorogued. James endeavoured to soften 
the removal of his minister by a pension of 
40001. a year on the Post Office for a term 
of years, together with the polluted grant of 
a perpetual annuity of 1700L a year out of 
the forfeited estate of Lord Gray,} for the 
sake of which the King, under a false show 
of mercy, had spared the life of that noble- 
man. The King was no longer, however, at 
pains to conceal his displeasure. He told 
Barillon that Rochester favoured the French 
Protestants, whom, as a term of reproach, he 
called "Calvinists," and added that this was 
one of many instances in which the senti- 
ments of the minister were opposite to those 
of his master.^ He informed D'Adda that 
the Treasurer's obstinate perseverance in 
error had at length rendered his removal in- 
evitable ; but that wary minister adds, that 
they who had the most sanguine hopes of 
the final success of the Catholic cause were 
obliged to own that, at that moment, the 
public temper was inflamed and exasperated, 
and that the cry of the people was, that 
since Rochester was dismissed because he 
would not become a Catholic, there must 

* Barillon, 12th Dec— Fox MSS. 

t Fd. 30ih Dec— Ibid. 

I Evelyn, vol. i. p. 595. 

§ Barillon, 13th Jan. 1687— Fox MSS. 



be a design to expel all Protestants from 
office.* 

The fall of Rochester was preceded, and 
probably quickened, by an important change 
in the administration of Scotland, and it was 
also connected with a revolution in the go- 
vernment of Ireland, of both which events it 
is now necessary to relate the most important 
particulars. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Scotland. — Administration of Queensberry. — 
Conversion of Perth. — Measures contem- 
plated by the King. — Debates in Parliament 
on the King's letter. — Proposed bill of tole- 
ration — unsatisfactory to James. — Adjourn- 
ment of Parliament. — Exercise of prero- 
gative. 

Ireland. — Character of Tyrconncl. — Review 
of the state of Ireland. — Arrival of Tyr- 
conncl. — His appointment as Lord Deputy. 
— Advancement of Catholics to of/ices. — ■ 
Tyrconncl aims at the sovereign power in 
Ireland. — Intrigues with France. 

The government of Scotland, under the 
Episcopal ministers of Charles II., w r as such, 
that, to the Presbyterians, who formed the 
majority of the people, " their native country 
had, by the prevalence of persecution and 
violence, become as insecure as a den of 
robbers. "t The chief place in the adminis- 
tration had been filled for some years by 
Queensberry, a man of ability, the leader of 
the Episcopal party, who, in that character 
as well as from a matrimonial connection 
between their families, was disposed to an 
union of councils with Rochester. I Adopting 
the principles of his English friends, he 
seemed ready to sacrifice the remaining 
liberties of his country, but resolved to ad- 
here to the Established Church. The acts' 
of the first session in the reign of James are 
such as to have extorted from a great histo- 
rian of calm temper, and friendly to the 
house of Stuart, the reflection that "nothing" 
could exceed the abject servility of the 
Scotch nation during this period but the ar- 
bitrary severity of the administration. "§ Not 
content with servility and cruelty for the 
moment, they laid down principles which 
would render slavery universal and perpe- 
tual, by assuring the King " that they abhor 
and detest all principles and positions which 
are contrary or derogatory to the King's sa- 
cred, supreme, absolute power and authority, 
which none, whether persons or collective 
bodies, can participate of, in any manner or 
on any pretext, but in dependence on him 
and by commission from him. "II 



* D'Adda, 10th Jan. 1687— MS. 
t Hume. History of England, chap. lxix. 
X His son had married the niece of Lady Ro- 
chester. 

§ Hume, chap. Ixx. 

II Acts of Parliament, vol. viii. p. 459. 



308 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



But the jealousies between the King's 
party and that of the Church among the 
Scotch ministers were sooner visible than 
those between the corresponding factions in 
the English council; and they seem, in some 
degree, to have limited the severities which 
followed the revolt of Argyle. The Privy 
Council, at the intercession of some ladies 
of distinction, prevented the Marquis of 
Athol from hanging Mr. Charles Campbell, 
then confined by a fever, at the gates of his 
father's castle of Inverary:* and it was pro- 
bably by their representations that James 
was induced to recall instructions which he 
had issued to the Duke of Queensberry for 
ih b suppression of the name of Campbell ;t 
which would have amounted to a proscrip- 
tion of several noblemen, a considerable 
body of gentry, and the most numerous and 
powerful tribe in the kingdom. They did not, 
however, hesitate in the execution of the 
King's orders to dispense with the Test in 
the case of four peers and twenty-two gen- 
tlemen, who were required by law to take it 
before they exercised the office of commis- 
sioners to assess the supply in their respective 
counties, t 

The Earl of Perth, the Chancellor of Scot- 
land, began now to attack Queensberry by 
means somewhat similar to those employed 
by Sunderland against Rochester. Queens- 
berry had two years before procured the ap- 
pointment of Perth, as it was believed, by a 
present of a sum of 27,000L of public money 
to the Duchess of Portsmouth. Under a new 
reign, when that lady was by no means a 
favourite, both Queensberry and Perth ap- 
prehended a severe inquisition into this mis- 
application of public money ;§ Perth, whether 
actuated by fear or ambition, made haste to 
consult his security and advancement by 
conforming to the religion of the Court, on 
which Lord Halifax observed, that " his faith 
had made him whole." Queensberry ad- 
hered to the Established Church. 

The Chancellor soon began to exercise 
that ascendency which he acquired by his 
■conversion, in such a manner as to provoke 
immediate demonstrations of the zeal against 
the Church of Rome, which the Scotch Pres- 
byterians carried farther than any other Re- 
formed community. He issued an order 
against the sale of any books without license, 
which was universally understood as intend- 
ed to prevent the circulation of controversial 
writings against the King's religion. Glen, 
a bookseller in Edinburgh, when he received 
this warning, said, that he had one book 
which strongly condemned Popery, and de- 
sired to know whether he might continue to 
sell it. Being asked what the book was, he 
answered, " The Bible. "II Shortly afterwards 
the populace manifested their indignation at 
the public celebration of mass by riots, in 

* Fountainhall, Chronicle, vol. i. p. 366. 

t Warrant, 1st June, 1685. — State Paper Office. 

X Warrant, 7ih Dec. — Ibid. 

$ Fountainhall, vol. i. p. 189. II Ibid. p. 390. 



the suppression of which several persons 
were killed. A law to inflict adequate pe- 
nalties on such offences against the security 
of religious worship would have been per- 
fectly just. But as the laws of Scotland had, 
however unjustly, made it a crime to be 
present at the celebration of mass, it was 
said, with some plausibility, that the rioters 
had only dispersed an unlawful assembly. 
The lawyers evaded this difficulty by the 
ingenious expedient of keeping out of view 
the origin and object of the tumults, and 
prosecuted the offenders, merely for rioting 
in violation of certain ancient statutes, some 
of which rendered that offence capital. They 
were pursued with such singular barbarity, 
that one Keith, who was not present at the 
tumult, was executed for having said, that 
he would have helped the rioters, and for 
having drank confusion to all Papists : though 
he at the same time drank the health of the 
King, and though in both cases he only fol- 
lowed the example of the witnesses on whose 
evidence he was convicted. Attempts were 
vainly made to persuade this poor man to 
charge Queensbeny with being accessory to 
the riots, which he had freely ridiculed in 
private. That nobleman was immediately 
after removed from the office of Treasurer, 
but he was at the same time appointed Lord 
President of the Council with a pension, that 
the Court might retain some hold on him 
during the important discussions at the ap- 
proaching session of Parliament. 

The King communicated to the secret com- 
mittee of the Scotch Privy Council his in- 
tended instructions to the Commissioners 
relative to the measures to be proposed to 
Parliament. They comprehended the repeal 
of the Test, the abrogation of the sanguinary 
laws as far as they related to Papists, the 
admission of these last to all civil and mili- 
tary employments, and the confirmation of 
all the King's dispensations, even in the 
reigns of his successors, unless they were 
recalled by Parliament. On these terms he 
declared his willingness to assent to any law 
(not repugnant to these things) for securing 
the Protestant religion, and the personal dig- 
nities, offices, and possessions of the clergy, 
and for continuing all laws against fanati- 
cism.* The Privy Council manifested some 
unwonted scruples about these propositions : 
James answered them angrily. t Perplexed 
by this unexpected resistance, as well as by 
the divisions in the Scottish councils, and 
the repugnance shown by the Episcopalian 
party to any measure which might bring the 
privileges of Catholics more near to a level 
with their own, he commanded the Duke of 
Hamilton and Sir George Lockhart, Presi- 
dent of the Court of Session, to come to Lon- 
don, with a view to ascertain their inclina- 
tions, and to dispose them favourably to his 
objects, but under colour of consulting them, 
on the nature of the relief which it might be 

* 4th March, 1686— State Paper Office. 
t 18th March.— Ibid. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



309 



prudent to propose for the members of his 
own communion.* The Scotch negotiators 
(for as such they seem to have acted) con- 
ducted the discussion with no small discre- 
tion and dexterity. They professed their 
readiness to concur in the repeal of the penal 
and sanguinary laws against Catholics ; ob- 
serving, however, the difficulty of proposing 
to confine such an indulgence to one class 
of dissidents, and the policy of moving for a 
general toleration, which it would be as much 
the interests of Presbyterians as of Catholics 
to promote. They added, that it might be 
more politic not to propose the repeal of the 
Test as a measure of government, but either 
to leave it to the spontaneous disposition of 
Parliament, which would very probably re- 
peal a law aimed in Scotland against Pres- 
byterians as exclusively as it had in England 
been intended to exclude Catholics, or to 
trust to the King's dispensing power, which 
was there undisputed ; — as indeed every part 
of the prerogative was in that country held 
to be above question, and without limits. t 
These propositions embarrassed James and 
his more zealous counsellors. The King 
struggled obstinately against the extension 
of the liberty to the Presbyterians. The 
Scotch councillors required, that if the Test 
was repealed, the King should bind himself 
by the most solemn promise to attempt no 
farther alteration or abridgment of the privi- 
leges of the Protestant clergy. James did 
not conceal from them his repugnance thus 
to confirm and to secure the establishment 
of a heretical Church. He imputed the per- 
tinacity of Hamilton to the insinuations of 
Rochester, and that of Lockhart to the still 
more obnoxious influence of his father-in-law. 
Lord Wharton. \ 

The Earl of Moray, a recent convert to the 
Catholic religion, opened Parliament on the 
29th of April, and laid before it a royal let- 
ter, exhibiting traces of the indecision and 
ambiguity which were the natural conse- 
quence of the unsuccessful issue of the con- 
ferences in London. The King begins with 
holding out the temptation of a free trade 
with England, and after tendering an ample 
amnesty, proceeds to state, that while he 
shows these acts of mercy to the enemies of 
his crown and royal dignity, he cannot be 
unmindful of his Roman Catholic subjects, 
who had adhered to the Crown in rebellions 
and usurpations, though they lay under dis- 
couragements hardly to be named. He re- 
commends them to the care of Parliament, 
and desires that they may have the protec- 
tion of the laws and the same security with 
other subjects, without being laid under ob- 
ligations which their religion will not admit 
of. "This love.'' he says, "we expect ye 
will show to your brethren, as you see we 
are an indulgent father to you all."§ 

At the next sitting an answer was voted, 



* Fountainhall, vol. i. p. 410. 
tBarillon, 22d April.— Fox MSS. 
% Id. 29th April.— Ibid. 
§ Acts of Parliament, vol. viii. p. 580. 



thanking the King for his endeavours to pro- 
cure a free trade with England ; expressing 
the utmost admiration of the offer of amnesty 
to such desperate rebels against so merciful 
a prince ; declaring, " as to that part of your 
Majesty's letter which relates to your sub- 
jects of the Roman Catholic persuasion, we 
shall, in obedience to your Majesty's com- 
mands, and in tenderness to their persons, 
take the same into our serious and dutiful 
consideration, and go as great lengths therein 
as our consciences will allow ;" and conclu- 
ding w ? ith these words, which were the more 
significant because they were not called for 
by any correspondent paragraph in the King's 
letter : — " Not doubting that your Majesty 
will be careful to secure the Protestant reli- 
gion established by law." Even this answer, 
cold and guarded as it was, did not pass with- 
out some debate, important only as indica- 
ting the temper of the assembly. The words, 
"subjects of the Roman Catholic religion," 
were objected to, " as not to be given by 
Parliament to individuals, whom the law 
treated as criminals, and to a Church which 
Protestants could not, without inconsistency, 
regard as entitled to the appellation of Catho- 
lic." Lord Fountainhall proposed as an 
amendment, the substitution of " those com- 
monly called Roman Catholics." The Earl 
of Perth called this nicknaming the King, 
and proposed, " those subjects your Majesty 
has recommended." The Archbishop of 
Glasgow supported the original answer, upon 
condition of an entry in the Journals, declar- 
ing that the words were used only out of 
courtesy to the King, as a repetition of the 
language of his letter. A minority of fifty- 
six in a house of one hundred and eighty- 
two voted against the original words, even 
though they were to be thus explained.* 
Some members doubted whether they could 
sincerely profess a disposition to go any far- 
ther lengths in favour of the Romanists, be- 
ing convinced that all the laws against the 
members of that communion ought to con- 
tinue in force. The Parliament having been 
elected under the administration of Queens- 
berry, the Episcopal party was very power- 
ful both in that assembly and in the com- 
mittee called the "Lords of the Articles," 
with whom alone a bill could originate. The 
Scottish Catholics were an inconsiderable 
body : and the Presbyterians, though com- 
prehending the most intelligent, moral, and 
rel igious part of the people, so far from having 
any influence in the legislature, were pro- 
scribed as criminals, and subject to a more 
cruel and sanguinary persecution at the hands 
of their Protestant brethren than either of 
these communions had ever experienced from 
Catholic rulers. f Those of the prelates who 
preferred the interest of their order to their 

* Fountainhall, vol. i. p. 413. 

t Wodrow, History of the Church of Scotland, 
&.C., vol. ii. p. 498: — an avowed partisan, but a 
most sincere and honest writer, to whom great 
thanks are due for having preserved that collection 
of facts and documents which will for ever render 



310 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



own were dissatisfied even with the very 
limited measure of toleration laid before the 
Lords of the Articles, which only proposed 
to exempt Catholics from punishment on ac- 
count of the private eyercise of their reli- 
gious worship * The Primate was alarmed 
by a hint thrown out by the Duke of Hamil- 
ton, that a toleration so limited might be 
granted to dissenting Protestants jf nor, on 
the other hand, was the resistance of the 
prelates softened by the lure held out by the 
King in his first instructions, that if they 
would remove the Test against Catholics 
they should be indulged in the persecution 
of their fellow Protestants. The Lords of 
the Articles were forced to introduce into the 
bill two clauses; — one declaring their deter- 
mination to adhere to the established religion, 
.the other expressly providing, that the im- 
munity and forbearance contemplated should 
not derogate from the laws which required 
the oath of allegiance and the test to be taken 
by all persons in offices of public trust.! 

The arguments on both sides are to be 
found in pamphlets then printed at Edin- 
burgh; those for the Government publicly 
and actively circulated, those of the oppo- 
site party disseminated clandestinely. § The 
principal part, as in all such controver- 
sies, consists in personalities, recriminations, 
charges of inconsistency, and addresses to 
prejudice, which scarcely any ability can 
render interesting after the passions from 
which they spring have subsided and are 
forgotten. It happened, also, that temporary 
circumstances required or occasioned the 
best arguments not to be urged by the dis- 
putants. Considered on general principles, 
the bill, like every other measure of tolera- 
tion, was justly liable to no permanent ob- 
jection but its incompleteness and partiality. 
But no Protestant sect was then so tolerant 
as to object to the imperfection of the relief 
to be granted to Catholics; and the ruling 
party were neither entitled nor disposed to 
complain, that the Protestant Non-conform- 
ists, whom they had so long persecuted, 
were not to be comprehended in the tolera- 
tion. The only objection which could rea- 
sonably be made to the tolerant principles, 
now for the first time inculcated by the 
advocates of the Court, was, that they were 
not proposed with good faith, or for the re- 
lief of the Catholics but for the subversion 
of the Protestant Church, and the ultimate 

it impossible to extenuate the tyranny exercised 
over Scotland from the Restoration to the Revolu- 
tion. 

* Wodrow, vol. ii. p. 594. 

t Fonntainhall, vol. i. p. 415. 

t Wodrow, vol. ii. app. 

<S> Ibid. VVodrow ascribes the Court pamphlet 
■to Sir Roger L' Estrange, in which he is followed 
by Mr. Laing, though, in answer to it, it is said to 
have been written by a clergyman who had 
preached before the Parliament. L'Estrange was 
then in Edinburgh, probably engaged in some 
more popular controversy. The tract in question 
seems more likely to have been written by Pater- 
son, Bishop of Edinburgh. 



establishment of Popery, with all the hor- 
rors which were to follow in its train. The 
present effects of the bill were a subject ot 
more urgent consideration than its general 
character. It was more necessary to ascer- 
tain the purpose which it was intended and 
calculated to promote at the instant, than to 
examine the principles on which such a 
measure, in other circumstances and in 
common times, might be perfectly wise and 
just. Even then, had any man been liberal 
and bold enough to propose universal and 
perfect liberty of worship, the adoption of 
such a measure would probably have afforded 
the most effectual security against the de- 
signs of the Crown. But very few enter- 
tained so generous a principle : and of these, 
some might doubt the wisdom of its applica- 
tion in that hour of peril, while no one could 
have proposed it with any hope that it could 
be adopted by the majority of such a Parlia- 
ment. It can hardly be a subject of wonder, 
that the Established clergy-, without any root 
in the opinions and affections of the people, 
on whom they were imposed by law, and 
against whom they were maintained by per- 
secution, should not in the midst of con- 
scious weakness have had calmness and 
fortitude enough to consider the policy of 
concession, but trembling for their unpopular 
dignities and invidious revenues, should re- 
coil from the surrender of the most distant 
outpost which seemed to guard them, and 
struggle with all their might to keep those 
who threatened to become their most formi- 
dable rivals under the brand at least. — if not 
the scourge, — of penal laws. It. must be 
owned, that the language of the Court wri- 
ters was not calculated either to calm the 
apprehensions of the Church, or to satisfy 
the solicitude of the friends of liberty. They 
told Parliament, " that if the King were ex- 
asperated by the rejection of the bill, he 
might, without the violation of any law, 
alone remove all Protestant officers and 
judges from the government of the State, 
and all Protestant bishops and ministers 
from the government of the Church;"* — a 
threat the more alarming, because the dis- 
pensing power seemed sufficient to carry it 
into effect in civil offices, and the Scotch 
Act of Supremacy, passed in one of the 
paroxysms of servility which were frequent 
in the first years of the Restoration,!" ap- 
peared to afford the means of fully accom- 
plishing it against the Church. 

The unexpected obstinacy of the Scottish 
Parliament alarmed and offended the Court. 
Their answer did not receive the usual com- 
pliment of publication in the Gazette. — 
Orders were sent to Edinburgh to remove 
two Privy Councillors.! to displace Seton, a 
judge, and to deprive the Bishop of Dunkeld 
of a pension, for their conduct. Sir George 
Mackenzie, himself, the most eloquent and 
accomplished Scotchman of his age, was for 



* Wodrow, vol. ii. app. t 1669. 

t The Earl of Glencaim and Sir W. Bruce. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



311 



the same reason dismissed from the office of 
Lord Advocate.* It was in vain that he had 
dishonoured his genius by being for ten years 
the advocate of tyranny and the minister of 

* " Sir George Mackenzie was the grandson 
of Kenneth, first Lord Mackenzie of Kintail. and 
the nephew of Colin and George, first and second 
Earls of Seaforth. He was born at Dundee in 
1636, and alter passing through the usual course 
of education in his own country, he was sent lor 
three years to the University of Bourges, at that 
time, as he tells us, called ihe ' Athens of Law- 
yers ;' — as in later times the Scotch lawyers usually 
repaired to Utrecht and Leyden. He was called 
to the Bar, and began to practise before the Resto- 
ration ; immediately afier which he was appointed 
one of the justices-depute — criminal judges, who 
exercised that jurisdiction which was soon after 
vested in five lords of session under the denomi- 
nation of ' commissioners of justiciary.' His name 
appears in the Parliamentary proceedings as coun- 
sel in almost every important cause. He repre- 
sented the county of Ross for the four sessions of 
the Parliament which was called in 1669. In 1677 
he was appointed Lord Advocate ; and was in- 
volved by that preferment, most unhappily for his 
character, in the worst acts of the Scotch adminis- 
tration of Charles II. At the Revolution he ad- 
hered lo the fortunes of his master. Being elected 
a member of the Convention, he maintained the 
pretensions of James with courage and ability 
against Sir John Dalrymple and Sir James Mont- 
gomery, who were the most considerable of the 
Revolutionary party ; and remaining in his place 
after the imprisonment of Balcarras and the escape 
of Dundee, he was one of the minority of five in 
the memorable division on the forfeiture of the 
crown. When the death of Dundee destroyed 
the hopes of his party in Scotland, he took refuge 
at Oxford, — the natural asylum of so learned and 
inveterate a Tory. Under the tolerant govern- 
ment of William he appears to have enjoyed his 
ample fortune, — the fruit of his professional la- 
bours, — with perfect comfort as well as security. 
He died in St. James' Street in May, 1691 ; and 
his death is mentioned as that of an extraordinary 
person by several of those who recorded the 
events of their time, before the necrology of this 
country was so undistinguishing as it has now 
become. The pomp and splendour of his inter- 
ment at Edinburgh affords farther evidence how 
little the administration of William was disposed 
to discourage the funeral honours paid to his most 
inflexible opponents. The writings of Sir George 
Mackenzie are literary, legal, and political. His 
Miscellaneous Essays, both in prose and verse. 
may now be dispensed with, or laid aside, without 
difficulty. They have not vigour enough for long 
life. But if they be considered as the elegant 
amusements of a statesman and lawyer, who had 
little leisure for the cultivation of letters, they 
afford a striking proof of the variety of his accom- 
plishments, and of the refinement of his taste. 
In several of his Moral Essays, both the subject 
and the manner betray an imitation of Cowley, 
who was at that moment beginning the reforma- 
tion of English style. Sir George Mackenzie 
was probably tempted, by the example of this 
great master, to write in praise of Solitude : and 
Evelyn answered by a panegyric on Active life. 
It seems singular that Mackenzie, plunged in the 
harshest labours of ambition, should be the advo- 
cate of retirement ; and that Evelyn, compara- 
tively a recluse, should have commended that 
mode of life which he did not choose. Both 
works were, however, rhetorical exercises, in 
which a puerile ingenuity was employed on ques- 
tions which admitted no answer, and were not 
therefore the subject of sincere opinion. Before 
we can decide whether a retired or a public life 



persecution : all his ignominious claims were 
cancelled by the independence of one day. 
It was hoped that such examples might strike 
terror.* Several noblemen, who held com- 
missions in the army, were ordered to repair 
to their posts. Some members were threat- 
ened with the avoidance of their elections. f 
A prosecution was commenced against the 
Bishop of Ross, and the proceedings were stu- 
diously protracted, to weary out the poorer 
part of those who refused to comply with the 
Court. The ministers scrupled at no expe- 
dient for seducing, or intimidating, or harass- 
ing.. But these expedients proved ineffectual. 
The majority of the Parliament adhered to 
their principles ; and the session lingered for 
about a month in the midst of ordinary or 
unimportant affairs. t The Bill for Tolera- 
tion was not brought up by the Lords of the 
Articles. The commissioners, doubting whe- 
ther it would be carried, and probably in- 
structed by the Court that it would neither 
satisfy the expectations nor promote the 
purposes of the King, in the middle of June 
adjourned the Parliament, which was never 
again to assemble. 

It was no wonder that the King should 
have been painfully disappointed by the 
failure of his attempt ; for after the conclu- 
sion of the session, it was said by zealous 
and pious Protestants, that nothing less than 
a special interposition of Providence could 
have infused into such an assembly a stead- 
fast resolution to withstand the Court. § The 
royal displeasure was manifested by mea- 
sures of a very violent sort. The despotic 
supremacy of the King over the Church was 
exercised by depriving Bruce of his bishopric 
of Dunkeldjll — a severity which, not long af- 
ter, was repeated in the deprivation of Cairn- 
cross, Archbishop of Glasgow, for some sup- 
be best, we must ask, — best for whom? The 
absurdity of these childish generalities, which 
exercised the wit of our forefathers, has indeed 
been long acknowledged. Perhaps posterity may 
discover, that many political questions which agi- 
tate our times are precisely of the same nature ; 
and that it would be almost as absurd to attempt 
the establishment of a democracy in China as 
the foundation of a nobility in Connecticut." — 
Abridged from the "Edinburgh Review," vol. 
xxx vi. p. 1. Ed. 

* Fountainhall, vol. i. p. 414. 

t Ibid. p. 419. 

t Among the frivolous but characteristic trans- 
actions of this session was the " Bore Brieve," 
or authenticated pedigree granted to the Marquis 
de Seignelai, as a supposed descendant of the an- 
cient family of Cuthhert of Castlehill, in Inverness- 
shire. His father, the great Colbert, who appears 
to have been the son of a reputable woollen-draper 
of Troyes, had attempted to obtain the same cer- 
tificate of genealogy, but such was the pride of 
birth at that time in Scotland, that his attempts 
were vain. It now required all the influence of 
the Court, set in motion by the solicitations of 
Barillon, to obtain it for Seignelai. By an elabo- 
rate display of all the collateral relations of the 
Cuthberts, the " Bore Brieve" connects Seignelai 
with the Royal Family, and with all the nobility 
and gentry of the kingdom. — Acts of Parliament, 
vol- iii. p. 611. 

§ Fountainhall, vol. i. p. 419. II Ibid. p. 416. 



31! 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



posed countenance to an obnoxious preacher, 
though that prelate laboured to avert it by 
promises of support to all measures favour- 
able to the King's religion.* A few days 
after the prorogation. Queensberry was dis- 
missed from all his offices, and required not 
to leave Edinburgh until he had rendered an 
account of his administration of the treasury. t 
Some part of the royal displeasure fell upon Sir 
George Mackenzie, the Lord Register, lately 
created Lord Cromarty, the most submissive 
servant of every government, for having flat- 
tered the King, by too confident assurances 
of a majority as obsequious as himself. The 
connection of Rochester with Queensberry 
now aggravated the offence of the latter, and 
prepared the way for the downfall of the 
former. Moray, the commissioner, promised 
positive proofs, but produced at last only 
such circumstances as were sufficient to con- 
firm the previous jealousies of James, that 
the Scotch Opposition were in secret corres- 
pondence with Pensionary Fagel, and even 
with the Prince of Orange. t Sir George 
Mackenzie, whose unwonted independence 
seems to have speedily faltered, was refused 
an audience of the King, when he visited 
London with the too probable purpose of 
making his peace. The most zealous Pro- 
testants being soon afterwards removed from 
the Privy Council, and the principal noble- 
men of the Catholic communion being in- 
troduced in their stead, James addressed a 
letter to the Council, informing them that 
his application to Parliament had not arisen 
from any doubt of his own power to stop the 
severities against Catholics ; declaring his 
intention to allow the exercise of the Catholic 
worship, and to establish a chapel for that 
purpose in his own palace of Holyrood House ; 
and intimating to the judges, that they were 
to receive the allegation of this allowance as 
a valid defence, any law to the contrary not- 
withstanding. § The warm royalists, in their 
proposed answer, expressly acknowledge the 
King's prerogative to be a legal security : but 
the Council, in consequence of an objection 
of the Duke of Hamilton, faintly asserted 
their independence, by substituting u suffi- 
cient" instead of "legal."|| 

The determination was thus avowed of 
pursuing the objects of the King's policy in 
Scotland 1 by the exercise of prerogative, at 
least until a more compliant Parliament could 
be obtained, which would not only remove 
all doubt for the present, but protect the 
Catholics against the recall of the dispen- 
sations by James' successors. The means 
principally relied on for the accomplishment 
of that object was the power now assumed 

* Fountainhall, vol i. p. 441. Skinner, Ecclesi- 
astical History, vol. ii. p. 503. 

t Ibid. p. 420. 

t Barillon, 1st— 22d July, 1686.— Fox MSS. 
It will appear in the sequel, that, these suspicions 
are at variance wiih probability, and unsupported 
by evidence. 

§ Wodrow, vol. ii. p. 598. 

II Fountainhall, vol. i. p. 424. 



by the King to stop the annual elections in 
burghs, to nominate the chief magistrates, 
and through them to command the election by 
more summary proceedings than those of the 
English courts. The choice of ministers cor- 
responded with the principles of administra- 
tion. The disgrace of the Duke of Hamilton, 
a few months later,* completed the transfer 
of power to the party which professed an 
unbounded devotion to the principles of their 
master in the government both of Church 
and State. The measures of the Government 
did not belie their professions. Sums of mo- 
ney, considerable when compared with the 
scanty revenue of Scotland, were employed 
in support of establishments for the main- 
tenance and propagation of the Roman Ca- 
tholic religion. A sum of 1400Z. a year was 
granted, in equal portions, to the Catholic 
missionaries, to the Jesuit missionaries, to 
the mission in the Highlands, to the Chapel 
Royal, and to each of the Scotch colleges at 
Paris, Douay, and Rome.t The Duke of 
Hamilton, Keeper of the Palace, was com- 
manded to surrender the Chancellor's apart- 
ments in Holyrood House to a college of 
Jesuits.! By a manifest act of partiality, 
two-thirds of the allowance made by Charles 
the Second to indigent royalists were directed 
to be paid to Catholics; and all pensions and 
allowances to persons of that religion were 
required to be paid in the first place, in pre- 
ference to all other pensions. § Some of these 
grants, it is true, if they had been made by a 
liberal sovereign in a tolerant age, were in 
themselves justifiable; but neither the cha- 
racter of the King, nor the situation of the 
country, nor the opinions of the times, left 
any reasonable man at liberty then to doubt 
their purpose : and some of them were at- 
tended by circumstances which would be 
remarkable as proofs of the infatuated im- 
prudence of the King and his counsellors, if 
they were not more worthy of observation 
as symptoms of that insolent contempt with 
which they trampled on the provisions of law, 
and on the strongest feelings of the people. 

The government of Ireland, as well as 
that of England and Scotland, was, at the 
accession of James, allowed to remain in the 
hands of Protestant Tories. The Lord-lieu- 
tenancy was, indeed, taken from the Duke 
of Ormonde, then far advanced in years, but 
it was bestowed on a nobleman of the same 
party, Lord Clarendon, whose moderate un- 
derstanding added little to those claims on 
high office, which he derived from his birth, 
connections, and opinions. But the feeble 
and timid Lord Lieutenant was soon held in 
check by Richard Talbot, then created Earl 

* Fountainhall, vol. i. p. 449 — 451. Letter (in 
State Paper Office,) 1st March, 1687, expressing 
the King's displeasure at the conduct of Hamilton,! 
and directing the names of his sons-in-law, Pan- 
mure and Dunmore, to be struck out of the list of 
the Council. 

t Warrants in the State Paper Office, dated 
19th May, 1687. 

t Ibid. 15th August. $ Ibid. 7th January, 1688. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



313 



of Tyreonnel, a Catholic gentleman of an- 
cient English extraction, who joined talents 
and spirit to violent passions, boisterous 
manners, unbounded indulgence in every 
excess, and a furious zeal for his religious 
party.* His character was tainted by that 
disposition to falsehood and artifice, which, 
however seemingly inconsistent with violent 
passions, is often combined with them : and 
he possessed more of the beauty and bravery 
than of the wit or eloquence of his unhappy 
nation. He had been first introduced to 
Charles II. and his brother before the Resto- 
ration, as one who was willing to assassinate 
Cromwell, and had made a journey into 
England with that resolution. He soon after 
received an appointment in the household of 
the Duke of York, and retained the favour 
of that prince during the remainder of his 
life. In the year 1666. he was imprisoned 
for a few days by Charles II., for having re- 
solved to assassinate the Duke of Ormonde, 
with Avhose Irish administration he was dis- 
satisfied. t He did not, however, even by the 
last of these criminal projects, forfeit the 
patronage of either of the royal brothers, and 
at the accession of James held a high place 
among his personal favourites. He was in- 
duced, both by zeal for the Catholic party, 
and by animosity against the family of Hyde, 
to give effectual aid to Sunderland in the 
overthrow of Rochester, and required in re- 
turn that the conduct of Irish affairs should 
be left to him.} Sunderland dreaded the 
temper of Tyreonnel, and was desirous of 

fierforming his part of the bargain with as 
ittle risk as possible to the quiet of Ireland. 
The latter at first contented himself with the 
rank of senior General Officer on the Irish 
staff; in which character he returned to 
Dublin in June, 1686, as the avowed favourite 
of the King, and with powers to new-model 
the army. His arrival, however, had been 



* The means by which Talbot obtained the fa- 
vour of James, if we may believe the accounts of 
his enemies, were somewhat singular. " Cla- 
rendon's daughter had been got with child in 
Flanders, on a pretended promise of marriage, by 
the Duke of York, who was forced by the King, 
at her father's importunity, to marry her, after lie 
had resolved the contrary, and got her reputation 
blasted by Lord Fitzharding and Colonel Talbot, 
who impudently affirmed that they had received 
the last favours from her." — Sheridan MS. 
Stuart Papers. " 5th July 1694. Sir E. Harley 
told us, that when the Duke of York resolved on 
putting away his first wife, particularly on disco- 
very of her commerce wiih , she by her 

father's advice turned Roman Catholic, and there- 
by secured herself from reproach, and that the 
pretence of her father's opposition to it was only 
to act a part, and secure himself from blame." — 
MSS. in the handwriting of Lord Treasurer Ox- 
ford, in the possession of the Duke of Portland. 
The latter of these passages from the concluding 
part must refer to the time of the marriage. But 
it must not be forgotten that both the reporters 
were the enemies ot Clarendon, and that Sheridan 
was the bitter enemy of Tyreonnel. 

t Clarendon, Continuation of History (Oxford, 
1759), p. 362. 

t Sheridan MS. Stuart Papers. 
40 



preceded by reports of extensive changes in 
the government of the kingdom.* The State, 
the Church, the administration, and the pro- 
perty of that unhappy island, were bound 
together by such unnatural ties, and placed 
on such weak foundations, that every rumour 
of alteration in one of them spread the deepest 
alarm for the safety of the whole. 

From the colonization of a small part of 
the eastern coast under Henry II.. till* the 
last years of the reign of Elizabeth, an un- 
ceasing and cruel warfare was waged by the 
English governors against the princes and 
chiefs of the Irish tribes, with little other 
effect than that of preventing the progress 
of civilization among the Irish, of replunging 
many of the English into barbarism, and of 
generating that deadly animosity between 
the natives and the invaders, under the 
names of Irishry and Englishry, which, as- 
suming various forms, and exasperated by a 
fatal succession of causes, has continued 
even to our days the source of innumerable 
woes. During that dreadful period of four 
hundred years, the laws of the English co- 
lony did not punish the murder of a man of 
Irish blood as a crime.! Even so late as the 
year 1547, the Colonial Assembly, called a 
''Parliament," confirmed the insolent laws 
which prohibited the English "of the pale" 
from marrying persons of Irish blood. t Re- 
ligious hostility inflamed the hatred of these 
mortal foes. The Irish, attached to their 
ancient opinions as well as usages, and little 
addicted to doubt or inquiry, rejected the 
reformation of religion offered to them by 
their enemies. The Protestant worship be- 
came soon to be considered by them as the 
odious badge of conquest and oppression ;§ 
while the ancient religion was endeared by 
persecution, and by its association with the 
name, the language, and the manners of their 
country. The island had long been repre- 
sented as a fief of the See of Rome ; the 
Catholic clergy, and even laity, had no un- 
changeable friend but the Sovereign Pontiff j 
and their chief hope of deliverance from a 
hostile yoke was long confined to Spain, the 



* Clarendon's Letters, passim. 

t Sir J. Davies, Discoverie, &c, pp. 102 — 112. 
" They were so far out of the protection of the 
laws that it was often adjudged no felony to kill a 
mere Irishman in time of peace," — except he 
were of the five privileged tribes of the O'Neils 
of Ulster, the O'Malaghlins of Meath, the O'Con- 
nors of Connaught, the O'Briens of Thomond, 
and the MacMurroughs of Leinster; to whom 
are to be added the Oastmen of the city of Wa- 
terford. — See also Leland, History of Ireland, 
book i. chap. 3. 

X 28 Hen. VIII. c. 13. " The English," says 
Sir W. Petty, "before Henry VII. 's time, lived 
in Ireland as the Europeans do in America." — 
Political Anatomy of Ireland, p. 112. 

$ That the hostility of religion was, however, 
a secondary prejudice superinduced on hostility 
between nations, appears very clearly from the 
laws of Catholic sovereigns against the Irish, even 
after the Reformation, particularly the Irish statute 
of 3 & 4 Phil. & Mar. c. 2, agamst the O' Mores, 
and O'Dempsies, and O'Connors, "and others 
of the Irishry." 

2B 



314 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



leader of the Catholic party in the European 
commonwealth. The old enmity of Irishry 
and Englishry thus appeared with redoubled 
force under the new names of Catholic and 
Protestant. The necessity of self-defence 
compelled Elizabeth to attempt the complete 
reduction of Ireland, which, since she had 
assumed her station at the head of Protest- 
ants, became the only vulnerable part of 
her dominions, and a weapon in the hands 
of her most formidable enemies. But few 
of the benefits which sometimes atone for 
conquest were felt by Ireland. Neither the 
success with which Elizabeth broke the bar- 
baric power of the Irish chieftains, nor the 
real benevolence and seeming policy of in- 
troducing industrious colonies under her suc- 
cessor, counterbalanced the dreadful evil 
which was then for the first time added to 
her hereditary sufferings. The extensive for- 
feiture of the lands of the Catholic Irish. 
and the grant of these lands to Protestant 
natives of Great Britain, became a new source 
of hatred between these irreconcilable fac- 
tions. Forty years of quiet, however, fol- 
lowed, in which a Parliament of all dis- 
tricts, and of both religions, was assembled. 
The administration of the Earl of Strafford 
bore the stamp of the political vices which 
tarnished his genius, and which often pre- 
vailed over those generous affections of 
which he was not incapable towards those 
who neither rivalled nor resisted him. The 
state of Ireland abounded with tempta- 
tions, — to a man of daring and haughty 
spirit, intent on taming a turbulent people, 
and impatient of slow discipline of law and 
justice, — to adopt those violent and sum- 
mary measures, the necessity of which his 
nature prompted him too easily to believe.* 
When his vigorous arm was withdrawn, 
the Irish were once more excited to revolt 
by the memory of the provocations which 
they had received from him and from his 
predecessors, by the feebleness of their go- 
vernment, and by the confusion and distrac- 
tion which announced the approach of civil 
war in Great Britain. This insurrection, 
which broke out in 1641, and of which the 
atrocities appear to have been extravagantly 
exaggerated! by the writers of the victorious 
party, was only finally subdued by the genius 
of Cromwell, who, urged by the general an- 
tipathy against the Irish,! and the peculiar 

* See Carle's Life of Ormonde, and the confes- 
sions of Clarendon, together with the evidence on 
the Trial of Strafford. 

t Evidence of this exaggeration is to be found 
in Carte and Leland, in the Political Anatomy of 
Ireland, by Sir VV. Petty, — to say nothing of 
Curry's Civil Wars, which, though the work of 
an Irish Catholic, deserves the serious considera- 
tion of every historical inquirer. Sir W, Petty 
limits the number of Protestants hilled throughout 
the island, in the first year of the war, to thirty- 
seven thousand. The massacres were confined to 
Ulster, and in that province were imputed only to 
the detachment of insurgents under Sir Phelim 
O'Neal. 

1 Even Milton calls the Irish Catholics, or, in 



animosity of his own followers towards Ca- 
tholics, exercised more than once in his Irish 
campaigns the most odious rights or practices 
of war, departing from the clemency which 
usually distinguished him above most men 
who have obtained supreme power by vio- 
The confiscation which followed 
Cromwell's victories, added to the forfeitures 
under Elizabeth and James, transferred more 
than two-thirds of the land of the kingdom 
to British adventurers.* '-'Not only all the 
Irish nation (with very few exceptions) were 
found guilty of the rebellion, and forfeited 
all their estates, but all the English Catholics 
of Ireland were declared to be under the 
same guilt. "t The ancient proprietors con- 
ceived sanguine hopes, that confiscations by 
usurpers would not be ratified by the restored 
government. But their agents were unex- 
perienced, indiscreet, and sometimes mer- 
cenary : while their opponents, who were in 
possession of power and property, chose the 
Irish House of Commons, and secured the 
needy and rapacious courtiers of Charles II. 
by large bribes.! The Court became a mart 
at which much of the property of Ireland 
was sold to the highest bidder ; — the inevit- 
able result of measures not governed by rules 
of law, but loaded with exceptions and con- 
ditions, where the artful use of a single word 
might affect the possession of considerable 
fortunes, and where so many minute particu- 
lars relating to unknown and uninteresting 
subjects were necessarily introduced, that 
none but parties deeply concerned had the 
patience to examine them. Charles was de- 
sirous of an arrangement which should give 
him the largest means of quieting, by profuse 
giants, the importunity of his favourites. He 
began to speak of the necessity of strength- 
ening the English interest in Ireland, and he 
represented the "settlement" rather as a 
matter of policy than of justice. The usual 
and legitimate policy of statesmen and law- 
givers is, doubtless, to favour every measure 
which qiriets present possession, and to dis- 
courage all retrospective inquisition into the 
tenure of property. But the Irish Govern- 
ment professed to adopt a principle of com- 
promise, and the general object of the statute 
called the "Act of Settlement," was to secure 
the land in the hands of its possessors, on 
condition of their making a certain compen- 
sation to those classes of expelled proprietors 
who were considered as innocent of the re- 
bellion. Those, however, were declared not 
to be innocent who had accepted the terms 
of peace granted by the King in 1648, who 
had paid contributions to support the insur- 
gent administration, or who enjoyed any real 
or personal property in the districts occupied 
by the rebel army. The first of these con- 



other words, the Irish nation, " Conscelerata et 
barbara colluvies." 

* Petty, pp. 1—3. 

t Life of Clarendon (Oxford, 1759), vol. ii. p. 115. 

t Ca-te, Life of Ormonde, vol. ii. p. 295. Tal- 
bot, afterwards Earl of Tyrconnel, returned »f> 
Ireland with 18.000Z. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



315 



ditions was singularly unjust ; the two latter 
must have comprehended many who were 
entirely innocent ; and all of them were in- 
consistent with those principles of compro- 
mise and provision for the interest of all on 
which the act was professedly founded. Or- 
monde, however, restored to his own greal 
estates, and gratified by a grant of 30,000L 
from the Irish Commons, acquiesced in this 
measure, ami it was not opposed by his friend 
Clarendon ; — circumstances which naturally, 
though perhaps not justly, have rendered the 
memory of these celebrated men odious to 
the Irish Catholics. During the whole reign 
of Charles II. they struggled to obtain a re- 
peal of the Act of Settlement. But Time 
opposed his mighty power to their labours. 
Every new year strengthened the rights of 
the possessors, and furnished additional ob- 
jections against the claims of the old owners. 
It is far easier to do mischief than to repair 
it; and it is one of the most malignant pro- 
perties of extensive confiscation that it is 
commonly irreparable. The land is shortly 
sold to honest purchasers ; it is inherited by 
innocent children; it becomes the security 
of creditors; its safety becomes interwoven, 
by the complicated transactions of life, with 
all the interests of the community. One act 
of injustice is not atoned for by the commis- 
sion of another against parties w T ho may be 
equally unoffending. In such cases the most 
specious plans for the investigation of con- 
flicting claims lead either to endless delay, 
attended by the entire suspension of the en- 
joyment of the disputed property, if not by 
a final extinction of its value, or to precipi- 
tate injustice, arising from caprice, from 
favour, from enmity, or from venality. The 
resumption of forfeited property, and the 
restoration of it to the heirs of the ancient 
owners, may be attended by all the mis- 
chievous consequences of the original con- 
fiscation ; by the disturbance of habits, and 
by the disappointment of expectations ; and 
by an abatement of that reliance on the in- 
violability of legal possession, which is the 
mainspring of industry, and the chief source 
of comfort. 

The arrival of Tyrconnel revived the hopes 
of the Catholics. They were at that time 
estimated to amount to eight hundred thou- 
sand souls ; the English Episcopalians, the 
English Nonconformists, and the Scotch Pres- 
byterians, each to one hundred thousand.* 
There was an army of three thousand men, 
which in the sequel of this reign was raised 
to eight thousand. The net revenue afforded 
■a yearly average of 300,000/. t Before the 

* Petty, p. 8. — As Sir William Petty exagge- 
rates the population of England, which he rates at 
six millions, considerably more than its amount in 
1700 (Population Returns, 1821, Introduction), it 
is probable he may have overrated that of Ireland ; 
but there is no reason to suspect a mistake in the 
proportions. 

t Supposing the taxes then paid by England and 
Wales to have been about three millions, each in- 
habitant contributed ten shillings, while each Irish- 
man paid somewhat more than five. 



civil war of 1641, the disproportion of num- 
bers of Catholics to Protestants had been 
much greater; and by the consequences of 
that event, the balance of property had been 
entirely reversed.* " In playing of this game 
or match" (the war of 1641) '.' upon so great 
odds, the English,'-' says Sir William Petty, 
'•'won, and have a gamester's right at least 
to their estates. " : t On the arrival of Tyr- 
connel, too, were redoubled the fears of the 
Protestants for possessions always invidious, 
and now, as it seemed, about to be preca- 
rious. The attempt to give both parties a 
sort of representation in the government, and 
to balance the Protestant Lord Lieutenant by 
a Catholic commander of the arm) - , unsettled 
the minds of the two communions. The 
Protestants, though they saw that the rising 
ascendant of Tyrconnel would speedily be- 
come irresistible, were bel rayed into occa- 
sional indiscretion by the declarations of tin- 
Lord Lieutenant; and the Catholics, aware of 
their growing force, were only exasperated by 
Clarendon's faint and fearful show of zeal for 
the established laws. The contemptuous dis- 
regard, or rather indecent insolence manifest- 
ed by Tyrconnel in his conversations with Lord 
Clarendon, betrayed a consciousness of the 
superiority of a royal favourite over a Lord 
Lieutenant, who had to execute a system to 
which he was disinclined, and was to remain 
in office a little longer only as a pageant of 
state. He indulged all his habitual indecen- 
cies and excesses; he gave loose to every 
passion, and threw off every restraint of good 
manners in these conversations. It is diffi- 
cult to represent them in a manner compati- 
ble with the decorum of history : yet they 
are too characteristic to be passed over. 
'■'You must know, my Lord," said Tyrconnel, 
' ; that the King is a Roman Catholic, and re- 
solved to employ his subjects of that religion, 
and that he will not keep one man in his 
service who ever served under the usurpers. 
The sheriffs you have made are generally 
rogues and old Cromweliians. There has 
not been an honest man sheriff in Ireland 
these twenty years." Such language, inter- 
mingled with oaths, and uttered in the bois- 
terous tone of a braggart youth, somewhat 
intoxicated, in a military guard-house, are 
specimens of the manner in which Tyrconnel 
delivered his opinions to his superior on the 
gravest affairs of state. It was no wonder 
that Clarendon told his brother Rochester, — 
c< If this Lord continue in the temper he is 
in, he will gain here the reputation of a mad- 
man ; for his treatment of people is scarce to 
be described, "t The more moderate of his 
own communion, comprehending almost all 
laymen of education or fortune, he reviled 
as trimmers. He divided the Catholics, and 
embroiled the King's affairs still farther by a 
violent prejudice against the native Irish, 
whom he contemptuously called the "O's 

* Petty, p. 24. t Ibid. 

t Correspondence of Clarendon and Roches- 
ter, vol. ii. Clarendon, Diary, 5th — 14th June. 
1686. 



316 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



and Macs."* To the letter of the King's 
public declarations, or even positive instruc- 
tions to the Lord Lieutenant, he paid very 
little regard. He was sent by James " to do 
the rough work" of remodelling the army 
and the corporations. With respect to the 
army, the King professed only to admit all 
his subjects on an equal footing without re- 
gard to religion ; but Tyrconnel's language, 
and, when he had the power, his measures, 
led to the formation of an exclusively Catho- 
lic force.'!' The Lord Lieutenant reasonably 
understood I he royal intentions to be no more 
than that the Catholic religion should be no 
bar to the admission of persons otherwise 
qualified into corporations : Tyrconnel disre- 
garded such distinctions, and declared, with 
one of his usual oaths, " I do not know what 
to say to that ; I would have all the Catholics 
in. "J Three unexceptionable judges of the 
Protestant persuasion were, by the King's 
command, removed from the bench to make 
way for three Catholics, — Daly, Rice, and 
Nugent, — also, it ought to be added, of un- 
objectionable character and competent learn- 
ing in their profession^ Officious sycophants 
hastened to prosecute those incautious Pro- 
testants who, in the late times of zeal against 
Popery, had spoken with freedom against 
the succession of the Duke of York ; though 
it is due to justice to remark, that the Catho- 
lic council, judges, and juries, discouraged 
these vexatious prosecutions, and prevented 
them from producing any very grievous 
effects. The King had in the beginning 
solemnly declared his determination to ad- 
here to the Act of Settlement; but Tyrcon- 
nel, with his usual imprecations, said to the 
Lord Lieutenant, "These Acts of Settlement, 
and this new interest, are cursed things."!! 
The coarseness and insolence of Tyrconnel 
could not fail to offend the Lord Lieutenant : 
but it is apparent, from the latter's own de- 
scription, that he was still more frightened 
than provoked ; and perhaps more decorous 
language would not have so suddenly and 
completely subdued the little spirit of the 
demure lord. Certain it is that these scenes 
of violence were immediately followed by 
the most profuse professions of his readiness 
to do whatever the King required, without 
any reservation even of the interest of the 
Established Church. These professions were 
not merely formularies of that ignoble obse- 
quiousness which degrades the inferior too 
much to exalt the superior: they were ex- 
plicit and precise declarations relating to the 
particulars of the most momentous measures 
then in agitation. In speaking of the re- 
formation of the army he repeated his assur- 

^Sheridan MS. 

t Sheridan MS. It should be observed, that the 
passages relating to Ireland in the Life of James 
II., vol. ii. pp. 59 — 63, were not written by the 
King, and do not even profess to be founded on 
the authority of his MSS. They are merely a 
6tatement made by Mr. Dicconson, the compiler 
of that work. 

t Clarendon, 20th— 31st July. 

$ Ibid. 19th June. II Ibid. 8th June. 



ance to Sunderland, " that the King may 
have every thing done here which he has a 
mind to : and it is more easy to do things 
quietly than In a storm."* He descended 
to declare even to Tyrconnel himself, that 
'•*■ it was not material how many Roman 
Catholics were in the army, if the King 
would have it so; for whatever his Majesty 
would have should be made easy as far as 
lay in me."f 

In the mean time Clarendon had incurred 
the displeasure of the Queen by his supposed 
civilities to Lady Dorchester during her resi- 
dence in Ireland. The King was also dis- 
pleased at the disposition which he imputed 
to the Lord Lieutenant rather to traverse 
than to forward the designs of Tyrconnel in 
favour of the Catholics.! It was in vain that 
the submissive viceroy attempted to disarm 
these resentments by abject declarations of 
deep regret and unbounded devotedness.§ 
The daily decline of the credit of Rochester 
deprived his brother of his best support; and 
Tyrconnel, who returned to Court in August, 
1686, found it easy to effect a change in the 
government of Ireland. But he found more 
difficulty in obtaining that important govern- 
ment for himself. Sunderland tried every 
means but the resignation of his own office 
to avert so impolitic an appointment. He 
urged the declaration of the King, on the re- 
moval of Ormonde, that he would not bestow 
the lieutenancy on a native Irishman : he re- 
presented the danger of alarming all Protest- 
ants, by appointing to that office an acknow- 
ledged enemy of the Act of Settlement, and 
of exciting the apprehensions of all English- 
men, by intrusting Ireland to a man so de- 
voted to the service of Louis XIV : he offered 
to make Tyrconnel a Major General on the 
English staff, with a pension of 5000L a year, 
and with as absolute though as secret au- 
thority in the affairs of Ireland, as Lauderdale 
had possessed in those of Scotland : he pro- 
mised that after the abrogation of the penal 
laws in England, Tyrconnel, if he pleased, 
might be appointed Lord Lieutenant in the 
room of Lord Pow T is, who was destined for 
the present to succeed Clarendon. Tyrconnel 
turned a deaf ear to these proposals, and 
threatened to make disclosures to the King 
and Queen which might overthrow the policy 
and power of Sunderland. The latter, when 
he was led by his contest with Rochester to 
throw himself into the arms of the Roman 
Catholics, had formed a more particular con- 
nection with Jermyn and Talbot, as the 
King's favourites, and as the enemies of the 
family of Hyde : Tyrconnel now threatened 
to disclose the terms and objects of that 
league, the real purpose of removing Lady 
Dorchester, and the declaration of Sunder- 
land, when this alliance was formed, "that 
the King could only be governed by a woman 
or a priest, and that they must therefore 



* Clarendon, 20th July. t Ibid. 30th July. 
t Ibid. 6th Oct. 

§ Clarendon to the King, 6th Oct. ; to Lord 
Rochester, 23d Oct. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



317 



combine the influence of the Queen with 
that of Father Petre." Sunderland appears 
to have made some resistance even after this 
formidable threat; and Tyrconnel proposed 
that the young Duke of Berwick should 
marry his daughter, and be created Lord 
Lieutenant, while he himself should enjoy 
the power under the more modest title of 
"Lord Deputy."* A council, consisting of 
Sunderland, Tyrconnel, and the Catholic 
ministers, was held on the affairs of Ireland 
in the month of October. The members 
who gave their opinions before Tyrconnel 
maintained the necessity of conforming to 
the Act of Settlement ; but Tyrconnel ex- 
claimed against them for advising the King 
to an act of injustice ruinous to the interests 
of religion. The conscience of James was 
alarmed, and he appointed the next day to 
hear the reasons of state which Sunderland 
had to urge on the opposite side. Tyrconnel 
renewed his vehement invectives against the 
iniquity and impiety of the counsels which 
he opposed ; and Sunderland, who began as 
he often did with useful advice, ended, as 
usual, with a hesitating and ambiguous sub- 
mission to his master's pleasure, trusting to 
accident and his own address to prevent or 
mitigate the execution of violent measures.! 
These proceedings decided the contest for 
office ; and Tyrconnel received the sword of 
state as Lord Deputy on the 12th February, 
1687. 

The King's professions of equality and 
impartiality in the distribution of office be- 
tween the two adverse communions were 
speedily and totally disregarded. The Lord 
Deputy and the greater part of the Privy 
Council, the Lord Chancellor with three 
fourths of the judges, all the King's counsel 
but one, almost all the sheriffs, and a ma- 
jority of corporators and justices, were, in 
less than a year. Catholics; — numbers so 
disproportioned to the relative property, edu- 
cation, and ability for business, to be found 
in the two religions, that even if the appoint- 
ments had not been tainted with the inex- 
piable blame of defiance to the laws, they 
must still have been regarded by the Pro- 
testants with the utmost apprehension, as 
indications of sinister designs. Fitten, the 
Chancellor, was promoted from the King's 
Bench prison, where he had been long a 
prisoner for debt ; and he was charged, 
though probably without reason, by his op- 
ponents, with forgery, said to have been 
committed in a long suit with Lord Mac- 
clesfield. His real faults were ignorance 
and subserviency. Neither of these vices 
could be imputed to Sir Richard Nagle, 
the Catholic Attorney General, who seems 
chargeable only with the inevitable fault of 
being actuated by a dangerous zeal for his 



* London Gazette. All these particulars are to 
be found in Sheridan's MS. It is but fair to add 
that, in a few months alter Sheridan accompanied 
Tyrconnel to Ireland, they became violent ene- 
ijrries. 

f D'Adda, 15th Nov. 1687— MS. 



I own suffering party. It does not appear 
I that the Catholic judges actually abused 
their power. We have already seen that, 
instead of seeking to retaliate for the mur- 
ders of the Popish Plot, they discounte- 
nanced prosecutions against their adversa- 
ries with a moderation and forbearance very 
rarely to be discovered in the policy of 
parties in the first moments of victory over 
long oppression. It is true that these Ca- 
tholic judges gave judgment against the 
charters of towns; but in these judgments 
they only followed the example of the most 
eminent of their Protestant brethren in Eng- 
land.* The evils of insecurity and alarm 
were 'those which were chiefly experienced 
by the Irish Protestants. These mischiefs, 
very great in themselves, depended so much 
on the character, temper, and manner, of the 
Lord Deputy, on the triumphant or sometimes 
threatening conversation of their Catholic 
neighbours, on the recollection of bloody 
civil wars, and on the painful consciousness 
which haunts the possessors of recently con- 
fiscated property, that it may be thought 
unreasonable to require any other or more 
positive proof of their prevalence. Some 
visible fruits of the alarm are pointed out. 
The Protestants, who were the wealthiest 
traders as well as the most ingenious arti- 
sans of the kingdom, began to emigrate : the 
revenue is said to have declined : the greater 
part of the Protestant officers of the army, 
alarmed by the removal of their brethren, 
sold their commissions for inadequate prices, 
and obtained military appointments in Hol- 
land, then the home of the exile and the 
refuge of the oppressed.! But that which 
Tyrconnel most pursued, and the Protestants 
most dreaded, was the repeal of the Act of 
Settlement. The new proprietors were not, 
indeed, aware how much cause there was 
for their alarms. Tyrconnel boasted that he 
had secured the support of the Queen by the 
present of a pearl necklace worth 10,000/., 
which Prince Rupert had bequeathed to his 
mistress. In -all extensive transfers of pro- 
perty not governed by rules of law, where 
both parties to a corrupt transaction have a 
great interest in concealment, and where 
there can seldom be any effective responsi- 



* Our accounts of Tyrconrfel's Irish administra- 
tion before the Revolution are peculiarly imperfect 
and suspicious. King, afterwards Archbishop of 
Dublin, whose State of the Protestants has been 
usually quoted as authority, was the most zealous 
of Irish Protestants, and his ingenious antago- 
nist, Leslie, was the most inflexible of Jacobites. 
Though both were men of great abilities, their 
attention was so much occupied in personalities 
and in the discussion of controverted opinions, 
that they have done little to elucidate matters of 
fact. Clarendon and Sheridan's MS. agree so 
exactly in their picture of Tyrconnel, and have 
such an air of truth in their accounts of him, that 
it is not easy to refuse them credit, though they 
were both his enemies. 

t " The Earl of Donegal," says Sheridan, 
" sold for 600 guineas a troop of horse which, two 
years before, cost him 1800 guineas." — Sheri- 
dan MS. 

2b2 



318 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



bility either judicial or moral, the suspicion 
of bribery must be incurred, and the tempta- 
tion itself must often prevail. Tyrconnel 
asked Sheridan, his secretary, whether he 
did not think the Irish would give 50,000/. 
for the repeal of the Act of Settlement : — 
"Certainly," said Sheridan, -since the new- 
interest paid three times that sum to the 
Duke of ( hmonde for passing it." Tyrconnel 
then authorised Sheridan to offer to Lord 
Sunderland 50,000/. in money, or 50007. a- 
year in land for the repeal. Sunderland pre- 
ferred the 50,000/.; but with what serious- 
ness of purpose cannot be ascertained, for the 
repeal was not adopted, and the money was 
never paid ;* and he seems to have contin- 
ued to thwart and traverse a measure which 
he did not dare openly to resist. The abso- 
lute abrogation of laws under which so much 
property was held seemed to be beset with 
such difficulty, that in the autumn of the 
following year Tyrconnel, on his visit to 
England, proposed a more modified mea- 
sure, aimed only at affording a partial relief 
to the ancient proprietors. In the temper 
which then prevailed, a partial measure pro- 
duced almost as much alarm as one more 
comprehensive, and was thought to be in- 
tended to pave the way for total resumption. 
The danger consisted in inquiry : the object 
of apprehension was any proceeding which 
brought this species of legal possession into 
question : and the proprietors dreaded the 
approach even of discussion to their invi- 
dious and originally iniquitous titles. It 
would be hard to expect that James should 
abstain from relieving his friends lest he 
might disturb the secure enjoyment of his 
enemies. Motives of policy, however, and 
some apprehensions of too sudden a shock 
to the feelings of Protestants in Great Britain, 
retarded the final adoption of this measure. 
It could only be carried into effect by the Par- 
liament of Ireland ; and it was not thought 
wise to call it together till every part of the 
internal policy of the kingdom which could 
influence the elections of that assembly 
should be completed. Probably, however, 
the delay principally arose from daring pro- 
jects of separation and independence, which 
were entertained by Tyrconnel : and of which 
a short statement (in its most important parts 
hitherto unknown to the public) will conclude 
the account of his administration. 

In the year 1666, towards the close of the 
first Dutch war, Louis XIV. had made pre- 
parations for invading Ireland with an army 
of twenty thousand men, under the Due de 
Beaufort, — assured by the Irish ecclesiastics, 
that he would be joined by the Catholics, 
then more than usually incensed by the con- 
firmation of the Act of Settlement, and by 
the English statutes against the importation 
of the produce of Ireland. To this plot, 
(which was discovered by the Queen-Mother 
al Paris, and by her disclosed to Charles II.,) 
it is not probable that so active a leader as 

* Sheridan MS. 



Tyrconnel could have been a stranger.* We 
are informed by his secretary, that, during 
his visits to England in 1686, he made no 
scruple to avow projects of the like nature, 
when, after some remarks on the King's de- 
clining age, and on the improbability that 
the Queen's children, if ever she had any, 
should live beyond infancy, he declared, 
" that the Irish would be fools or madmen 
if they submitted to be governed by the 
Prince of Orange, or by Hyde's grand-daugh- 
ters ; that they ought rather to take that 
opportunity of resolving no longer to be the 
slaves of England, but to set up a king of 
their own under ,the protection of France, 
which he was sure would be readily grant- 
ed ;" and added that " nothing could be more 
advantageous to Ireland or ruinous to Eng- 
land." t His reliance on French support 
was probably founded on the general policy 
of Louis XIV., on his conduct towards Ireland 
in 1666, and, perhaps, on information from 
Catholic ecclesiastics in France ; but he was 
not long content with these grounds of assur- 
ance. During his residence in England in 
the autumn of 1687, he had recourse to de- 
cisive and audacious measures for ascertain- 
ing how far he might rely on foreign aid in 
the execution of his ambitious schemes. A 
friend of his at Court (whose name is con- 
cealed, but who probably was either Henry 
Jermyn or Father Petre) applied on his be- 
half to Bonrepos (then employed by the 
Court of Versailles in London, on a special 
mission, )t expressing his desire, in case of 
the death of James II., to take measures to 
prevent Ireland from falling under the domi- 
nation of the Prince of Orange, and to place 
that country under the protection of the Most 
Christian King. Tyrconnel expressed his 
desire that Bonrepos would go to Chester for 
the sake of a full discussion of this important 
'proposition ; but the wary minister declined 
a step which should have amounted to the 
opening of a negotiation, until he had autho- 
rity from his Government. He promised, 
however, to keep the secret, especially from 
Barillon, who it was feared would betray it 
to Sunderland, then avowedly distrusted by 
the Lord Deputy. Bonrepos, in communi- 
cating this proposition to his Court, adds, 
that he very certainly knew the King of Eng- 

* There are obscure intimations of this intended 
invasion in Carte, Life of Ormonde, vol. ii. p. 328. 
The resolutions of the Parliament of Ireland con- 
cerning it are to be found in the Gazette, 25th — 
28th December, 1665. Louis XIV. himself tells 
us, that he had a correspondence with those whom 
he calls the " remains of Cromwell " in England, 
and " with the Irish Catholics, who, always dis- 
contented with their condition, seem ever ready 
to join any enterprise which may render it more 
supportable." — Oeuvres de Louis XIV., vol. ii. 
p. 203. Sheridan's MS. contains more particu- 
lars. It is supported by the printed authorities as 
far as they go ; and being written at St. Germains, 
probably differed little in matters of fact from the 
received statements of the Jacobite exiles. 

t Sheridan MS. 

t Bonrepos to Seignelai, 4th Sept. 1687.— Fox 
MSS. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



319 



land's intention to be to deprive his pre- 
sumptive heir of Ireland, to make that coun- 
try an asylum for all his Catholic subjects, 
and to complete his measures on that subject 
in the course of five years, — a time which 
Tyrconnel thought much too long, and ear- 
nestly besought the King to abridge; and 
that the Prince of Orange certainly appre- 
hended such designs. James himself told 
the Nuncio that one of the objects of the ex- 
traordinary mission of Dykveldt was the 
affair of Ireland, happily begun by Tyrcon- 
nel ;* and the same prelate was afterwards 
informed by Sunderland, that Dykveldt had 
expressed a fear of some general designs 
against the succession of the Prince and 
Princess of Orange. t Bonrepos was speedily 
instructed to inform Tyrconnel, that if on the 
death of James he could maintain himself in 
Ireland, he might rely on effectual aid from 
Louis to preserve the Catholic religion, and 
to separate that country from England, when 
under the dominion of a Protestant sove- 
reign, i Tyrconnel is said to have agreed, 
without the knowledge of his own master, 
to put four Irish sea-ports, Kinsale. Water- 
ford, Limerick, and either Gal way or Cole- 
raine, into the hands of Fiance. § The re- 
maining particulars of this bold and hazard- 
ous negotiation were reserved by Bonrepos 
till his return to Paris ; but he closes his last 
despatch with the singular intimation that 
several Scotch lords had sounded him on the 
succour they might expect from France, on 
the death of James, to exclude the Prince 
and Princess of Orange from the throne of 
Scotland. Objects so far beyond the usual 
aim of ambition, and means so much at vari- 
ance with prudence as well as duty, could 
hardly have presented themselves to any 
mind whose native violence had not been 
inflamed by an education in the school of 
conspiracy and insurrection ; — nor even to 
such but in a country which, from the divi- 
sion of its inhabitants, and the impolicy of 
its administration, had constantly stood on 
the brink of the most violent revolutions; 
where quiet seldom subsisted long but as the 
bitter fruit of terrible examples of cruelty 
and rapine ; and where the majority of the 
people easily listened to offers of foreign aid 
against a government which they considered 
as the most hostile of foreigners. 



CHAPTER V. 

Rupture with the Protestant Tories. — Increas- 
ed decision of the King's designs. — En- 
croachments on the Church establishment. — 
Charter-House. — Oxford, University Col- 
lege. — Christ Church. — Exeter College , 
Cambridge. — Oxford, Magdalen College. — 



* D'Adda, 7th Feb. 1687.— MS. 

t Id. 20th June. 

t Seignelai to Bonrepos, 29th Sept. — Fox MSS. 

$ Sheridan MS. 



Declaration of liberty of conscience. — Simi- 
lar attempts of Charles. — Proclamation at 
Edinburgh. — Resistance of the Church. — 
Attempt to conciliate the Nonconformists. 
— Review of their sufferings. — Barter. — 
Bunyan. — Presbyterians. — independents. — 
Baptists. — Quakers. — Addresses of thanks 
for the declaration. 

In the beginning of the year 1687 the 
rapture of James with the powerful party 
who were ready to sacrifice all but the 
Church to his pleasure appeared to be irrepa- 
rable. He had apparently destined Scotland 
to set the example of unbounded submission, 
under the forms of the constitution; and he 
undoubtedly hoped that the revolution in 
Ireland would supply him with the means 
of securing the obedience of his English sub- 
jects by intimidation or force. The failure 
of his project in the most Protestant part of 
his dominions, and its alarming success in 
the most Catholic, alike tended to widen the 
breach between parties in England. The 
Tories were alienated from the Crown by the 
example of their friends in Scotland, as well 
as by their dread of the Irish. An unre- 
served compliance with the King's designs 
became notoriously the condition by which 
office was to be obtained or preserved ; and, 
except a very few instances of personal 
friendship, the public profession of the Ca- 
tholic faith was required as the only security 
for that compliance. The royal confidence 
and the direction of public affairs were trans- 
ferred from the Protestant Tories, in spite of 
their services and sufferings during half a 
century, into the hands of a faction, who, as 
their title to power was zeal for the advance- 
ment of Popery, must be called "Papists;" 
though some of them professed the Protest- 
ant religion, and though their maxims of 
policy, both in Church and State, were dread- 
ed and resisted by the most considerable of 
the English Catholics. 

It is hard to determine, — perhaps it might 
have been impossible for James himself to 
say, — how far his designs for the advance- 
ment of the Roman Catholic Church extend- 
ed at the period of his accession to the 
throne. It is agreeable to the nature of such 
projects that he should not, at first, have 
dared to avow to himself any intention be- 
yond that of obtaining relief for his religion, 
and of placing it in a condition of safety and 
honour ; but it is altogether improbable that 
he had even then steadily fixed on a secure 
toleration as the utmost limit of his endea- 
vours. His schemes were probably vague 
and fluctuating, assuming a greater distinct- 
ness with respect to the removal of grievous 
penalties and disabilities, but always ready 
to seek as much advantage for his Church as 
the progress of circumstances should render 
attainable; — sometimes drawn back to toler- 
ation by prudence or fear, and on other oc- 
casions impelled to more daring counsels by 
the pride of success, or by anger at resist 
ance. In this state of fluctuation it is not 



320 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



altogether irreconcilable with the irregu- 
larities of human nature that he might have 
sometimes yielded a faint and transient as- 
sent to those principles of religious liberty 
which he professed in his public acts; though 
even this superficial sincerity is hard to be 
reconciled with his share in the secret treaty 
of 1670, — with his administration of Scotland, 
where he carried his passion for intolerance 
so far as to be the leader of one sect of here- 
tics in the bloody persecution of another, — 
and with his language to Barillon, to whom, 
at the very moment of his professed tolera- 
tion, he declared his approbation of the cruel- 
ties of Louis XIV. against his own Protestant 
subjects.* It would be extravagant to ex- 
pect that the liberal maxims which adorned 
his public declarations had taken such a hold 
on his mind as to withhold him from endea- 
vouring to establish his own religion as soon 
as his sanguine zeal should lead him to think 
it practicable ; or that he should not in pro- 
cess of time go on to guard it by that code 
of disabilities and penalties which was then 
enforced by every state in Europe except 
Holland, and deemed indispensable security 
for their religion by every Christian com- 
munity, except the obnoxious sects of the 
Socinians, Independents, Anabaptists, and 
Quakers. Whether he meditated a violent 
change of the Established religion from the 
beginning, or only entered on a course of 
measures which must terminate in its sub- 
version, is rather a philosophical than a poli- 
tical question. In both cases, apprehension 
and resistance were alike reasonable ; and 
in neither could an appeal to arms be war- 
ranted until every other means of self-de- 
fence had proved manifestly hopeless. 

Whatever opinions may be formed of his 
intentions at an earlier period, it is evident 
that in the year 1687 his resolution was 
taken; though still no doubt influenced by 
"the misgivings and fluctuations incident to 
vast and perilous projects, especially when 
they are entertained by those whose charac- 
ter is not so daring as their designs. All the 
measures of his internal government, during 
the eighteen months which ensued, were 
directed to the overthrow of the Established 
Church, — an object which was to be attained 
by assuming a power above law, and could 
only be preserved by a force sufficient to 
bid defiance to the repugnance of the nation. 
An absolute monarchy, if not the first instru- 
ment of his purpose, must have been the 
last result of that series of victories over the 
people which the success of his design re- 
quired. Such, indeed, were his conscientious 
opinions of the constitution, that he thought 
the Habeas Corpus Act inconsistent with it; 

* " J'ai dit an Roi que V. M. n'avoit plus au 
coeur que devoir prosperer les soins qu'il prends 
ici pour y etablir la religion Catholique. S. M. B. 
me dit en me quittan. , ' Vous voyez que je 
n'omets rien de ce qui est en mon pouvoir. J'es- 
pere que le Roi voire maitre nr aidera, et que nous 
ferons de concert des grandes choses pour la re- 
ligion.' " Barillon, 12th May, 1687.— Fox MSS. 



and so strong was his conviction of the ne- 
cessity of military force to his designs at that 
time, that in his dying advice to his son, 
written long afterwards, in secrecy and soli- 
tude, after a review of his own government, 
his injunction to the Prince is, — ''Keep up a 
considerable body of Catholic troops, with- 
out which you cannot be safe. "* The liberty 
of the people, and even the civil constitu- 
tion, were as much the objects of his hos- 
tility as the religion of the great majority, 
and were their best security against ultimate 
persecution. 

The measures of the King's domestic po- 
licy, indeed, consisted rather in encroach- 
ments on the Church than in measures of 
relief to the Catholics. He had, in May, 
1686, granted dispensations to the curate of 
Putney, a convert to the Church of Rome, 
enabling him to hold his benefices, and re- 
lieving him from the performance of all the 
acts inconsistent with his new religion, which 
a long series of statutes had required clergy- 
men of the Church of England to perform.! 
By following this precedent, the King might 
have silently transferred to ecclesiastics of 
his own communion many benefices in every 
diocese in which the bishop had not the 
courage to resist the dispensing power. The 
converted incumbents would preserve their 
livings under the protection of that preroga- 
tive, and Catholic priests might be presented 
to benefices without any new ordination ; for 
the Church of England. — although she treats 
the ministers of any other Protestant commu- 
nion as being only in pretended holy orders, 
— recognises the ordination of the Church of 
Rome, which she sometimes calls ' : idola- 
trous," in order to maintain, even through 
such idolatrous predecessors, that unbroken 
connection with the apostles which she deems 
essential to the power of conferring the sacer- 
dotal character. This obscure encroachment, 
however, escaped general observation. 

The first attack on the laws to which resist- 
ance was made was a royal recommendation 
of Andrew Popham, a Catholic, to the Gover- 
nors of the Charter House (a hospital school, 
founded by a merchant of London, named 
Sutton, on the site of a Carthusian monas- 
tery), to be received by them as a pensioner 
on their opulent establishment, without taking 
the oaths required both by the general law 
and by a private statute passed for the go- 
vernment of that foundation j Among the 

* Life of James II., vol. ii. p. 621. 

t Gutch, Collectanea Curiosa, vol. i. p. 290, and 
Reresby, p. 233. Sclater publicly recanted the 
Romish religion on the 5th of May, 1689, — a 
pretty rapid retreat. — Account of E. Sclater's Re- 
turn to the Church of England, by Dr. Horneck. 
London, 1689. It is remarkable that Sancroft so 
far exercised his archiepiscopal jurisdiction as to 
authorise Sclater's admission to the Protestant 
communion on condition of public recantation, at 
which Burnet preached: yet the pious Horneck 
owns that the juncture of time tempted him to 
smile. 

\ Relation of the Proceedings at the Charter 
House, London, 1689. — Carte, Life of Ormonde, 
vol. ii. p. 246. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



321 



Governors were persons of the highest dis- 
tinction in Church and State. The Chan- 
cellor, at their first meeting, intimated the 
necessity of immediate compliance with the 
King's mandate. Thomas Burnet, the Mas- 
ter, a man justly celebrated for genius, elo- 
quence, and learning, had the courage to 
maintain the authority of the laws against 
an opponent so formidable. He was sup- 
ported by the aged Duke of Ormonde, and 
Jeffreys' motion was negatived. A second 
letter to the same effect was addressed to 
the Governors, which they persevered in re- 
sisting; assigning their reasons in an answer 
to one of the Secretaries of State, which was 
subscribed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
the Bishop of London, Ormonde, Halifax, 
Nottingham, and Danby. This courageous 
resistance by a single clergyman, counte- 
nanced by such weighty names, induced the 
Court to pause till experiments were tried in 
other places, where politicians so important 
could not directly interfere. The attack on 
the Charter House was suspended and never 
afterwards resumed. To Burnet, who thus 
threw himself alone into the breach, much 
of the merit of the stand which followed 
justly belongs. He was requited like other 
public benefactors; his friends forgot the 
service, and his enemies were excited by 
the remembrance of it to defeat his promo- 
tion, on the pretext of his free exercise of 
reason in the interpretation of the Scriptures, 
— which the Established Clergy zealously 
maintained in vindication of their own sepa- 
ration from the Roman Church, but treated 
with little tenderness in those who dissented 
from their own creed. 

Measures of a bolder nature were resorted 
to on a more conspicuous stage. The two 
great Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, 
the most opulent and splendid literary insti- 
tutions of Europe, were from their foundation 
under the government of the clergy, — the 
only body of men who then possessed suffi- 
cient learning to conduct education. Their 
constitution had not been much altered at 
the Reformation : the same reverence which 
spared their monastic regulations happily 
preserved their rich endowments from ra- 
pine; and though many of their members 
suffered at the close of the Civil War from 
their adherence to the vanquished party, the 
corporate property was undisturbed, and their 
studies flourished both under the Common- 
wealth and the Protectorate. Their fame as 
seats of learning, their station as the eccle- 
siastical capitals of the kingdom, and their 
ascendant over the susceptible minds of all 
youth of family and fortune, now rendered 
them the chief scene of the decisive contest 
between James and the Established Church. 
Obadiah Walker, Master of University Col- 
leffe, Oxford, a man of no small note for 
ability and learning, and long a concealed 
Catholic, now obtained for himself, and two 
of his fellows, a dispensation from all those 
acts of participation in the Protestant wor- 
ship which the laws since the Reformation 
41 • 



required, together with a license for the pub- 
lication of books of Catholic theology.* He 
established a printing press, and a Catholic 
chapel in his college, which was henceforth 
regarded as having fallen into the hands of 
the Catholics. Both these exertions of the 
prerogative had preceded the determination 
of the judges, which was supposed by the 
King to establish its legality. 

Animated by that determination, he (con- 
trary to the advice of Sunderland, who 
thought it safer to choose a well-affected 
Protestant,) proceeded to appoint one Mas- 
sey, a Qatholic, who appears to have been a 
layman, to the high station of Dean of 
Christ Church, by which he became a dig- 
nitary of the Church as well as the ruler of 
the greatest college in the University. A 
dispensation and pardon had been granted 
to him on the 16th of December, 1686, dis- 
pensing with the numerous statutes standing 
in the way of his promotion, one of which 
was the Act of Uniformity, — the only foun- 
dation of the legal establishment of the 
Church. t His refusal of the oath of supre- 
macy was recorded ; but he was, notwith- 
standing, installed in the deanery without 
resistance or even remonstrance, by Aldrich, 
the Sub-Dean, an eminent divine of the High 
Church party, who, on the part of the Col- 
lege, accepted the dispensation as a substi- 
tute for the oaths required by law. Massey 
appears to have attended the chapter offi- 
cially on several occasions, and to have pre- 
sided at the election of a Bishop of Oxford 
near two years afterwards. Thus did that 
celebrated society, overawed by power, or 
still misled by their extravagant principle of 
unlimited obedience, or, perhaps, not yet 
aware of the extent of the King's designs, 
recognise the legality of his usurped power 
by the surrender of an academical office of 
ecclesiastical dignity into hands which the 
laws had disabled from holding it. It was 
no wonder, that the unprecedented vacancy 
of the archbishopric of York for two years 
and a half was generally imputed to the 
King's intending it for Father Petre : — a sup- 
position countenanced by his frequent appli- 
cation to Rome to obtain a bishopric and a 
cardinal's hat for that Jesuit:! for if he had 
been a Catholic bishop, and if the chapter 
of York were as submissive as that of Christ 
Church, the royal dispensation would have 
seated him on the archiepiscopal throne. 
The Jesuits were bound by a vow§ not to 
accept bishoprics unless compelled byapre- 



* Gulch, Collectanea Curiosa, vol. i. p. 287. 
Athenae Oxoniensis, vol. iv. p. 438. Dodd, Church 
Hisiorv. vol. iii. p. 454. 

t Gulch, vol. ii. p 294. The dispensation to 
Massey contained an ostentatious enumeration of 
the laws which it sets at defiance. 

t Dodd, vol. iii. p. 511. D'Adda MSS. 

i Imposed by Ignatius, at the suggestion of 
Claude Le Jay, an original member of the order, 
who wished to avoid a bishopric, probahly from 
humility ; but the regulation afterwards prevented 
the Jesuits from looking for advancement any- 
where but to Rome. 



322 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



cept from the Pope ; so that his interference 
was necessary to open the gates of the En- 
glish Church to Petre. 

An attempt was made on specious grounds 
to take possession of another college by a 
suit before the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, 
in which private individuals were the appa- 
rent parties. The noble family of Petre (of 
whom Father Edward Petre was one), in 
January, 1687, claimed the right of nomina- 
tion to seven fellowships in Exeter College, 
which had been founded there by Sir Wil- 
liam Petre, in the reign of Elizabeth. It 
was acknowledged on the part of the College, 
that Sir William and his son had exercised 
that power, though the latter, as they con- 
tended, had nominated only by sufferance. 
The Bishop of Exeter, the Visitor, had, in 
the reign of James I., pronounced an opinion 
against the founder's descendants; and a 
judgment had been obtained against them 
in the Court of Common Pleas about the 
same time. Under the sanction of these 
authorities, the College had for seventy years 
nominated without disturbance to these fel- 
lowships. Allibone, the Catholic lawyer, 
contended, that this long usage, which would 
otherwise have been conclusive, deserved 
little consideration in a period of such ini- 
quity towards Catholics that they were de- 
terred from asserting their civil rights. Lord 
Chief Justice Herbert observed, that the ques- 
tion turned upon the agreement between Sir 
William Petre and Exeter College, under 
which that body received the fellows on 
his foundation. Jeffreys, perhaps, fearful of 
violent measures at so early a stage, and 
taking advantage of the non-appearance of 
the Crown as an ostensible party, declared 
his concurrence with the Chief Justice : and 
the Court determined that the suit was a 
civil case, dependent on the interpretation 
of a contract, and therefore not within their 
jurisdiction as Commissioners of Ecclesiasti- 
cal Causes. Sprat afterwards took some 
merit to himself for having contributed to 
save Exeter College from the hands of the 
enemy : but the concurrence of the Chan- 
cellor and Chief Justice, and the technical 
ground of the determination, render the 
vigour and value of his resistance very 
doubtful.* 

The honour of opposing the illegal power 
of the Crown devolved on Cambridge, second 
to Oxford in rank and magnificence, but then 
more distinguished by zeal for liberty ; — a 
distinction probably originating in the long 
residence of Charles I. at Oxford, and in the 
prevalence of the Parliamentary party at the 
same period, in the country around Cam- 
bridge. The experiment was made now on 
the whole University; but it was of a cautious 
and timid nature, and related to a case im- 
portant in nothing but the principle which it 



* Sprat's Letter to Lord Dorset, p. 12. This 
case is now published from the Records of Exeter 
College, for the first time, through ihr kind per- 
mission of Dr. Jones, the present [1826] Rector 
f)f '.hat society. 



would have established. Early in February, 
of this year, the King had recommended 
Alban Francis, a Benedictine monk (said to 
have been a missionary employed to convert 
the young scholars to the Church of Rome, 
on whom an academical honour could hardly 
have been conferred without some appear- 
ance of. countenancing his mission) to be ad- 
mitted a master of arts, — which was a com- 
mon act of kingly authority ; and had granted 
him a dispensation from the oaths appointed 
by law to be taken on such an admission.* 
Peachell, the Vice-Chancellor, declared, that 
he could not tell what to do, — to decline 
his Majesty's letter or his laws. Men of 
more wisdom and courage persuaded him to 
choose the better part : and he refused the 
degree without the legal condition. t On the 
complaint of Francis he was summoned 
before the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to 
answer for his disobedience, and (though 
vigorously supported by the University, who 
appointed deputies to attend him to the bar 
of the hostile tribunal), after several hearings 
was deprived of his Vice-Chancellorship, and 
suspended from his office of Master of Mag- 
dalen College. Among those deputies at the 
bar, and probably undistinguished from the 
rest by the ignorant and arrogant Chancellor, 
who looked down upon them all with the 
like scorn, stood Isaac Newton, Professor of 
Mathematics in the University, then employ- 
ed in the publication of a work which will 
perish only with the world, but who showed 
on that, as on every other fit opportunity in 
his life, that the most sublime contempla- 
tions and the most glorious discoveries could 
not withdraw him from the defence of the 
liberties of his country. 

But the attack on Oxford, which imme- 
diately ensued, was the most memorable of 
all. The Presidency of Magdalen College, 
one of the most richly endowed communities 
of the English Universities, had become va- 
cant at the end of March, which gave occa- 
sion to immediate attempts to obtain from 
the King a nomination to that desirable 
office. Smith, one of the fellows, paid his 
court, with this view, to Parker, the treache- 
rous Bishop of Oxford, who, after having 
sounded his friends at Court, warned him 
" that the King expected the person to be 
recommended should be favourable to his 
religion." Smith answered by general ex- 
pressions of loyalty, which Parker assured 
him " would not do." A few days after- 
wards, Sancroft anxiously asked Smith who 
was to be the President ; to which he an- 
swered, "Not I; I never will comply with 
the conditions." Some rumours of the pro- 



* State Trials, vol. xi. p. 1350. Narcissus Lut- 
trell, April and May, 1687.— MS. 

t Pepys, Memoirs, vol. ii. Correspondence, p. 
79. He consistently pursued the doctrine of pas- 
sive obedience. " If," says he, " his Majesty, 
in his wisdom, and according to his supreme 
power, contrive other methods to satisfy himself, 
I shall be no murmurer or complainer, but can be 
no abettor." — Ibid., p. 81. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



323 



jects of James having probably induced the 
fellows to appoint the election for the 13th 
of April, on the 5th of that month the King 
issued his letter mandatory, commanding 
them to make choice of Anthony Farmer,* 
— not a member of the College, and a recenl 
convert to the Church of Rome, " any statute 
or custom to the contrary notwithstanding." 
On the 9th, the fellows agreed to a petition to 
the King, which was delivered the next day 
to Lord Sunderland, to be laid before his 
Majesty, in which they alleged that Farmer 
was legally incapable of holding the office, 
and prayed either that they might be left to 
make a free election, or that the King would 
recommend some person fit to be preferred. 
On the 11th, the mandate arrived, and on 
the 1 3th the election was postponed to the 
15th, — the last day on which it could by the 
statutes be held, — to allow time for receiving 
an answer to the petition. On that day they 
were informed that the King "expected to 
be obeyed." A small number of the senior 
fellows proposed a second petition ; but the 
larger and younger part rejected the propo- 
sal with indignation, and proceeded to the 
election of Mr. Hough, after a discussion 
more agreeable to the natural feelings of in- 
jured men than to the principles of passive 
obedience recently promulgated by the Uni- 
versity. t The fellows were summoned, in 
June, before the Ecclesiastical Commission, 
to answer for their contempt of his Majesty's 
commands. On their appearance, Fairfax, 
one of their body, having desired to know 
the commission by which the Court sat, Jef- 
freys said to him, '-What commission have 
you to be so impudent in court'? This man 
ought to be kept in a dark room. Why do 
you suffer him without a guardian?"!: On 
the 22d of the same month, Hough's elec- 
tion was pronounced to be void, and the 
Vice-President, with two of the fellows, were 
suspended. But proofs of such notorious and 
vulgar profligacy had been produced against 
Farmer, that it was thought necessary to 
withdraw him in August; and the fellows 
were directed by a new mandate to admit 
Parker, Bishop of Oxford, to the presidency. 
This man was as much disabled by the sta- 
tutes of the College as Farmer; but as ser- 
vility and treachery, though immoralities 
often of a deeper dye than debauchery, are 
neither so capable of proof nor so easily 
stripped of their disguises, the fellows were 
by this recommendation driven to the neces- 
sity of denying the dispensing power. Their 
inducements, however, to resist him, were 



* State Trials, vol. xii. p. 1. 

t " Hot debates arose about the King's letter, 
and horrible rude reflections were made upon his 
authority, thai he had nothing to do in our affair, 
and things of a far worse nature and consequence. 
I told one of them that the spirit of Ferguson had 
got into him." — Smith's Diary, Slate Trials, vol. 
xii. p. 58. 

t In Narcissus Lnttrell's Diary, Jeffreys is made 
to say of Fairfax, "He is fitter to be in a mad- 
house." 



strengthened by the impossibility of repre- 
senting them to the King. Parker, origi- 
nally a fanatical Puritan, became a bigoted 
Churchman at the Restoration, and disgraced 
abilities not inconsiderable by the zeal with 
which he defended the persecution of his 
late brethren, and by the unbridled ribaldry 
with which he reviled the most virtuous men 
among them. His labours for the Church of 
England were no sooner rewarded by the 
bishopric of Oxford, than he transferred his 
services, if not his faith, to the Church of 
Rome, which then began to be openly pa- 
tronised by the Court, and seems to have re- 
tained his station in the Protestant hierarchy 
in order to contribute more effectually to its 
destruction. The zeal of those who are more 
anxious to recommend themselves than to 
promote their cause is often too eager : and 
the convivial enjoyments of Parker often 
betrayed him into very imprudent and un- 
seemly language.* Against such an intru- 
der the College had the most powerful mo- 
tives to make a vigorous resistance. They 
were summoned into the presence of the 
King, when he arrived at Oxford in Septem- 
ber, and was received by the body of the 
University with such demonstrations of loy- 
alty as to be boasted of in the Gazette. 
i: The King chid them very much for iheir 
disobedience," says one of his attendants, 
" and with a much greater appearance of 
anger than ever I perceived in his Majesty; 
who bade them go away and choose the 
Bishop of Oxford, or else they should cer- 
tainly feel the weight of their Sovereign's 
displeasure."! They answered respectfully, 
but persevered. They further received pri- 
vate warnings, that it was better to acquiesce 
in the choice of a head of suspected religion, 
such as the Bishop, than to expose them- 
selves to be destroyed by the subservient 
judces, in proceedings of quo warranto (for 
which the inevitable breaches of their innu- 
merable statutes would supply a fairer pre- 
text than was sufficient in the other corpora- 
tions), or to subject themselves to innovations 
in their religious worship which might be 
imposed by the King in virtue of his unde- 
fined supremacy over the Church. I 

These insinuations proving vain, the King 
issued a commission to Cartwright, Bishop 
of Chester. Chief Justice Wright, and Baron 
Jenner, to examine the state of the College, 
with full power to alter the statutes and 
•frame new ones, in execution of the autho- 
rity which the King claimed as supreme 
visitor of cathedrals and colleges, and which 
was held to supersede the powers of their 
ordinary visitors. The commissioners ac- 
cordingly arrived at Oxford on the 20th of 
October, for the purpose of this royal visita- 

* Athena? Oxonienses, vol. ii. p. 814. It ap- 
pears that he refused on his death-bed to declare 
himself a Catholic, which Evelyn justly thinks 
strange. — Memoirs, vol. i. p. 605. 

t Blathwayt, Secretary of War, Pepys, vol. ii 
Correspondence, p. 86. 

t State Trials, vol. xii. p. 19, 



324 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



tion ; and the object of it was opened by 
Cartwright in a speech full of anger and 
menace. Hough maintained his own rights 
and those of his College with equal decorum 
and (irmness. On being asked whether he 
Submitted to the visitation, he answered, 
" We submit to it as far as it is consistent 
with the laws of the land and the statutes 
of the College, but no farther. There neither 
is nor can be a President as long as I live 
and obey the statutes." The Court cited 
five cases of nomination to the Presidency by 
the Crown since the Reformation, of which 
he appears to have disputed only one. But he 
was unshaken: he refused to give up posses- 
sion of his house to Parker; and when, on 
the second day they deprived him of the 
Presidency, and struck his name off the 
books, he came into the hall, and protested 
'•'against all they had done in prejudice of 
his right, as illegal, unjust, and null." The 
strangers and young scholars loudly ap- 
plauded his courage, which so incensed the 
Court, that the Chief Justice bound him to 
appear in the King's Bench in a thousand 
pounds. Parker having been put into pos- 
Bession by force, a majority of the fellows 
were prevailed on to submit, "as far as was 
lawful and agreeable to the statutes of the 
College." The appearance of compromise, 
to which every man feared that his com- 
panion might be tempted to yield, shook 
their firmness for a moment. Fortunately 
the imprudence of the King set them again 
at liberty. The answer with which the com- 
missioners were willing to be content did 
not satisfy him. He required a written sub- 
mission, in which the fellows should acknow- 
ledge their disobedience, and express their 
sorrow for it. On this proposition they with- 
drew their former submission, and gave in a 
writing in which they finally declared "that 
they could not acknowledge themselves to 
have done any thing amiss." The Bishop 
of Chester, on the 16th of November,' pro- 
nounced the judgment of the Court; by 
which, on their refusal to subscribe a hum- 
ble acknowledgment of their errors, they 
were deprived and expelled from their fel- 
lowships. Cartwright, like Parker, had origi- 
nally been a Puritan, and was made a Church- 
man by the Restoration ; and running the 
same race, though with less vigorous pow- 
ers, he had been made Bishop of Chester for 
a sermon, inculcating the doctrine, that the 
promises of kings were not binding.* Within 
a few months after these services at Oxford, 
he was rebuked by the- King, for saying in 
his cups that Jeffreys and Sunderland would 
deceive him.t Suspected as he was of more 
opprobious vices, the merit of being useful 
in an odious project was sufficient to cancel 

* The King- hath, indeed, promised to govern by 
law ; but the safety of the people (of which he is 
judge) is an excepiion implied in every monarrhial 
promise." — Sermon at Ripon, 6th February, 1686. 
See also bis sermon on the 30ih January, 1682, at 
ilolyrood House, before the Lady Anne. 

t Narcissus Luttrell, February, 1688.— MS. 



all private guilt; and a design was even 
entertained of promoting him to the see of 
London, as soon as the contemplated depriva- 
tion of Complon should be carried into execu- 
tion.* 

Early in December, the recusant fellows 
were incapacitated from holding any benefice 
or preferment in the Church by a decree 
of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, which 
passed that body, however, only by a majo- 
rity of one ; — the minority consisting of Lord 
Mulgrave, Lord Chief Justice Herbert, Baron 
Jenner, and Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, who 
boasts, that he laboured to make the Com- 
mission, which he countenanced by his pre- 
sence, as little mischievous as he could. t 
This rigorous measure was probably adopted 
from the knowledge, that many of the no- 
bility and gentry intended to bestow livings 
on many of the ejected fellows. t The King 
told Sir Edward Seymour, that he had heard 
that he and others intended to take some of 
them into their houses, and added that he 
should look on it as a combination against 
himself. § But in spite of these threats con- 
siderable collections were made for them ; 
and when the particulars of the transaction 
were made known in Holland, the Princess 
of Orange contributed two hundred pounds 
to their relief. II It was probably by these 
same threats that a person so prudent as 
well as mild was so transported beyond her 
usual meekness as to say to D'Abbeville, 
James' minister at the Hague, that if she 
ever became Queen, she would signalise her 
zeal for the Church more than Elizabeth. 

The King represented to Barillon the ap- 
parently triumphant progress which he had 
just made through the South and West of 
England, as a satisfactory proof of the popu- 
larity of his person and government.!" But 
that experienced statesman, not deceived by 
these outward shows, began from that mo- 
ment to see more clearly the dangers which 
James had to encounter. An attack on the 
most opulent establishment for education of 
the kingdom, the expulsion of a body of 
learned men from their private property 
without any trial known to the laws, and for 
no other offence than obstinate adherence to 
their oaths, and the transfer of their great 
endowments to the clergy of the King's per- 
suasion, who were legally unable to hold 
them, even if he had justly acquired the 
power of bestowing them, were measures of 
bigotry and rapine, — odious and alarming 
without being terrible, — by which the King 
lost the attachment of many fiiends, without 

* Johnstone (son of Warriston) to Burnet, 8th 
December, 1687. — Welbeck MS. Sprat, in his 
Letter to Lord Dorset, speaks of "farther pro- 
ceedings" as being meditated against Compton. 

t Johnstone, ibid. He does not name the ma- 
jority : they, prohabiy, were Jeffreys, Sunderland, 
the Bishops of Chester and Durham, and Lord 
Chief Justice Wrisht. 

t Johnstone. 17' h November. — MS. 

§ Td. 8th December.— MS. 

II Smith's Diary. State Trials, vol. xii. p. 73. 

1 Barillon, 23d— 29th Sept.— Fox MSS. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



326 



inspiring his opponents with much fear. The 
members of Magdalen College were so much 
the objects of general sympathy and respect, 
that though they justly obtained the honours 
of martyrdom, they experienced little of its 
sufferings. It is hard to imagine a more un- 
skilful attempt to persecute, than that which 
thus inflicted sufferings most easily relieved 
on men who were most generally respected. 
In corporations so great as the University the 
wrongs of every member were quickly felt 
and resented by the whole body : and the 
prevalent feeling was speedily spread over 
the kingdom, every part of which received 
from thence preceptors in learning and teach- 
ers of religion, — a circumstance of peculiar 
importance at a period when publication still 
continued to be slow and imperfect. A con- 
test for a corporate right has the advantage 
of seeming more generous than that for indi- 
vidual interest ; and corporate spirit itself is 
one of the most steady and inflexible prin- 
ciples of human action. An invasion of the 
legal possessions of the Universities was an 
attack on the strong holds as well as palaces 
of the Church, where she was guarded by 
the magnificence of art, and the dignity and 
antiquity of learning, as well as by respect 
for religion. It was made on principles which 
tended directly to subject the whole property 
of the Church to the pleasure of the Crown ; 
and as soon as, in a conspicuous and exten- 
sive instance, the sacredness of legal pos- 
session is intentionally violated, the security 
of all property is endangered. Whether 
such proceedings were reconcilable to law, 
and could be justified by the ordinary au- 
thorities and arguments of lawyers, was a 
question of very subordinate importance. 

At an early stage of the proceedings 
against the Universities, the King, not con- 
tent with releasing individuals from obedi- 
ence to the law by dispensations in particular 
cases, must have resolved on altogether sus- 
pending the operation of penal laws relating 
to religion by one general measure. He had 
accordingly issued, on the 4th of April, " A 
Declaration for Liberty of Conscience;" 
which, after the statement of those princi- 
ples of equity and policy on which religious 
liberty is founded, proceeds to make provi- 
sions in their own natures so wise and just 
that they want nothing but lawful authority 
and pure intention to render them worthy 
of admiration. It suspends the execution 
of all penal laws for nonconformity, and of 
all laws which require certain acts of con- 
formity, as qualifications for civil or military 
office ; it gives leave to all men to meet and 
serve God after their own manner, publicly 
and privately ; it denounces the royal dis- 
pleasure and the vengeance of the land 
against all who should disturb any religious 
worship; and, finally, •' in order that his 
loving subjects may be discharged from all 
penalties, forfeitures, and disabilities, which 
they may have incurred, it grants them a 
free pardon for all crimes by them committed 
against the said penal laws." This Declara- 



tion, founded on the supposed power of sus- 
pending laws, was, in several respects, of 
more extensive operation than the exercise 
of the power to dispense with them. The 
laws of disqualification only became penal 
when the Nonconformist was a candidate for 
office, and not necessarily implying immo- 
rality in the person disqualified, might, ac- 
cording to the doctrine then received, be the 
proper object of a dispensation. But some 
acts of nonconformity, which might be com- 
mitted by all men, and which did not of ne- 
cessity involve a conscientious dissent, were 
regarded as in themselves immoral, and to 
them it was acknowledged that the dispen- 
sing power did not extend. Dispensations, 
however multiplied, are presumed to be 
grounded on the special circumstances of 
each case. But every exercise of the power 
of indefinitely suspending a whole class of 
laws which must be grounded on general 
reasons of policy, without any consideration 
of the circumstances of particular individu- 
als, is evidently a more undisguised assump- 
tion of legislative authority. There were 
practical differences of considerable import- 
ance. No dispensation could prevent a legal 
proceeding from being commenced and car- 
ried on as far as the point where it was regu- 
lar to appeal to the dispensation as a defence. 
But the declaration which suspended the 
laws stopped the prosecutor on the threshold; 
and in the case of disqualification it seemed 
to preclude the necessity of all subsequent 
dispensations to individuals. The dispensing 
power might remove disabilities, and protect 
from punishment; but the exemption from 
expense, and the security against vexation, 
were completed only by this exercise of the 
suspending power. 

Acts of a similar nature had been twice 
attempted by Charles II. The first was the 
Declaration in Ecclesiastical Affairs, in the 
year of his restoration ; in which, after many 
concessions to Dissenters, which might be 
considered as provisional, and binding only 
till the negotiation for a general union in re- 
ligion should be closed, he adds, "We hereby 
renew what we promised in our Declaration 
from Breda, that no man should be disquieted 
for difference of opinion in matters of religion, 
which do not disturb the peace of the king- 
dom."* On the faith of that promise the 
English Nonconformists had concurred in the 
Restoration; yet the Convention Parliament 
itself, in which the Presbyterians were 
powerful, if not predominant, refused, though 
by a small majority, to pass a bill to render 
this tolerant Declaration effectual.! But the 
next Parliament, elected under the preva- 
lence of a different spirit, broke the public 
faith by the Act of Uniformity, which pro- 
hibited all public worship and religious in- 
struction, except such as were conformable to 



* Kennet, History, vol. iii. p. 242. 

t Commons' Journals, 28ih November, 1660. 
On the second reading the numbers were, ayes, 
157; noes, 183. Sir G. Booth, a teller for the 
ayes, was a Presbyterian leader. 
2C 



326 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



the Established Church.* The zeal of that 
assembly had, indeed, at its opening, been 
stimulated by Clarendon, the deepest stain 
on whose administration was the renewal of 
htfole ranee .t Charles; whether most actu- 
ated by love of quiet, or by indifference to 
religion, or by a desire to open the gates to 
Dissenters, that Catholics might enter, made 
an attempt to preserve the public faith, 
which he had himself pledged, by the exer- 
cise of his dispensing power, In the end of 
1662 he had published another Declaration,}' 
in which lie assured peaceable Dissenters, 
who were only desirous modestly to perform 
their devotions in their own way, that he 
would make it his special care to incline the 
wisdom of Parliament to concur with him in 
making some act which, he adds, "may 
enable us to exercise, with a more universal 
■satisfaction, the dispensing power which we 
conceive to be inherent in us." In the 
speech with which he opened the next ses- 
sion, he only ventured to say, "I could 
heartily wish I had such a power of indul- 
gence." The Commons, however, better 
royalists or more zealous Churchmen than 
the King, resolved '-'that it be represented 
to his Majesty, as the humble advice of this 
House, that no indulgence be granted to 
Dissenters from the Act of Uniformity ;"§ 
and an address to that effect was presented 
to him, which had been drawn up by Sir 
Heneage Finch, his own Solicitor-General. 
The King, counteracted by his ministers, 
almost silently acquiesced : and the Parlia- 
ment proceeded, in the years which immedi- 
ately followed, to enact that series of perse- 
cuting laws which disgrace their memory, 
and dishonour an administration otherwise 
not without claims on our praise. It was not 
till the beginning of the second Dutch war, 
that "a Declaration for indulging Noncon- 
formists in matters ecclesiastical" was ad- 
vised by Sir Thomas Clifford, for the sake of 
Catholics, and embraced by Shaftesbury for 
the general interests of religious liberty. II A 



* 14 Car. II. c. iv. 

t Speeches, 8ih May, 1661, and 19th May, 
1662. " The Lords Clarendon and Southampton, 
together with the Bishops, were the great oppo- 
se rs of the King's intention to grant toleration to 
Dissenters, according to the promise at Breda." — 
Life of James II. vol. i. p. 391. These, indeed, 
are not the words of the King; but for more than 
twelve years on this part of his Life, the compiler, 
Mr. Dicconson, does not quote James' MSS. 

t Kennet, Register, p. 850. — The concluding 
paragraph, relating to Catholics, is a model of that 
stately ambiguity under which the style of Claren- 
don gave him peculiar facilities of cloaking an un- 
popular proposal. 

$ Journals, 25th Feb., 1663. 

II " We think ourselves obliged to make use of 
that supreme power in ecclesiastical matters which 
is inherent in us. We declare our will and plea- 
sure, that the execution of all penal laws in mat- 
ters ecclesiastical be suspended ; and we shall 
allow a sufficient number of places of worship as 
they shall be desired, for the use of those who do 
not conform to the Church of England : — without 
-allowing public worship to Roman Catholics." 
Most English historians tell us that Sir Orlando 



considerable debate on this Declaration took 
place in the House of Commons, in which 
Waller alone had the boldness and liberality 
to contend for the toleration of the Catholics ; 
but the principle of freedom of conscience, 
and the desire to gratify the King, yielded to 
the dread of prerogative and the enmity to 
the Church of Rome. An address was pre- 
sented to the King, :: to inform him that 
penal statutes in. matters ecclesiastical can- 
not be suspended but by Act of Parlia- 
ment. ;" to which the King returned an eva- 
sive answer. The House presented another 
address, declaring '.' that the King was very 
much misinformed, no such power having 
been claimed or recognised by any of his 
predecessors, and if admitted, might tend to 
altering the legislature, which has always 
been acknowledged to be in your Majesty 
and jour two Houses of Parliament ;" — in 
answer to which the King said, " If any 
scruple remains concerning the suspension 
of the penal laws, I hereby faithfully promise 
that what hath been done in that particular 
shall not be drawn either into consequence 
or example." The Chancellor and Secretary 
Coventry, by command of the King, acquaint- 
ed both Houses separately, on the same day, 
that he had caused the Declaration to be can- 
celled in his presence j on which both Houses 
immediately voted, and presented in a body, 
an unanimous address of thanks to his 
Majesty, " for his gracious, full, and satis- 
factory answer."* The whole of this trans- 
action undoubtedly amounted to a solemn 
and final condemnation of the pretension to 
a suspending power by the King in Parlia- 
ment : it was in substance not distinguishable 
from a declaratory law ; and the forms of a 
statute seem to have been dispensed with 
only to avoid the appearance of distrust or 
discourtesy towards Charles. We can dis- 
cover, in the very imperfect accounts which 
are preserved of the debates of 1673, that 
the advocates of the Crown had laid main 
stress on the King's ecclesiastical supremacy; 
it being, as they reasoned, evident that the 
head of the Church should be left to judge 
when it was wise to execute or suspend the 
laws intended for its protection. They relied 
also on the undisputed right of the Crown to 
stop the progress of each single prosecution 
which seemed to justify, by analogy, a more 
general exertion of the same power. 

James, in his Declaration of Indulgence, 
disdaining any appeals to analogy or to su- 
premacy, chose to take a wider and higher 
ground, and concluded the preamble in the 
tone of a master: — "We have thought fit, 
by virtue of our royal prerogative, to issue 

Bridgman refused to put the Great Seal to this 
Declaration, and that Lord Shaftesbury was made 
Chancellor to seal it. The falsehood of this state- 
ment is proved by the mere inspection of the 
London Gazette, by which we see that the De- 
claration was issued on the 15th of March, 1672, 
when Lord Shaftesbury was not yet appointed. 
— See Locke's Letter from a Person of Quality, 
and the Life of Shaftesbury (unpublished), p. 247. 
* Journals, 8th March, 1673. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



327 • 



forth this our Declaration of Indulgence, 
making no doubt of the concurrence of our 
two Houses of Parliament, when we shall 
think it convenient for them to meet." His 
Declaration was issued in manifest defiance of 
the parliamentary condemnation pronounced 
on that of his brother, and it was introduced 
in language of more undefined and alarming 
extent^. On the other hand, his measure was 
countenanced by the determination of the 
judges, and seemed to be only a more com- 
pendious and convenient manner of effecting 
what these perfidious magistrates had de- 
clared he might lawfully do. Their iniqui- 
tous decision might excuse many of those 
who were ignorant of the means by which it 
was obtained ; but the King himself, who 
had removed judges too honest to concur in 
it, and had neither continued nor appointed 
any whose subserviency he had not first as- 
certained, could plead no such authority in 
mitigation. He had dictated the oracle which 
he affected to obey. It is very observable 
that he himself, or rather his biographer (for 
it is not just to impute this base excuse to 
himself), while he claims the protecting au- 
thority of the adjudication, is prudently silent 
on the unrighteous practices by which that 
show of authority was purchased.* 

The way had been paved for the English 
Declaration by a Proclamationf issued at 
Edinburgh, on the 12th of February, couched 
in loftier language than was about to be 
hazarded in England: — "We, by our sove- 
reign authority, prerogative royal, and abso- 
lute power, do hereby give and grant our 
royal toleration. We allow and tolerate the 
moderate Presbyterians to meet in their 
private houses, and to hear such ministers 
as have been or are willing to accept of our 
indulgence ; but they are not to build meet- 
ing-houses, but to exercise in houses. We 
tolerate Quakers to meet in their form in any 
place or places appointed for their worship. 
We, by our sovereign authority, &c. suspend, 
stop, and disable, all laws or Acts of Parlia- 
ment made or executed against any of our 
Roman Catholic subjects, so that they shall 
be 'free to exercise their religion and to enjoy 
all ; but they are to exercise in houses or 
chapels. And we cass, annul, and discharge 
all oaths by which our subjects are disabled 
from holding offices." He concludes by con- 
firming the proprietors of Church lands in 
their possession, which seemed to be wholly 
unnecessary while the Protestant establish- 
ment endured ; and adds an assurance more 
likely to disquiet than to satisfy, " that he 
will not use force against any man for the 
Protestant religion." In a short time after- 
wards he had extended this indulgence to 
those Presbyterians who scrupled to take the 
Test or any other oath; and in a few months 
more, on the 5th of July, all restrictions on 
toleration had been removed, by the per- 

* Life of James II., vol. ii. p. 81. " He," says 
the biographer, " had no other oracle to apply to 
for exposition of difficult and intricate points*" 

t Wodrow, vol. ii. app. 



mission granted to all to serve God in their 
own manner, whether in private houses or 
chapels, or houses built or hired for the pur- 
pose ;* or, in other words, he had established, 
by his own sole authority, the most unbound- 
ed liberty of worship and religious instruc- 
tion in a country where the laws treated 
every act of dissent as one of the most 
heinous crimes. There is no other example, 
perhaps, of so excellent an object being pur- 
sued by means so culpable, or for purposes 
in which evil was so much blended with 
good. 

James was equally astonished and incensed 
at the resistance of the Church of England. 
Their warm professions of loyalty, their ac- . 
quiescence in measures directed only against 
civil liberty, their solemn condemnation of 
forcible resistance to oppression (the lawful- 
ness of which constitutes the main strength 
of every opposition to misgovernment), had 
persuaded him that they would look patiently 
on the demolition of all the bulwarks of their 
own wealth, and greatness, and power, and 
submit in silence to measures which, after 
stripping the Protestant religion of all its 
temporal aid, might at length leave it exposed 
to persecution. He did not distinguish be- 
tween legal opposition and violent resistance. 
He believed in the adherence of multitudes 
to professions poured forth in a moment of 
enthusiasm ; and he was so ignorant of hu- 
man nature as to imagine, that speculative 
opinions of a very extravagant sort, even if 
they could be stable, were sufficient to su- 
persede interest and habits, to bend the pride 
of high establishments, and to stem the pas- 
sions of a nation in a state of intense excite- 
ment. Yet James had been admonished by 
the highest authority to beware of this de- 
lusion. Morley, Bishop of Winchester, a 
veteran royalist and Episcopalian, whose 
fidelity had been tried, but whose judgment 
had been informed in the Civil War, almost 
with his dying breath desired Lord Dart- 
mouth to warn the King, that if ever he de- 
pended on the doctrine of Nonresistance he 
would find himself deceived; for that most 
of the Church, would contradict it in their 
practice, though not in terms. It was to no 
purpose that Dartmouth frequently reminded 
James of Morley's last message ; for he an- 
swered, " that the Bishop was a good man, 
but grown old and timid. "t 

It must be owned, on the other hand, that 
there were not wanting considerations which 
excuse the expectation and explain the dis- 
appointment of James. Wiser men than he 
have been the dupes of that natural preju- 
dice, which leads us to look for the same 
consistency between the different parts of 
conduct which is in some degree found to 
prevail among the different reasonings and 
opinions of every man of sound mind. It 
cannot be denied that the Church had done 



* Wodrow. vol. ii. app. Fountainhall, vol. i. p. 463. 
t Burnet, (Oxford, 1823), vol. ii. p. 428. Lord 
Dartmouth's note. 



328 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



much to delude him. For they did not con- 
tent themselves with never controverting, nor 
even confine themselves to calmly preaching 
the doctrine ot Nonresistance (which might 
be justified and perhaps commended); but it 
was constantly and vehemently inculcated. 
The more furious preachers treated all who 
doubted it with the fiercest scurrility,* and 
the most pure and gentle were ready to intro- 
duce it harshly and unreasonably ;t and they 
all boasled of it, perhaps with reason, as a pe- 
culiar characteristic which distinguished the 
Church of England from other Christian com- 
munities. Nay, if a solemn declaration from 
an authority second only to the Church, as- 
sembled in a national council, could have 
been a security for their conduct, the judg- 
ment of the University of Oxford, in their Con- 
vocation in 1683, may seem to warrant the 
utmost expectations of the King. For among 
other positions condemned by that learned 
body, one was, " that if lawful governors be- 
come tyrants, or govern otherwise than by 
the laws of God or man they ought to do, 
they forfeit the right they had unto their 
government, t Now, it is manifest, that, 
according to this determination, if the King- 
had abolished Parliaments, shut the courts 
of justice, and changed the laws according 
to his pleasure, he would nevertheless retain 
the same rights as before over all his sub- 
jects : that any part of them who resisted 
him would still contract the full guilt of re- 
bellion ; and that the co-operation of the 
sounder portion to repress the revolt would 
be a moral duty and a lawful service. How, 
then, could it be reasonable to withstand him 
in far less important assaults on his sub- 
jects, and to turn against him laws which 
owed their continuance solely to his good 
pleasure 1 Whether this last mode of rea- 
soning be proof against all objections or not, 
it was at least specious enough to satisfy the 
King, when it agreed with his passions and 
supposed interest. Under the influence of 
these natural delusions, we find him filled 
with astonishment at the prevalence of the 
ordinary motives of human conduct over an 
extravagant dogma, and beyond measure 
amazed that the Church should oppose the 



* South, passim. 

t Tillotson, On the Death of Lord Russell. 
About a year before the time to which the text 
alludes, in a visitation sermon preached before 
Sancroft by Kettlewell, an excellent man, in 
whom nothing was stern but this doctrine, it is in- 
culcated to such an extent as, according to the 
usual interpretation of the passage in Paul's Epis- 
tle to the Romans (xiii. 2.), to prohibit resistance 
to Nero ; ' ' who," says nevertheless the preacher, 
" invaded honest men's estates to supply his own 
profusion, and embrued his hands in the blood of 
any he had a pique against, without any regard to 
law or justice." The Homily, or exhortation to 
obedience, composed under Edward VI., in 1547, 
by Cranmer, and sanctioned by authority of the 
Church, asserts it to be " the calling of God's 
people to render obedience to governors, although 
they be wicked or wrong-doers, and i?i no case to 
resist." 

t Collier, Ecclesiastical History, vol. ii. p. 902. 



Crown after the King had become the ene- 
my of the Church. " Is this your Church of 
England loyalty?" he cried to the fellows 
of Magdalen College ; while in his confiden- 
tial conversations he now spoke with the 
utmost indignation of this inconsistent and 
mutinous Church. Against it, he told the 
Nuncio, that he had by his Declaration struck 
a blow which would resound through the 
country ; — ascribing their unexpected resist- 
ance to a consciousness that, in a general 
liberty of conscience, ' : the Anglican religion 
would be the first to decline.'''* Sunderland, 
in speaking of the Church to the same min- 
ister, exclaimed, ' : Where is now their boast- 
ed fidelity? The Declaration has mortified 
those who have resisted the King's pious and 
benevolent designs. The Anglicans are a 
ridiculous sect, who affect a sort of modera- 
tion in heresy, by a compound and jumble 
of all other persuasions; and who, notwith- 
standing the attachment which they boast 
of having maintained to the monarchy and 
the royal family, have proved on this occa- 
sion the most insolent and contumacious of 
men."t After the refusal to comply with 
his designs, on the ground of conscience, by 
Admiral Herbert, a man of loose life, loaded 
with the favours of the Crown, and supposed 
to be as sensible of the obligations of honour 
as he was negligent of those of religion and 
morality, James declared to Barillon, that he 
never could put confidence in any man, how- 
ever attached to him, who affected the cha- 
racter of a zealous Protestant. t 

The Declaration of Indulgence, however, 
had one important purpose beyond the asser- 
tion of prerogative, the advancement of the 
Catholic religion, or the gratification of anger 
against the unexpected resistance of the 
Church: it was intended to divide Protest- 
ants, and to obtain the support of the Non- 
conformists. The same policy had, indeed, 
failed in the preceding reign; but it was not 
unreasonably hoped by the Court, that the 
sufferings of twenty years had irreconcilably 
inflamed the dissenting sects against the 
Establishment, and had at length taught 
them to prefer their own personal and reli- 
gious liberty to vague and speculative oppo- 
sition to the Papacy, — the only bond of union 
between the discordant communities who 
were called Protestants. It was natural 
enough to suppose, that they would show no 
warm interest in universities from which 
they were excluded, or for prelates who had 
excited persecution against them; and that 
they would thankfully accept the blessings 
of safety and repose, without anxiously ex- 
amining whether the grant of these advan- 
tages was consistent with the principles of a 
constitution which treated them as unworthy 
of all trust or employment. Certainly the 
penal law from which the Declaration ten-j 



* D'Adda, 21st March, 1687; " un colpo stre- 
pitpso." " Perche la religione Anglicana sarebbe 
stata la prima a declinare in questa mutazione." 

t D'Adda, 4th— 18th April. 

t Barillon, 24th March— Fox MSS. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



329 



dered relief, was not such as to dispose them 
to be very jealous of the mode of its removal. 
An Act in the latter years of Elizabeth* 
had made refusal to attend the established 
worship, or presence at that of Dissenters, 
punishable by imprisonment, and, unless 
atoned forby conformity within three months. 
by perpetual banishment, f enforced by death 
if the offender should return. Within three 
years after the solemn promise of liberty of 
conscience from Breda, this barbarous law, 
which had been supposed to be dormant, 
was declared to be in force, by an Act t which 
subjected every one attending any but the 
established worship, where more than five 
were present, on the third offence, to trans- 
portation for seven years to any of the colo- 
nies (except New England and Virginia, — 
the only ones where they might have been 
consoled by their fellow-religionists, and 
where labour in the fields was not fatal to an 
European) ; and which doomed them in case 
of their return, — an event not very probable, 
after having laboured for seven years as the 
slaves of their enemies under the sun of Bar- 
badoes, — to death. Almost every officer, 
civil or military, was empowered and en- 
couraged to disperse their congregations as 
unlawful assemblies, and to arrest their ring- 
leaders. A conviction before two magis- 
trates, and in some cases before one, without 
any right of appeal or publicity of proceed- 
ing, was sufficient to expose a helpless or 
obnoxious Nonconformist to these tremen- 
dous consequences. By a refinement in per- 
secution, the jailer was instigated to disturb 
the devotions of his prisoners ; being subject 
to a fine if he allowed any one who was at 
large to join them in their religious worship. 
The pretext for this statute, which was how- 
ever only temporary, consisted in some riots 
and tumults in Ireland and in Yorkshire, 
evidently viewed by the ministers them- 
selves with more scorn than fear.§ A per- 
manent law, equally tyrannical, was passed 
in the next session. II By it every dissenting 
clergyman was forbidden from coming within 
five miles of his former congregation, or of 
any corporate town or parliamentary borough, 
under a penalty of forty pounds, unless he 
should take the following oath: — "I swear 
that it is not lawful, upon any pretence what- 
soever, to take up arms against the King, or 
those commissioned by him, and that I will 
not at any time endeavour any alteration of 
government in Church or State." In vain 
did Lord Southampton raise his dying voice 
against this tyrannical act, though it was 
almost the last exercise of the ministerial 



* 35 Eliz. c. 1, (1593.) 

t A sort of exile, called, in our old law, " ab- 
juring the realm," in which the offender was to 
banish himself. 

t 16 Car. II. c. 4. 

§ Ralph, History of England, vol. ii. p. 97. 
" As these plots," says that writer, "were con- 
temptible or formidable, we must acquit or con- 
demn this reign." 

I! 17 Car. II. c. 2. 

42 



power of his friend and colleague Clarendon ; 
— vehemently condemning the oath, which, 
royalist as he was, he declared that neither 
he nor any honest man could take.* A faint 
and transient gleam of indulgence followed 
the downfall of Clarendon. But, in the year 
1670, another Act was passed, reviving that 
of 1664, with some mitigations of punish- 
ment, and with amendments in the form of 
proceeding ;t but with several provisions of 
a most unusual nature, which, by their mani- 
fest tendency to stimulate the bigotry of ma- 
gistrates, rendered it a sharper instrument 
of persecution. Of this nature was the de- 
claration, that the statute was to be construed 
most favourably for the suppression of con- 
venticles, and for the encouragement of those 
engaged in carrying it into effect ; the ma- 
lignity of which must be measured by its 
effect in exciting all public officers, especial- 
ly the lowest, to constant vexation and fre- 
quent cruelty towards the poorer Noncon- 
formists, marked by such language as the 
objects of the fear and hatred of the legisla- 
ture. 

After the defeat of Charles' attempt to re- 
lieve all Dissenters by his usurped preroga- 
tive, the alarms of the House of Commons 
had begun to be confined to the Catholics; 
and they had conceived designs of union 
with the more moderate of their Protestant 
brethren, as well as of indulgence towards 
those whose dissent was irreconcilable. But 
these designs proved abortive : the Court re- 
sumed its animosity against the Dissenters, 
when it became no longer possible to employ 
them as a shelter for the Catholics. The 
laws were already sufficient for all practical 
purposes of intolerance, and their execution 
was in the hands of bitter enemies, from the 
Lord Chief Justice to the pettiest constable. 
The temper of the Established clergy was 
such, that even the more liberal of them 
gravely reproved the victims of such laws 
for complaining of persecution.!: The in- 
ferior gentry, who constituted the magistracy, 
— ignorant, intemperate, and tyrannical, — 
treated dissent as rebellion, and in their con- 
duct to Puritans were actuated by no princi- 
ples but a furious hatred of those whom they 
thought the enemies of the monarchy. The 
whole jurisdiction, in cases of Nonconformity, 
was so vested in that body, as to release 
them in its exercise from the greater part of 
the restraints of fear and shame. With the 
sanction of the legislature, and the counte- 
nance of the Government, what indeed could 
they fear from a proscribed party, consisting 
chiefly of the humblest and poorest men? 
From shame they were effectually secured, 
since that which is not public cannot be 
made shameful. The particulars of the con- 
viction of a Dissenter might be unknown 
beyond his village; the evidence against 



* Locke, Letter from a Person of Quality, 
t 22 Car. II. c. 1. 

t Stillingfleet, Sermon on the Mischief of Se- 
paration. 

2c2 



330 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



him, if any, might be confined to the room 
where he was convicted : and in that age of 
slow communication, few men would incur 
the trouble or obloquy of conveying to their 
correspondents the hardships inflicted, with 
the apparent sanction of law, in remote and 
ignorant districts, on men at once obscure 
and odious, and often provoked by their suf- 
ferings into intemperance ami extravagance. 
Imprisonment is, of all punishments, the 
most quiet and convenient mode of persecu- 
tion. The prisoner is silently hid from the 
public eye ; his sufferings, being unseen, 
speedily cease to excite pity or indignation : 
he is soon doomed to oblivion. As it is 
always the safest punishment for an op- 
pressor to inflict, so it was in that age, in 
England, perhaps the most cruel. Some esti- 
mate of the suffering from cold, hunger, and 
nakedness, in the dark and noisome dun- 
geons, then called prisons, may be formed 
from the remains of such buildings, which 
industrious benevolence has not yet every 
where demolished. Being subject to no re- 
gulation, and without means for the regular 
sustenance of the prisoners, they were at 
once the scene of debauchery and famine. 
The Puritans, the most severely moral men 
of any age, were crowded in cells with the 
profligate and ferocious criminals with whom 
the kingdom then abounded. We learn from 
the testimony of the legislature itself, that 
"needy persons committed to jail many times 
perished before their trial."* We are told 
by Thomas Ellwood, the Quaker, a friend of 
Milton, that when a prisoner in Newgate for 
his religion, he saw the heads and quarters 
of men who had been executed for treason 
kept for sotne time close to the cells, and 
the heads tossed about in sport by the hang- 
man and the more hardened malefactors ;t 
and the description given by George Fox. 
the founder of the Quakers, of his own treat- 
ment when a prisoner at Launceston, too 
clearly exhibits the unbounded power of his 
jailers, and its most cruel exercise.! It was 
no wonder that, when prisoners were brought 
to trial at the assizes, the contagion of jail 
fever should often rush forth with them from 
these abodes of all that was loathsome and 
hideous, and sweep away judges, and jurors, 
and advocates, with its pestilential blast. 
The mortality of such prisons must have 
surpassed the imaginations of more civilized 
times ; and death, if it could be separated 
from the long sufferings which led to it, might 



* 18 & 19 Car. II. c. 9. Evidence more con- 
elusive, from its being undesignedly dropped, of 
the frequency of such horrible occurrences in the 
jail of Newgate, transpires in a controversy be- 
tween a Catholic and Protestant clergyman, about 
the religious sentiments of a dying criminal, and 
is preserved in a curious pamphlet, called " The 
Pharisee Unmasked," published in 1687. 

+ " This prison, where are so many, suffocateth 
the spirits of aged ministers." — Life of Baxter 
(Calamy's Abridgment), part iii. p. 200. 

t Journal, p. 186, where the description of the 
dungeon called " Doomsdale" surpasses all imagi- 
nation. 



perhaps be considered as the most merciful 
part of the prison discipline of that age. It 
would be exceedingly hard to estimate the 
amount of this mortality, even if the difli- 
culty were not enhanced by the prejudices 
which led either to its extenuation or aggra- 
vation. Prisoners were then so forgotten, 
that a record of it was not to be expected; 
and the very nature of the atrocious wicked- 
ness which employs imprisonment as the in- 
strument of murder, would, in many cases, 
render it impossible distinctly and palpably 
to show the process by which cold and hunger 
beget mortal disease. But computations have 
been attempted, and, as was natural, chiefly 
by the sufferers. William Penn, a man of 
such virtue as to make his testimony weighty, 
even when borne to the sufferings of his 
own party, publicly affirmed at the time, that 
since the Restoration "more than five thou- 
sand persons had died in bonds for matters 
of mere conscience to God."* Twelve hun- 
dred Quakers were enlarged by James.t 
The calculations of Neale, the historian of 
the Nonconformists, would carry the num- 
bers still farther; and he does not appear, on 
this point, to be contradicted by his zealous 
and unwearied antagonist.! But if we reduce 
the number of deaths to one half of Penn's 
estimate, and suppose that number to be the 
tenth of the prisoners, it will afford a dread- 
ful measure of the sufferings of twenty-five 
thousand prisoners; and the misery within 
the jails will too plainly indicate the beg- 
gary,§ banishment, disquiet, vexation, fear, 
and horror, which were spread among the 
whole body of Dissenters. 

The sufferings of two memorable men 
among them, differing from each other still 
more widely in opinions and disposition than 
in station and acquirement, may be selected 
as proofs that no character was too high to 
be beyond the reach of this persecution, and 
no condition too humble to be beneath its 
notice. Richard Baxter, one of the most 
acute and learned as well as pious and ex- 
emplary men of his age, was the most cele- 
brated divine of the Presbyterian persua- 
sion. He had been so well known for his 
moderation as well as his general merit, that 
at the Restoration he had been made chap- 
lain to the King, and a bishopric had been 
offered to him, which he declined, not be- 
cause he deemed it unlawful, but because it 
might engage him in severities against the 
conscientious, and because he was unwilling 
to give scandal to his brethren by accepting 
preferment in the hour of their afliiction.1 
He joined in the public worship of the 



* Good Advice to the Church of England. 

t Address of the Quakers to James II. — Clark- 
son, Life of William Penn, vol. i. p. 492. Lon- 
don Gazette, 23d and 26th May, 1687. 

t Grey, Examination of Neale. 

§ " Fifteen thousand families ruined." — Good 
Advice, &c. In this tract, very little is said of 
the dispensing power; the far greater part con- 
sisting of a noble defence of religious liberty, 
applicable to all ages and communions 

II Life of Baxter, part iii. p. 281. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



331 



Church of England, but himself preached 
to a small congregation at Acton, where he 
soon became the friend of his neighbour, Sir 
Matthew Hale, who, though then a magis- 
trate of great dignity, avoided the society of 
those who might be supposed to influence 
him, and from his jealous regard to inde- 
pendence, chose a privacy as simple' and 
frugal as that of the pastor of a persecuted 
flock. Their retired leisure was often em- 
ployed in high reasoning on those sublime 
subjects of metaphysical philosophy to which 
both had been conducted by their theological 
studies, and which, indeed, few contempla- 
tive men of elevated thought have been de- 
terred by the fate of their forerunners from 
aspiring to comprehend. Honoured as he was 
by such a friendship, esteemed by the most 
distinguished persons of all persuasions, and 
consulted by the civil and ecclesiastical au- 
thorities in every project of reconciliation 
and harmony, Baxter was five times in fif- 
teen years dragged from his retirement, and 
thrown into prison as a malefacter. In 1669 
two subservient magistrates, one of whom 
was the steward of the Archbishop of Can- 
terbury, summoned him before them for 
preaching at a conventicle ; at hearing of 
which, Hale, too surely foreknowing the 
event, could scarcely refrain from tears. 
He was committed to prison for six months; 
but, after the unavailing intercession of his 
friends with the King, was at length enlarg- 
ed in consequence of informalities in the 
commitment.* Twice afterwards he escaped 
by irregularities into which the precipitate 
zeal of ignorant persecutors had betrayed 
them ; and once, when his physician made 
oath that imprisonment would be dangerous 
to his life, he owed his enlargement to the 
pity or prudence of Charles II. At last, in 
the year 1685, he was brought to trial for 
some supposed libels, before Jeffreys, in the 
Court of Kind's Bench, in which his vener- 
able friend had once presided, — where two 
Chief Justices, within ten years, had exem- 
plified the extremities of human excellence 
and depravity, and where he, whose misfor- 
tunes had almost drawn tears down the aged 
cheeks of Hale was doomed to undergo the 
most brutal indignities from Jeffreys. 

The history and genius of Bunyan were as 
much more extraordinary than those of Bax- 
ter as his station and attainments were infe- 
rior. He is probably at the head of unlettered 
men of genius ; and perhaps there is no other 
instance of any man reaching fame from so 
abject an origin. For other extraordinary 
men who have become famous without edu- 
cation, though they were without what is 
called "learning," have had much reading 
and knowledge ; and though they were re- 
pressed by poverty, were not, like him, sul- 
lied by a vagrant and disreputable occupa- 
tion. By his trade of a travelling tinker, he 
had been from his earliest years placed in 
die midst of profligacy, and on the verge of 
dishonesty. He was for a time a private in the 

* Life of Baxter, part iii. pp. 47—51. 



parliamentary army, — the only military ser- 
vice which was likely to elevate his senti- 
ments and amend his life. Haying embraced 
the opinions of the Baptisfs. he was soon ad- 
mitted to preach in a community which did 
not recognise the distinction between the 
clergy and the laity.* Even under the Pro- 
tectorate he had been harassed by some busy 
magistrates, who took advantage of a parlia- 
mentary ordinance, excluding from toleration 
those who maintained the unlawfulness of 
infant baptism. f But this officiousness was 
checked by the spirit of the government : and 
it was not till the return of intolerance with 
Charles II. that the sufferings of Bunyan be- 
gan. Within five months after the Restora- 
tion, he was apprehended under the statute 
35th of Elizabeth, and was thrown into a pri- 
son, or rather dungeon, at Bedford, where he 
remained for twelve years. The narratives of 
his life exhibit remarkable specimens of the 
acuteness and fortitude with which he with- 
stood the threatsand snaresof the magistrates, 
and clergymen, and attorneys, who beset 
him, — foiling them in every contest of argu- 
ment, especially in that which relates to the 
independence of religion on civil authority r , 
which he expounded with clearness and 
exactness ; for it was a subject on which his 
naturally vigorous mind was better educated 
by his habitual meditations than it could 
have been by the most skilful instructor. In 
the year after his apprehension, he had made 
some informal applications for release to the 
judges of assize, in a petition presented by 
his wife, who was treated by one of them, 
Twisden, with brutal insolence. His col- 
league, Sir Mathew Hale, listened to her 
with patience and goodness, and with con- 
solatory compassion pointed out to her the 
only legal means of obtaining redress. It is 
a singular gratification thus to find a human 
character, which, if it be met in the most 
obscure recess of the history of a bad time, 
is sure to display some new excellence. The 
conduct of Hale on this occasion can be as- 
cribed only to strong and pure benevolence ; 
for he was unconscious of Bunyan's genius, 
he disliked preaching mechanics, and he 
partook the general prejudice against Ana- 
baptists. In the long years which followed, 
the time of Bunyan was divided between the 
manufacture or lace, which he learned in 
order to support his family, and the compo- 
sition of those works which have given cele- 
brity to his sufferings. He was at length re- 
leased, in 1672, by Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln; 



* See Grace Abounding. 

t Scobell's Ordinances, chap. 114. This excep- 
tion is omitted in a subsequent Ordinance against 
blasphemous opinions, (9th August, 1650), direct- 
ed chiefly against the Anlinomians, who were 
charged with denying the obligation of morality, 
— the single case where the danger of nice dis- 
tinction is the chief objection to the use of punish- 
ment against the promulgation of opinions. Reli- 
gious liberty was afterwards carried much nearer 
to its just limits by the letter of Cromwells' 
constitution, and probably to its full extent by 
its spirit. — See Humble Petition and Advice, 
sect. xi. 



332 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS, 



but not till the timid prelate had received an 
injunction from the Lord Chancellor* to that 
effect. He availed himself of the Indulgence 
of James II. without trusting it, and died 
unmolested in the last year of that prince's 
government. His Pilgrim's Progress, an alle- 
gorical representation of the Calvinistic the- 
ology, at first found readers only among those 
of that persuasion, but, gradually emerging 
from this narrow circle, by the natural power 
of imagination over the uncorrupted feelings 
of the majority of mankind, has at length 
rivalled Robinson Crusoe in popularity. The 
bigots and persecutors have sank into ob- 
livion ; the scoffs of witst and worldlings 
have been unavailing; while, after the lapse 
of a century, the object of their cruelty and 
scorn has touched the poetical sympathy, as 
well as the piety, of Cowper ; his genius has 
subdued the opposite prejudices of Johnson 
and of Franklin ; and his name has been 
uttered in the same breath with those of 
Spenser and Dante. It should seem, from 
this statement, that Lord Castlemaine, him- 
self a zealous Catholic, had some colour for 
asserting, that the persecution of Protestants 
by Protestants, after the Restoration, was 
more violent than that of Protestants by 
Catholics under Mary; and that the perse- 
cution then raging against the Presbyterians 
in Scotland was not so much more cruel, as 
it was more bloody, than that which silently 
consumed the bowels of Eugland. 

Since the differences between Churchmen 
and Dissenters, as such, have given way to 
other Controversies, a recital of them can 
have no other tendency than that of dispos- 
ing men to pardon each other's intolerance, 
and to abhor the fatal error itself, which all 
communions have practised, and of which 
some malignant roots still lurk among all. 
Without it, the policy of the King, in his at- 
tempt to form an alliance with the latter, 
could not be understood. The general body 
of Nonconformists were divided into four 
parties, on whom the Court acted through 
different channels, and who were variously 
affected by its advances. 

The Presbyterians, the more wealthy and 
educated sect, were the descendants of the 
ancient Puritans, who had been rather de- 
sirous of reforming the Church of England 
than of separating from it; and though the 
breach was widened by the Civil War, they 
might have been reunited at the Restoration 
by moderate concession in the form of wor- 
ship, and by limiting the episcopal authority 
agreeably to the project of the learned Usher, 
and to the system of superintendency esta- 
blished among the Lutherans. Gradually, 
indeed, they learned to prefer the perfect 

* Probably Lord Shaftesbury, who received the 
Great Seal in November, 1672. The exact date 
of Bunyan'9 complete liberation is not ascertained ; 
but he was twelve years a prisoner, and had been 
apprehended in November, 1660. Ivimey (Life 
of Bunyan, p. 289) makes his enlargement to be 
about the close of 1672. 

+ Hudibras, part i. canto ii. Grey's notes. 



equality of the Calvinistic clergy ; but they 
did not profess that exclusive zeal for it 
which actuated their Scottish brethren, who 
had received their Reformation from Geneva. 
Like men of other communions, they had 
originally deemed it the duty of the magis- 
trate to establish true religion, and to punish 
the crime of rejecting it. In Scotland they 
continued to be sternly intolerant ; while in 
England they reluctantly acquiesced in im- 
perfect toleration. Their object was now 
what was called a " comprehension," or such 
an enlargement of the terms of communion 
as might enable them to unite with the 
Church; — a measure which would have 
broken the strength of the Dissenters, as a 
body, to the eminent hazard of civil liberty. 
From them the King had the least hopes. 
They were undoubtedly much more hostile 
to the Establishment after twenty-five years' 
persecution ; but they were still connected 
with the tolerant clergy ; and as they con- 
tinued to aim at something besides mere 
toleration, they considered the royal Decla- 
ration, even if honestly meant, as only a 
temporary advantage. 

The Independents, or Congregationalists r 
were so called from their adoption of the- 
opinion, that every congregation or assembly 
for worship was a church perfectly indepen- 
dent of all others, choosing and changing 
their own ministers, maintaining with others- 
a fraternal intercourse, but acknowledging 
no authority in all the other churches of 
Christendom to interfere with its internal 
concerns. Their churches were merely vo- 
luntary associations, in which the office of 
teacher might be conferred and withdrawn 
by the suffrages of the members. These 
members were equal, and the government 
was perfectly democratical ; if the term "go- 
vernment" may be applied to assemblies 
which endured only as long as the members 
agreed in judgment, and which, leaving all 
coercive power to the civil magistrate, exer- 
cised no authority but that of admonition, cen- 
sure, and exclusion. They disclaimed the 
qualification of "national" as repugnant to the 
nature of a "church."* The religion of the 
Independents, therefore, could not, without 
destroying its nature, be established by law. 
They never could aspire to more than reli- 
gious liberty ; and they accordingly have the 
honour of having been the first, and long the 
only, Christian community who collectively 
adopted that sacred principle.t It is true, 



* " There is no true visible Church of Christ 
but a particular ordinary congregation only. Every 
ordinary assembly of the faithful hath power to 
elect and ordain, deprive and depose, their minis- 
ters. The pastor must have others joined with 
him by the congregation, to exercise ecclesiastical 
jurisdiction ; neither ought he and they to perform 
any material act without the free consent of the 
congregation." — Christian Offer of a Conference 
tendered to Archbishops, Bishops, &.c. London,. 
1606.) 

t An Humble Supplication for Toleration and 
Liberty to James 1. (London, 1609): — a tract 
which affords a conspicuous specimen of the ability 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



333 



that in the beginning they adopted the per- 
nicious and inconsistent doctrine of limited 
toleration ; excluding Catholics, as idolaters, 
and in New England (where the great ma- 
jority were of their persuasion), punishing, 
even capitally, dissenters from what they ac- 
counted as fundamental opinions.* But, as 
intolerance could promote no interest of 
theirs, real or imaginary, their true princi- 
ples finally worked out the stain of these 
dishonourable exceptions. The government 
of Cromwell, more influenced by them than 
by any other persuasion, made as near ap- 
proaches to general toleration as public pre- 
judice would endure; and Sir Henry Vane, 
an Independent, was probably the first who 
■laid down, with perfect precision, the invio- 
lable rights of conscience, and the exemption 
of religion from all civil authority. Actuated 
by these principles, and preferring the free- 
dom of their worship even to political liberty, 
it is not wonderful that many of this persua- 
sion gratefully accepted the deliverance from 
persecution which was proffered by the King. 

Similar causes produced the like disposi- 
fii-tions among the Baptists, — a simple and 
pious body of men, generally unlettered, ob- 
noxious to all other sects for their rejection 
of infant baptism, as neither enjoined by the 
New Testament nor consonant to reason, and 
in some degree, also, from being called by 
the same name with the fierce fanatics who 
had convulsed Lower Germany in the first 
age of the Reformation. Under Edward VI. 
and Elizabeth many had suffered death for 
their religion. At the Restoration they had 
been distinguished from other Nonconform- 
ists by a brand in the provision of a statute,! 
'which excluded every clergyman who had 
opposed infant baptism from re-establish- 
ment in his benefice ; and they had during 
Charles' reign suffered more than any other 
persuasion. Publicly professing the principles 
of religious liberty,! and, like the Indepen- 
dents, espousing the cause of republicanism, 
they appear to have adopted also the congre- 
gational system of ecclesiastical polity. More 
incapable of union with the Established 
Church, and having less reason to hope for 
toleration from its adherents than the Inde- 
pendents themselves, — many, perhaps at 
first most of them, eagerly embraced the In- 
dulgence. Thus, the sects who maintained 
the purest principles of religious liberty, and 
had supported the most popular systems of 
government, were the most disposed to fa- 
vour a measure which would have finally 
buried toleration under the ruins of political 
freedom. 

But of all sects, those who needed the 
royal Indulgence most, and who could accept 

and learning of the ancient Independents, often 
described as unlettered fanatics. 

* The Way of the Churchps in New England, 
by Mr J. Co'ton (London, 1645); and the Way 
of Congregational Churches, by Mr. J. Cotton 
(London, 1648) ; — in answer to Principal Baillte. 

t 12 Car. II. c. 17. 

t Crosby, History of English Baptists, &c, 
vol. ii. pp. 100—144. 



it most consistently with their religious prin- 
ciples, were the Quakers. Seeking perfec- 
tion, by renouncing pleasures, of which the 
social nature promotes kindness, and by con- 
verting self-denial, a means of moral disci- 
pline, into one of the ends of life, — it was 
their more peculiar and honourable error, 
that by a literal interpretation of that affec- 
tionate and ardent language in which the 
Christian religion inculcates the pursuit of 
peace and the practice of beneficence, they 
struggled to extend the sphere of these most 
admirable virtues beyond the boundaries of 
nature. They adopted a peculiarity of lan- 
guage, and a uniformity of dress, indicative 
of humility and equality, of brotherly love — 
the sole bond of their pacific union, and of 
the serious minds of men who lived only for 
the performance of duty, — taking no part in 
strife, renouncing even defensive arms, and 
utterly condemning the punishment of death. 
George Fox had, during the Civil War, 
founded this extraordinary community. At 
a time when personal revelation was gene- 
rally believed, it was a pardonable self-delu- 
sion that he should imagine himself to be 
commissioned by the Deity to preach a sys- 
tem which could only be objected to as too 
pure to be practised by man.* This belief, 
and an ardent temperament, led him and 
some of his followers into unseasonable at- 
tempts to convert their neighbours, and into 
unseemly intrusions into places of worship 
for that purpose, which excited general hos- 
tility against them, and exposed them to 
frequent and severe punishments. One or 
two of them, in the general fermentation of 
men's minds at that time, had uttered what 
all other sects considered as blasphemous 
opinions; and these peaceable men became 
the objects of general abhorrence. Their 
rejection of most religious rites, their refusal 
to sanction testimony by a judicial oath, or 
to defend their country in the utmost danger, 
gave plausible pretexts for representing them 
as alike enemies to religion and the common- 
wealth ; and the fantastic peculiarities of 
their language and dress seemed to be the 
badge of a sullen and morose secession from 
human society. Proscribed as they were by 
law and prejudice, the Quakers gladly re- 
ceived the boon held out by the King. They 
indeed were the only consistent professors of 
passive obedience : as they resisted no wrong, 
and never sought to disarm hostility other- 
wise than by benevolence, they naturally 
yielded with unresisting submission to the 
injustice of tyrants. Another circumstance 
also contributed, still more perhaps than these 
general causes, to throw them into the arms 
of James. Although their sect, like most 
other sects, had sprung from among the 
humbler classes of society, — who, from their 



* Journal of the Life of George Fox, by him- 
self: — one of the most extraordinary and instruc- 
tive narratives in the world, which no reader of 
competent judgment can peruse without revering- 
the virtue of the writer, pardoning his self-delu 
9ion, and ceasing to smile at his peculiarities. 



334 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



numbers and simplicity, are alone suscepti- 
ble of those sudden and simultaneous emo- 
tions which change opinions and institutions, 
— they had early been joined by a few per- 
sons of superior rank and education, who. in 
a period of mutation in government and re- 
ligion, had lonff contemplated their benevo- 
lent visions with indulgent complacency, and 
had at length persuaded themselves that this 
pure system of peace and charity might be 
realised, if not among all, at least among a few 
of the wisest and best of men. Such a hope 
would gradually teach the latter to tolerate. 
and in time to adopt, the peculiarities of their 
simpler brethren, and to give the most rational 
interpretation to the language and pretensions 
of their founders; — consulting reason in their 
doctrines, and indulging enthusiasm only in 
their hopes and affections.* Of the first who 
thus systematised, and perhaps insensibly 
softened, their creed, was Barclay ; whose 
Apology for the Quakers — a masterpiece of 
ingenious reasoning, and a model of argu- 
mentative composition — extorted praise from 
Bayle, one of the most acute and least fana- 
tical of men.t 

But the most distinguished of their con- 
verts was William Penn, whose father, Ad- 
miral Sir William Penn, had been a personal 
friend of the King, and one of his instructors 
in naval affairs. This admirable person had 
employed his great abilities in support of 
civil as well as religious liberty, and had both 
acted and suffered for them Under Charles 
II. Even if he had not founded the common- 
wealth of Pennsylvania as an everlasting- 
memorial of his love of freedom, his actions 
and writings in England would have been 
enough to absolve him from the charge of 
intending to betray the rights of his country- 
men. But though, as the friend of Algernon 
Sidney, he had never ceased to intercede, 
through his friends at Court, for the perse- 
cuted^ still an absence of two years in 
America, and the consequent distraction of 
his mind, had probably loosened his connec- 
tion with English politicians, and rendered 
him less acquainted with the principles of 
the government. On the accession of James 
he was received by that prince with favour; 
and hopes of indulgence to his suffering bre- 
thren were early held out to him. He was 
soon admitted to terms of apparent intimacy, 
and was believed to possess such influence 
that two hundred suppliants were often seen 
at his gates, imploring his intercession with 
the King. That it really was great, appears 
from his obtaining a promise of pardon for 
his friend Mr. Locke, -which that illustrious 
man declined, because he thought that the 
acceptance of it would have been a confes- 
sion of criminality .$ Penn appears in 1679, 

* Mr. Swinton, a Scotch judge during the Pro- 
tectorate, was one of the earliest of these con- 
verts. 

t Nouvelles de 'a Republique des Lettres, 
Avril, 1684. 

t Clarkson, Life of William Penn, vol. i. p. 248. 

$ Clarkson, vol. i. pp. 433, 438. Mr. Clarkson ia 



through his influence with James when in 
Scotland, to have obtained the release of all 
the Quakers who were imprisoned there;* 
and he subsequently obtained the release of 
many hundred English ones,t as well as pro- 
cured letters to be addressed by Lord Sun- 
derland to the various Lord Lieutenants in 
England in favour of his persuasion,! several 
months before the Declaration of Indulgence* 
It was no wonder that he should have been 
gained over by this power of doing good. 
The very occupations in which he was en- 
gaged brought daily before his mind the 
general evils of intolerance, and the suffer- 
ings of his own unfortunate brethren. Though 
well stored with useful and ornamental know- 
ledge, he was unpractised in the wiles of 
courts ; and his education had not trained 
him to dread the violation of principle so 
much as to pity the infliction of suffering. 
It cannot be doubted that he believed the 
King's object to be universal liberty in re- 
ligion, and nothing further: and as his own 
sincere piety taught him to consider religious 
liberty as unspeakably the highest of human 
privileges, he was too just not to be desirous 
of bestowing on all other men that which he 
most earnestly sought for himself. One who 
refused to employ force in the most just de- 
fence, must have felt a singular abhorrence 
of its exertion to prevent good men from 
following the dictates of their conscience. 
Such seem to have been the motives which 
induced this excellent man to len«i» himself 
to the measures of the King. Compassion, 
friendship, liberality, and toleration, led him 
to support a system the success of which 
would have undone his country; and he 
afforded a remarkable proof that, in the com- 
plicated combinations of political morality, a 
virtue misplaced may produce as much im- 
mediate mischief as a vice. The Dutch 
minister represents "the arch-quaker" as 
travelling over the kingdom to gain proselytes 
to the dispensing power ; § while Dunoombe, 
a banker in London, and (it must in justice, 
though in sorrow, be added) Penn, are stated 
to have been the two Protestant counsellors 
of Lord Sunderland.il Henceforward, it be- 



among the few writers from whom I should ven- 
ture to adopt a fact for which the original authority 
is not mentioned. By his own extraordinary ser- 
vices to mankind he has deserved to be the bio- 
grapher of William Penn. 

* Address of Scotch Quakers, 1687. 

t George Fox, Journal, p. 550. 

t State Paper Office, November and Decem- 
ber, 1686. 

$ Van Citters to the States General, 14th Oct. 
]687. 

II Johnstone, 25th Nov. 1687. —MS. John- 
stone's connections afforded him considerable 
means of information. Mrs. Dawson, an attend- 
ant of the Queen, was an intimate friend of his 
sister, Mrs. Baillie of Jerviswood : another of his 
sisters was the wife of General Drummond, who 
was deeply engaged in the persecution of the 
Scotch Presbyterians, and the Earl of Melfort's 
son had married his niece. His letters were to or 
for Burnet, his cousin, and intended to be read by 
the Prince of Orange, to both of whom he had 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



335 



came necessary for the friends of liberty to j 
deal with him as with an enemy, — to be | 
resisted when his associates possessed, and 
watched after they had lost power. 

Among the Presbyterians, the King's chief 
agent was Alsop, a preacher at Westminster, 
who was grateful to him for having spared 
the life of a sou convicted of treason. Bax- 
ter, their venerable patriarch, and Howe, one 
of their most eminent divines, refused any 
active concurrence in the King's projects. 
But Lobb, one of the most able of the Inde- 
pendent divines, warmly supported the mea- 
sures of James : he was favourably received 
at Court, and is said to have been an adviser 
as well as an advocate of the King.* An 
elaborate defence of the dispensing power, 
by Philip Nye, a still more eminent teacher 
of the same persuasion, who had been dis- 
abled from accepting office at the Restoration, 
written on occasion of Charles' Declaration 
of Indulgence in 1672, was now republished 
by his son, with a dedication to James. t 
Kiffin, the pastor of the chief congregation 
of the Baptists, and at the same time an opu- 
lent merchant in London, who, with his pas- 
toral office, had held civil and military stations 
under the Parliament, withstood the preva- 
lent disposition of his communion towards 
compliance. The few fragments of his life 
that have reached us illustrate the character 
of the calamitous times in which he lived. 
Soon after the Restoration, he had obtained 
a pardon for twelve persons of his persuasion, 
who were condemned to death at the same 
assize at Aylesbury, • under the atrocious 
statute of the 35th of Elizabeth, for refus- 
ing either to abjure the realm or to conform 
to the Church of England.! Attempts were 
made to ensnare him into treason by anony- 
mous letters, inviting him to take a share in 
plots which had no existence j and he was 
harassed by false accusations, some of which 
made him personally known to Charles II. 
and also to Clarendon. The King applied to 
him personally for the loan of 40,000/. : this he 
declined, offering the gift of 10,000/.. and on 
its being accepted, congratulated himself on 
having saved 30.000/. Two of his grandsons, 
although he had offered 3000/. for their pre- 
servation, suffered death for being engaged 
in Monmouth's revolt • and Jeffreys, on the 
trial of one of them, had declared, that had 
their grandfather been also at the bar, he 
would have equally deserved death. James, 
at one of their interviews, persuaded him, 
partly through his fear of incurring a ruinous 
fine in crjre of refusal, in spite of his plead- 
ing his inability through age (he was then 

the strongest inducements to give accurate infor- 
mation. He had frequent and confidential inter- 
course with Halifax, Tillotson, and Slillingfleet. 

* Wilson, History and Antiquities of Dissent- 
ing Churches, &c. — (London, 1808), vol. iii. p. 
436. 

t Wilson, vol. iii. p. 71. The Lawfulness of 
the Oath of Supremacy asserted, &c, by Philip 
Nye. (London, 1687.) 

X Orme, Life of Kiffin, p. 120. Crosby, vol. ii. 
p. 181, &c. 



seventy years old, and could not speak of 
his grandsons without tears) to accept the 
office of an alderman under the protection 
of the dispensing and suspending power. 

Every means were employed to excite 
the Nonconformists to thank the King for 
his Indulgence. He himself assured D'Adda 
that it would be of the utmost service to 
trade and population, by recalling the nu- 
merous emigrants ' ; who had been driven 
from their country by the persecution of the 
Anglicans;"* and his common conversation 
now turned on the cruelty of the Church of 
England towards the Dissenters, which he 
declared that he would have closed sooner, 
had he not been restrained by those who 
promised favour to his own religion, if they 
were still suffered to vex the latter. f This 
last declaration was contradicted by the par- 
ties whom he named ; and their denial might 
be credited with less reserve, had not one of 
the principal leaders of the Episcopal party 
in Scotland owned that his friends would 
have been contented if they could have been 
assured of retaining the power to persecute 
Presbyterians. t The King even ordered an 
inquiry to be instituted into the suits against 
Dissenters in ecclesiastical courts, and the 
compositions which they paid, in order to 
make a scandalous disclosure of the extortion 
and venality practised under cover of the 
penal laws.§ — assuring (as did also Lord 
Sunderland) the Nuncio, that the Established 
clergy traded in such compositions.il The 
most just principles of unbounded freedom 
in religion were now the received creed at 
St. James'. Even Sir Roger L'Estrange 
endeavoured to save his consistency by de- 
claring, that though he had for twenty years 
resisted religious liberty as a right of the 
people, he acquiesced in it as a boon from 
the King. 

On the other hand, exertions were made 
to warn the Dissenters of the snare which 
was laid for them : while the Church began 
to make tardy efforts to conciliate them, 
especially the Presbyterians. The King was 
agitated by this canvass, and frequently 
trusted the NuncioH with his alternate hopes 
and fears about it. Burnet, then at the 
Hague, published a letter of warning, in 
which he owns and deplores " the persecu- 
tion," acknowledging " the temptation under 
which the Nonconformists are to receive 
every thing which gives them present ease 
with a little too much kindness," blaming 
more severely the members of the Church 
who applauded the Declaration, but entreat- 

* D'Adda, Uth April, 1687— MS. 

t Burnet, (Oxford. 1823), vol. iii. p. 175. 

X " If it had not been for the fears of encourag- 
ing by such a liberty the fanatics, then almost en- 
tirely ruined, few would have refused to comply 
with all your Majesty's demands." — Balcarras, 
Account of the Affairs of Scotland, p. 8. 

$ Burnet, supra. 

II D'Adda, 18ih April.— MS— Ministri Angli- 
cani che facevano mercanzia sopra le leggi fatti 
contro le Nonconformisti. 

T D'Adda. 2d May, 4th April.— MS 



336 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



ing the former not to promote the designs of 
the common enemy.* The residence and 
connections of the writer bestowed on this 
publication the important character of an ad- 
monition from the Prince of Orange. He 
hail been employed by some leaders of the 
Church party to procure the Prince's inter- 
ference with the Dissenting body;t and 
Dykveldt, the Dutch minister, assured both 
of his master's resolution to promote union 
between them, and to maintain the common 
interest of Protestants. Lord Halifax also 
published, on the same occasion, a Letter to 
a Dissenter, — the most perfect model, per- 
haps, of a political tract, — which, although 
its whole argument, unbroken by diversion 
to general topics, is brought exclusively to 
bear with concentrated force upon the ques- 
tion, the parties, and the moment, cannot be 
read, after an interval of a century and a 
half, without admiration at its acuteness, 
address, terseness, and poignancy.! 

The Nonconformists were thus acted upon 
by powerful inducements and dissuasives. 
The preservation of civil liberty, the interest 
of the Protestant religion, the secure enjoy- 
ment of freedom in their own worship, were 
irresistible reasons against compliance. Gra- 
titude for present relief, remembrance of 
recent wrongs, and a strong sense of the obli- 
gation to prefer the exercise of religion to 
every other consideration, were very strong 
temptations to a different conduct. Many 
of them owed their lives to the King, and 
the lives of others were still in his hands. 
The remembrance of Jeffreys' campaign was 
so fresh as perhaps still rather to produce 
fear than the indignation and distrust which 
appear in a more advanced stage of recovery 
from the wounds inflicted by tyranny. The 
private relief granted to some of their minis- 
ters by the Court on former occasions afforded 
a facility for exercising adverse influence 
through these persons, — the more dangerous 
because it might be partly concealed from 
themselves under the disguise of gratitude. 
The result of the action of these conflicting 
motives seems to have been, that the far 
greater part of all denominations of Dissen- 
ters availed themselves of the Declaration so 
far as to resume their public worship^ that 
the most distinguished of their clergy, and 
the majority of the Presbyterians, resisted 
the solicitations of the Court to sanction the 
dispensing power by addresses of thanks for 
this exertion of it ; and that all the Quakers, 



* Stale Tracts from Restoration to Revolution 
(London, 1689), vol. ii. p. 289. 

t Burnet, Reflections on a Book called "Rights, 
&c. of a Convocation," p. 16. 

t Halifax. Miscellanies, p. 233. 

§ Bates' Life of Philip Flenry, in Wordsworth's 
Ecclesiastical Biography, vol. vi. p. 290. " They 
rejoiced with trembling." Henry refused to give 
in a return of the money levied on him in his suf- 
ferings having, as he said, " long since from hi* 
heart forgiven all the agents in that matter." 
" Mr. Bunyan clearlv saw through the designs of 
the Court, though he accepted the Indulgence 
with a holy fear." — Ivimey, Life of Bunyan. p. 297. 



the greater part of the Baptists, and perhaps 
also of the Independents, did not scruple to 
give this perilous token of their misguided 
gratitude, though many of them confined 
themselves to thanks for toleration, and 
solemn assurances that they would not 
abuse it. 

About a hundred and eighty of these 
addresses were presented within a period 
of ten months, of which there are only 
seventy-seven exclusively and avowedly 
from Nonconformists. If to these be added 
a fair proportion of such as were at first 
secretly and at last openly corporators and 
grand jurors, and a larger share of those 
who addressed under very general descrip- 
tions, it seems probable that the numbers 
were almost equally divided between the 
Dissenting communions and the Established 
Church.* We have a specimen of these 
last mentioned by Evelyn, in the address of 
the Churchmen and dissenters of Coventry,f 
and of a small congregation in the Isle of 
Ely, called the "Family of Love." His 
complaint! that the Declaration had thinned 
his own parish church of Deptford, and had 
sent a great concourse of people to the meet- 
ing-house, throw T s light on the extent of the 
previous persecution, and the joyful eager- 
ness to profit by their deliverance. 

The Dissenters were led astray not only 
by the lights of the Church, but by the pre- 
tended guardians of the laws. Five bishops, 
Crew, of Durham, with his chapter, Cart- 
wright of Chester, with his chapter, Barlow, 
of Lincoln, Wood, of Lichfield, and Watson, 
of St. David's, with the clergy of their dio- 
ceses, together with the Dean and Chapter 
of Ripon, addressed the King, in terms 
which were indeed limited to his assurance 
of continued protection to the Church, but 
at a time which rendered their addresses a 
sanction of the dispensing power; Croft, of 
Hereford, though not an addresser, was a 
zealous partisan of the measures of the 
Court; while the profligate Parker was un- 
able to prevail on the Chapter or clergy of 
Oxford to join him, and the accomplished 
Sprat was still a member of the Ecclesiasti- 



* The addresses from bishops and their clergy 
were seven ; those from corporations and grand 
juries seventy-five ; those from inhabitants, &c, 
fourteen ; two from Catholics, and two from the 
Middle and Inner Temple. If six addresses from 
Presbyterians and Quakers in Scotland, Ireland, 
and New England be deducted, as it seems that 
they ought to be, the proportion of Dissenting 
addresses was certainly less than one haK- Some 
of them, we know, were the produce ora sort of 
personal canvass, when the King made his pro- 
gress in the autumn of 1687, " to court the com- 
pliments of the people;" and one of them, in 
which Philip Henry joined, "was not to offer 
lives and fortunes to him, but to thank him for 
the liberty, and to promise to demean themselves 
quietly in the use of it " — Wordsworth, vol vi. 
p. 292. Address of Dissenters of Nantwich, 
Wem, and Whitchurch. London Gazette, 29th 
August. 

t Evelyn, vol. i. Diary, 16th June. 

t Ibid. 10th April. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



337 



cal Commission, in which character he held 
a high command in the adverse ranks: — so 
that a third of the episcopal order refused to 
concur in the coalition which the Church 
was about to form with public liberty. A 
bold attempt was made to obtain the appear- 
ance of a general concurrence of lawyers 
also in approving the usurpations of the 
Crown. From two of the four societies, 
called tt Inns, of Court/' who have the exclu- 
sive privilege of admitting advocates to prac- 
tise at the bar, the Middle and Inner Temple, 
addresses of approbation were published ; 
though, from recent examination of the re- 
cords of these bodies, they do not appear to 
have been ever voted by either. That of the 
former, eminent above the others for fulsome 
servility, is traditionally said to have been 
the clandestine production of three of the 
benchers, of whom Chauncy, the historian 
of Hertfordshire, was one. That of the 
Inner Temple purports to have been the act 
of certain students and the "comptroller," — 
an office of whose existence no traces are 
discoverable. As Roger North had been 
Treasurer of the Middle Temple three years 
before, and as the crown lawyers were mem- 
bers of these societies, it is scarcely possible 
that the Government should not have been 
apprised of the imposture which thev coun- 
tenanced by their official publication of these 
addresses.* The necessity of recurring to 
such a fraud, and the silence of the other 
law societies, may be allowed to afford some 
proof that the independence of the Bar was 
not yet utterly extinguished. The subservi- 
ency of the Bench was so abject as to tempt 
the Government to interfere with private 
suits, which is one of the last and rarest 
errors of statesmen under absolute mo- 
narchies. An official letter is still extantt 
from Lord Sunderland, as Secretary of State, 
to Sir Francis Watkins, a judge of assize, 
recommending him to show all the favour to 
Lady Shaftesbury, in the despatch of her 
suit, to be tried at Salisbury, which the jus- 
tice of her cause should deserve : — so deeply 
degraded were the judges in the eyes of the 
ministers themselves. 



CHAPTER VI. 

D' Adda publicly received as the Nuncio. — Dis- 
solution of Parliament. — Final breach. — 
Preparations for a new Parliament. — Neiv 
charters. — Removal of Lord Lieutenants. — 
Patronage of the Crown. — Moderate views 
of Sunderland. — House of Loads. — Royal 
progress. — Pregnancy of the Queen. — Lon- 
don has the appearance of a Catholic city. 

The war between Religious parties had 
not yet so far subsided as to allow the 
avowed intercourse of Princes of Protestant 
-communions with the See of Rome. In the 

* London Gazette. June 9th. 
t 24th February. — State Paper Office. 
43 



first violence of hostility, indeed, laws were 
passed in England forbidding, under pain of 
death, the indispensable correspondence of 
Catholics with the head of their Church, and 
even the bare residence of their priests 
within the realm.* These laws, never to be 
palliated except as measures of retaliation 
in a warfare of extermination, had been often 
executed without necessity and with slight 
provocation. It was most desirable to pre- 
vent their execution and to procure their re- 
peal. But the object of the King, in his 
embassy to Rome was to select these odious 
enactments, as the most specious case, in 
which he might set an example of the osten- 
tatious contempt with which he was resolved 
to trample on every law which stood in the 
way of his designs. A nearer and more 
signal instance than that embassy was re- 
quired by his zeal or his political projects. 
D'Adda was accordingly obliged to undergo 
a public introduction to the King at Windsor 
as Apostolic Nuncio from the Pope ; and his 
reception, — being an overt act of high trea- 
son, — was conducted with mote than ordi- 
nary state, and announced to the public like 
that of any other foreign minister.! The 
Bishops of Durham and Chester were per- 
haps the most remarkable attendants at the 
ceremonial. The Duke of Somerset, the 
second Peer of the kingdom, Mas chosen 
from the Lords of the Bedchamber as the 
introducer; and his attendance in that cha- 
racter had been previously notified to the 
Nuncio by the Earl of Mulgrave, Lord 
Chamberlain : but, on the morning of the 
ceremony, the Duke besought his Majesty 
to excuse him from the performance of an 
act which might expose him to the most 
severe animadversion of the law.t . The 
King answered, that he intended to confer 
an honour upon him, by appointing him to 
introduce the representative of so venerable 
a potentate; and that the royal power of 
dispensation had been solemnly determined 
to be a sufficient warrant for such acts. — 
The King is said to have angrily asked, •' Do 
you not know that I am above the law ?"§ 
to which the Duke is represented by the 
same authorities to have replied, " Your 
Majesty is so, but I am not;" — an answer 
which was perfectly correct, if it be under- 
stood as above punishment by the law. The 
Duke of Grafton introduced the Nuncio ; and 
it was observed, that while the ambassadors 
of the Emperor, and of the crowns of Fiance 
and Spain, were presented by Earls, persons 
of superior dignity were appointed to do 
the same office to the Papal minister; — 
a singularity rather rendered alarming than 
acceptable by the example of the Court 
of France, which was appealed to by the 
courtiers on this occasion. The same cere- 

* 13 Eliz. c. 2.-35 Eliz. c. 1. 

t D'Adda, 11th July.— MS. London Gazette, 
4th to 7th July. 

t Van Citters. 15th July.— MS. ' 

§ Perhaps saying, or meaning to say, " in this 
respect." 

2D 



338 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



monious introduction to the Queen Dowager 
immediately followed. The King was very 
desirous of the like presentation being made 
to the Princess Anne, to whom it was ens- 
tomary to present foreign ministers; but the 
Nuncio declined a public audience of an 
heretical princess:*and though we learn that, 
a few days after, he was admitted by her to 
what is called u a public audience,"! yet, as 
it was neither published in the Gazette, nor 
adverted to in his own letter, it seems pro- 
bable tluit she only received him openly as 
a Roman prelate, who was to be treated 
with the respect due to his rank, and with 
whom it was equally politic to avoid the ap- 
pearance of clandestine intercourse and. of 
formal recognition. The King said to the 
Duke of Somerset, -As you have not chosen 
to obey my commands in this case, I shall 
not trouble you with any other;" and imme- 
diately removed him from his place in the 
Household, from his regiment of dragoon s ; 
and the Lord-lieutenancy of his county, — 
continuing for some time to speak with indig- 
nation of this act of contumacy, and telling 
the Nuncio, that the Duke's nearest relations 
had thrown themselves at his feet, and as- 
sured him, that they detested the disobe- 
dience of their kinsman. t The importance 
of the transaction consisted in its being a 
decisive proof of how little estimation were 
the judicial decisions in favour of the dis- 
pensing power in the eyes of the most loyal 
and opulent of the nobility. § 

The most petty incidents in the treatment 
of the Nuncio were at this time jealously 
watched by the public. By the influence 
of the new members placed by James in the 
corporation, he had been invited to a festival 
annually given by the city of London, at 
which the diplomatic body were then, as 
now, accustomed to be present. Fearful of 
insult, and jealous of his precedence, he con- 
sulted Lord Sunderland, and afterwards the 
King, on the prudence of accepting the in- 
vitation. II The King pressed him to go, 
also signifying to all the other foreign min- 
isters that their attendance at the festivaf 
would be agreeable to him. The Dutch! 
and Swedish ministers were absent. The 
Nuncio was received unexpectedly well by 
the populace, and treated with becoming 
courtesy by the magistrates. But though 
the King honoured the festival with his pre- 
sence, he could not prevail even on the alder- 
men of his own nomination to forbear from 
the thanksgiving, on the 5th of November, 
for deliverance from the Gunpowder Plot.** 
On the contrary, Sir John Shorter, the Pres- 
byterian mayor, made haste to atone for the 
invitation of D'Adda. by publicly receiving 

* D'Adda, 16th July— MS. 

t Van Cillers, 22d July.— MS. 

t D' Add;}, supra. 

§ Rarillon, 21st July. —Fox MSS. 

II D'Adda. 7th — 14th Nov.— MS. 

V According to ihe previous instructions of the 
States General, and the practice of their ministers 
at the Congresses of Minister and Nimpgtien. 

** Narcissus Luttrell, Nov. 1687.— MS. 



the communion according to the rites of the 
Church of England ;* — a strong mark of dis- 
trust in the dispensing power, and of the de- 
termination of the Presbyterians to adhere to 
the common cause of Protestants. f 

Another occasion offered itself, then es- 
teemed a solemn one, for the King, in his 
royal capacity, to declare publicly against 
the Established Church. The kings of Eng- 
land had, from very ancient times, pretend- 
ed to a power of curing scrofula by touching 
those who were afflicted by that malady ; 
and the Church had retained, after the Refor- 
mation, a service for the occasion, in which 
her ministers officiated. James, naturally 
enough, employed the mass book, and the 
aid of the Roman Catholic clergy, in the 
exercise of this pretended power of his 
crown, according to the precedents in the 
reign of Mary.i As' we find no complaint 
from the Established clergy of the perver- 
sion of this miraculous prerogative, we are 
compelled to suspect that they had no firm 
faith in the efficacy of a ceremony which 
they solemnly sanctioned by their prayers.§ 

On the day before the public reception of 
the Nuncio, the dissolution of Parliament had 
announced a final breach between the Crown 
and the Church. All means had been tried 
to gain a majority in the House of Commons : 
persuasion, influence, corruption, were in- 
adequate ; the example of dismissal failed 
to intimidate, — the hope of preferment to 
allure. Neither the command obtained by 
the Crown over the corporations, nor the 
division among Protestants excited by the 
Toleration, had sufficiently weakened the 
opposition to the measures of the Court. It 
was useless to attempt the execution of pro- 
jects to subdue the resistance of the Peers 
by new creations, till the other House was 
either gained or removed. The unyielding 
temper manifested by an assembly formerly 
so submissive, seems, at first sight, unac- 
countable. It must, however, be borne in 
mind, that the elections had taken place 
under the influence of ihe Church party; 
that the interest of the Church had defeated 
the ecclesiastical measures of the King in 
the two former sessions; and that the im- 

* Van Citters, 24th Nov.— MS. 

t Catharine Shorter, the daughter and heiress 
of this Presbyterian mayor, became, long after, 
the wife of Sir Robert Walpole. 

t Van Citters, 7th June, 1686.— MS. 

i It is well known that Dr. Samuel Johnson 
was, when a child, touched for the scrofula by 
Queen Anne. The princes of the House of Bruns- 
wick relinquished the practice. Carte, the his- 
torian, was so blinded by his zeal for the House 
of Stuart as to assure the public that one Lovel, a 
native of Bristol, who had gone to Avignon to be 
touched by the son of James II. in 1716, was 
really cured by that prince. A small piece of gold 
was tied round the patient's neck, which explains 
the number of applications. The gold sometimes 
amounted to 3000/. a year. Louis XIV. touched 
sixteen hundred patients on Easter Sunday, 1686. 
— See Barrington's Observations on AncienC 
Statutes, pp. 108, 109. Lovel relapsed after Carte 
had seen him. — General Biographical Dictionary, 
article " Carte." 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



339 



mense influence of the clergy over general 
opinion, now seconded by the zealous ex- 
ertions of the friends of liberty, was little 
weakened by the servile ambition of a few 
of their tiumber, who, being within the reach 
of preferment, and intensely acted upon by 
its attraction, too eagerly sought their own 
advancement to regard the dishonour of de- 
serting their body. England was then fast 
approaching to that state in which an opinion 
is so widely spread, and the feelings arising 
from it are so ardent, that dissent is account- 
ed infamous, and considered by many as 
unsafe. It is happy when such opinions 
(however inevitably alloyed by base ingre- 
dients, and productive of partial injustice) 
are not founded in delusion, but on princi- 
ples, on the whole, beneficial to the commu- 
nity. The mere influence of shame, of fear, 
of imitation, or of sympathy, is, at such mo- 
ments, sufficient to give to many men the 
appearance of an integrity and courage little 
to be hoped from their ordinary conduct. 

The King had, early in the summer, as- 
certained the impossibility of obtaining the 
consent of a majority of the House of Com- 
mons to a repeal of the Test and penal laws, 
and appears to have shown a disposition to 
try a new Parliament.* His more moderate 
counsellors,! however, headed, as it appears, 
by the Earl of Sunderland,! did not fail to 
represent to him the mischiefs and darngers 
of that irrevocable measure. "Ttwas," they 
said, "a perilous experiment to dissolve the 
union of the Crown with the Church, and 
to convert into enemies an order which 
had hitherto supported unlimited autho- 
rity, and inculcated unbounded submission. 
The submission of the Parliament had no 
bounds except the rights or interests of 
the Church. The expense of an increas- 
ing army would speedily require parliamen- 
tary aid • the possible event of the death of 
the King of Spain without issue mi<rht in- 
volve all Europe in war :§ for these purposes. 

* Van Citters, 13th June.— MS. 

tBarillon, 12th June.— Fox MSS. 

t D'Adda, 7th— 22d August.— MS. 

§ The exaci coincidence, in this respect, of Sun- 
derland's public defence, nearly two years after- 
wards, with the Nuncio's secret despatches of the 
moment, is worthy of consideration : — 

"I hindered the dissolu- 
tion several weeks, by tell- " DalP altra parte 
ins the King that the Parlia- si poteva promettere 
ment would do every thing he S. M. del medesimo 
could desire but the taking off parlamento ogni as- 
the tests ; that another Parlia- sistenza inasgiore de 
ment would probably not re- denaro, si S^ M. fosse 
peal these laws: and, if they obligato di entrare in 
did, would do nothing else for una guerra straniera, 
the support of government. I ponderando il caso 
slid nften. if the Kingof Spain possibile della morte 
died, his Majesty could not pre- del Re di Spagna sen- 
serve the peace of Europe; zasuccessione. Ques- 
that he mieht be sure of all ti e simili vantaggi 
the help and service he could non doverse attendere 
wish from the present Parlia- d'un nuovn parlamen- 
ment, but if he dissolved it he to composto di Non- 
must give up all thoughts of conformist!, nutrendo, 
foreign affairs, for no other per li piincipi, senti- 
wolild ever assist him but on menti totalmente ron- 
such terms as would ruin the trarii alia monarchia. 
monarcny " — Lord Sunder- "D'Adda." 
Sand's Letter, licensed 23d 
Hatch, 1689. 



and for every other that concerned the 
honour of the Crown, this loyal Parliament 
were read)- to grant the most liberal sup- 
plies. Even in ecclesiastical matters, though 
they would not at once yield all, they would 
in time grant much : when the King had 
quieted the alarm and irritation of the mo- 
ment, they would, without difficulty, repeal 
all the laws commonly called "penal." The 
King's dispensations, sanctioned' by the de- 
cisions of the highest authority of the law, 
obviated the evil of the laws of disability; 
and it would be wiser for the Catholics to 
leave the rest to time and circumstances, 
than to provoke severe retaliation by the 
support of measures which the immense 
majority of the people dreaded as subversive 
of their religion and liberty. What hope of 
ample supply or steady support could the 
King entertain from a Parliament of Non- 
conformists, the natural enemies of kingly 
power ? What faith could the Catholics place 
in these sectaries, the most Protestant of 
Protestant communions, of whom the larger 
part looked on relief from persecution, when 
tendered by Catholic hands, with distrust 
and fear; and who believed that the friend- 
ship of the Church of Rome for them would 
last no longer than her inability to destroy 
them?" To this it was answered, M that it Mas 
now too late to inquire whether a more wary 
policy might not have been at first more ad- 
visable ; that the King could not stand where 
he was; that he would soon be compelled to 
assemble a Parliament: and that, if he pre- 
served the present, their first act would be 
to impeach the judges, who had determined 
in favour of the dispensing power. To call 
them together, would be to abandon to their 
rage all the Catholics who had accepted office 
on the faith of the royal prerogative. If the 
Parliament were not to be assembled, they 
were at least useless; and their known dis- 
position would, as long as they existed, keep 
up the spirit of audacious disaffection: if 
they were assembled, they would, even 
during the King's life, tear away the shield 
of the dispensing power, which, at all events, 
never would be stretched out to cover Catho- 
lics by the hand of the Protestant successor. 
All the power gained by the monarchy over 
corporations having been used in the last 
election by Protestant Tories, was now acting 
against the Crown : by extensive changes in 
the government of counties and corporations, 
a more favourable House of Commons, and 
if an entire abrogation should prove imprac- 
ticable, a better compromise, might be ob- 
tained." 

Sunderland informed the Nuncio that the 
King closed these discussions by a declara- 
tion that, having ascertained the determina- 
tion of the present Parliament not to concur 
in his holy designs, and having weighed all 
the advantages of preserving it, he consider- 
ed them as far inferior to his great object, 
which was the advancement of the Catholic 
religion. Perhaps, indeed, this determina- 
tion, thus apparently dictated by religious 
zeal, was conformable to the maxims of civil 



340 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



prudence, unless the King was prepared to 
renounce his encroachments, and content 
himself with that measure of toleration for 
his religion which the most tolerant states 
then dealt out to their dissenting subjects. 

The next object was so 10 influence the 
elections as to obtain a more yielding ma- 
jority. At an early period Sunderland had 
represented two hundred members of the 
late House "as necessarily dependent on the 
Crown ;"* — probably not so much a sanguine 
hope as a political exaggeration, which, if 
believed, might realise itself. He was soon 
either undeceived or contradicted : the King 
desired all bound to him. either by interest 
or attachment, to come singly to private au- 
diences in hisclosel,t that he might ask their 
support to his measures ; and the answers 
which he received were regarded by by- 
standers as equivalent to a general refusal. t 
This practice, then called il closeting^'''' was, 
it must be owned, a very unskilful species 
of canvass, where the dignity of the King 
left little room for more than a single ques- 
tion and answer, and where other parties 
were necessarily forewarned of the subject 
of the interview, which must have soon be- 
come so generally known as to expose the 
more yielding part of them to the admoni- 
tions of their more courageous friends. It 
was easy for an eager monarch, on an occa- 
sion which allowed so little explanation, to 
mistake evasion, delay, and mere courtesy, 
for an assent to his proposal. But the new 
influence, and, indeed, power, which had 
been already gained by the Crown over the 
elective body seemed to be so great as to 
afford the strongest motives for assembling a 
new Parliament. 

In the six years which followed the first 
judgments of forfeiture, two hundred and 
forty-two new charters of incorporation had 
passed the seals to replace those which had 
been thus judicially annulled or voluntarily 
resigned. § From this number, however, 
must be deducted those of the plantations 
on the continent and islands of America, 
some new incorporations on grounds of gene- 
ral policy, || and several subordinate corpora- 
tions in cities and towns, — though these last 
materially affected parliamentary elections. 
The House then consisted of five hundred 
and five members, of whom two hundred 
and forty-four were returned on rights of 
election altogether or in part corporate ; this 
required only a hundred and twenty-two 
new charters. But to many corporations more 
than one charter had been issued, after the 
extorted surrenders of others, to rivet them 
more firmly in their dependency ; and if any 
were spared, it can only have been because 



* D'Adda, lOih Oct. 1686— 7th Feb. 1687.— 
MS. 

t Id. 24th Jan.— MS. 

I Van Citiers, 24rh Jan.— MS. 

$ Lords' Journals, 20ih Dec. 1689. 

II Of these, ihoseof the College of Physicians 
and the town of Bombay, are mentioned by Nar- 
cissus Luttrell. 



they were considered as sufficiently enslaved, 
and some show of discrimination was con- 
sidered as politic. In six years, therefore, it 
is evident, that by a few determinations of 
servile judges, the Crown had acquired the 
direct, uncontrolled, and perpetual nomina- 
tion of nearly one half of the House of Com- 
mons : and when we recollect the independ- 
ent and ungovernable spirit manifested by 
that assembly in the last fifteen years of 
Charles II., we may be disposed to conclude 
that there is no other instance in history of 
so great a revolution effected in so short a 
time by the mere exercise of judicial au- 
thority. These charters, originally contrived 
so as to vest the utmost power in the Crown, 
might, in any instance where experience 
showed them to be inadequate, be rendered 
still more effectual, as a power of substituting 
others was expressly reserved in each.* In 
order to facilitate the effective exercise of 
this power, commissioners were appointed to 
be "regulators" of corporations, with full 
authority to remove and appoint freemen and 
corporate officers at their discretion. The 
Chancellor, the Lords Powis, Sunderland, 
Arundel, and Castlemaine, with Sir Nicholas 
Butler and Father Petre, were regulators of 
the first class, who superintended the whole 
operation. f Sir Nicholas Butler and Dun- 
combe, a banker, " regulated" the corpora- 
tion of London, from which they removed 
nineteen hundred freemen ; and yet Jeffreys 
incurred a reprimand, from his impatient 
master, for want of vigour in changing the 
corporate bodies, and humblj r promised to 
repair his fault : for " every Englishman who 
becomes rich," said Barillon, " is more dis- 
posed to favour the popular party than the 
designs of the King."j These regulators 
were sent to every part of the country, and 
were furnished with letters from the Secre- 
tary of State, recommending them to the aid 
of the Lord lieutenants of counties. § 

When the election was supposed to be 
near, circular letters were sent to the Lord 
lieutenants, and other men of influence, in- 
cluding even the Chief Justice of the King ; s 
Bench, recommending them to procure the 
election of persons mentioned therein by 
name, to the number of more than a hun- 
dred. Among them were eighteen members 
for counties, and many for those towns which, 
as their rights of election were not corporate, 
were not yet subjected to the Crown by le- 
gal judgnnents.il In this list we find the un- 
expected name of John Somers, probably se- 
lected from a hope that his zeal for religious 
liberty might induce him to support a Go- 



* Reign of James II. p. 21. — Parliamentum 
Pacificum. (London, 1688.) p. 29. The latter 
pamphlet boasts of these provisions. The Pro- 
tcsiant Tories, says the writer, cannot question a 
power by which many of themselves were brought 
into the House. 

t Lords' Journals, supra. 

t Barillon, 8th Sept.— MS. 

$ Dated 21st July. — State Paper Office. 

II Lord Sunderland's Letters, Sept. — Ibid. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



341 



vemment which professed so comprehensive 
a toleration: but it was quickly discovered 
that he was too wise to be ensnared, and the 
clerk of the Privy Council was six days after 
judiciously substituted in his stead. It is 
due to James and his minister to remark, 
that these letters are conceived in that official 
.form which appears to indicate established 
practice : and, indeed, most of these prac- 
tices were not only avowed, but somewhat 
ostentatiously displayed as proofs of the 
King's confidence in the legitimacy and suc- 
cess of his measures. Official letters* had 
also been sent to the Lord lieutenants, di- 
recting them to obtain answers from the de- 
puty-lieutenants and justices of the peace of 
their respective counties, to the questions, — 
Whether, if any of them were chosen to 
serve in Parliament, they would vote for the 
repeal of the penal laws and the Test ? and 
Wnether they would contribute to the elec- 
tion of other members of the like disposi- 
tion"? and also to ascertain what corporations 
in each county were well affected, what in- 
dividuals had influence enough to be elect- 
ed, and what Catholics and Dissenters were 
qualified to be deputy-lieutenants or justices 
of the peace. 

Several refused to obey so unconstitutional 
a command : their refusal had been fore- 
seen; and so specious a pretext as that of 
disobedience was thus found for their re- 
moval from office.! Sixteen Lieutenancies,}: 
held by fourteen Lieutenants, were imme- 
diately changed ; the majority of whom 
were among the principal noblemen of the 
kingdom, to whom the government of the 
most important provinces had, according to 
ancient usage, been intrusted. The removal 
of Lord Scarsdale^ from his Lieutenancy of 
Derbyshire displayed the disposition of the 
Princess Anne, and furnished some scope 
for political dexterity on her part and on that 
of her father. Lord Scarsdale holding an 
office in the household of Prince George, the 
Princess sent Lord Churchill to the King 
from herself and her husband, humbly de- 
siring to know his Majesty's pleasure how 
they should deal with one of the Prince's 
servants who had incurred the King's dis- 
favour. The King, perceiving that it was' 
intended to throw Scarsdale's removal from 
their household upon him, and extremely 
solicitous that it should appear to be his 
daughter's spontaneous act, and thus seem 
a proof of her hearty concurrence in his 
measures, declared his reluctance to pre- 
scribe to them in the appointment or dis- 
missal of their officers. The Princess (for 
Prince George was a cipher) contented her- 
self with this superficial show of respect, 
and resolved that the sacrifice of Scarsdale, 
if ever made, should appear to be no more 

* Dated 5th Oct.— State Paper Office. Van 
Citters' account exactly corresponds with the 
original document. 

t Barillon, 8th Dec— MS. " II alloit fairecette 
tentative pour avoir un pretexte de les changer." 

\ Id. 18th Dec. $ Id. 15th Dec 



than the bare obedience of a subject and a 
daughter. James was soon worsted in this 
conflict of address, and was obliged to notify 
his pleasure that Scarsdale should be re- 
moved, to avoid the humiliation of seeing 
his daughter's court become the refuge of 
those whom he had displaced.* The vacant 
Lieutenancies were bestowed on Catholics, 
with the exception of Mulgrave, (who had 
promised to embrace the King's faith, but 
whose delays begot suspicions of his sin- 
cerity,) and of Jeffreys, Sunderland, and 
Preston ; who, though they continued to pro- 
fess the Protestant religion, were no longer 
members of the Protestant party. Five co- 
lonels of cavalry, two of infantry, and four 
governors of fortresses, (some of whom were 
also Lord lieutenants, and most of them of 
the same class of persons,) were removed 
from their commands. Of thirty-nine new 
sheriffs, thirteen were said to be Roman Ca- 
tholics. t Although the proportion of gentry 
among the Nonconformists was less, yet 
their numbers being much greater, it cannot 
be doubted that a considerable majority of 
these magistrates were such as the King 
thought likely to serve his designs. 

Even the most obedient and zealous Lord 
lieutenants appear to have been generally 
unsuccessful : the Duke of Beaufort made 
an unfavourable report of the principality of 
Wales ; and neither the vehemence of Jef- 
freys, nor the extreme eagerness of Roches- 
ter, made any considerable impression in 
their respective counties. Lord Waldegrave, 
a Catholic, the King's son-in-law, found in- 
surmountable obstacles in Somersetshire ,t 
Lord Molyneux, also a Catholic, appointed 
to the Lieutenancy of Lancashire, made an 
unfavourable report even of that county, 
then the secluded abode of an ancient Ca- 
tholic gentry; and Dr. Leyburn, who had 
visited every part of England in the dis- 
charge of his episcopal duty, found little to 
encourage the hopes and prospects of the 
King. The most general answer appears to 
have been, that if chosen to serve in Parlia- 
ment, the individuals to whom the questions 
were put would vote according to their con- 
sciences, after hearing the reasons on both 
sides ; that they could not promise to vote 
in a manner which their own judgment after 
discussion might condemn ; that if they en- 
tered into so unbecoming an engagement, 
they might incur the displeasure of the 
House of Commons for betraying its privi- 
leges; and that they would justly merit con- 
demnation from all good men for disabling 
themselves from performing the duty of 

* Barillon, 30th August.— Fox MSS. 

t The names are marked in a handwriting ap- 
parently contemporary, on the margin of the list, 
in a copy of the London Gazette ^now before me. 
Van Citters (14th Nov.) makes the sheriffs almost 
all either Roman Catholics or Dissenters, — pro- 
bably an exaggeration. In his despatch of 16th 
Dec, he states the sheriffs to be thirteen Catho- 
lics, thirteen Dissenters, and thirteen submissive 
Churchmen. 

t D'Adda, 12th Dec— MS. 
2d2 



342 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



faithful subjects by the honest declaration 
of their judgment on those arduous affairs 
on which they were to advise and aid the 
King. The Court was incensed by these 
answers: but to cover their defeat, and 
make their resolution more known, it was 
formally notified in the London Gazette,* 
that " His Majesty, being resolved to main- 
tain the Declaration of Liberty of Cons. , ■ i 
ami to use the utmost endeavours that i 
pass into a law. and become an establ I 

ity for after ages, has thought fit to re- 
view the lists of deputy-lieutenants and jus- 
tices of the peace; that those may continue 
who are willing to contribute to so good and 
necessary a work, and such others be added 
from whom he may reasonably expect the 
like concurrence." 

It is very difficult to determine in what 
degree the patronage of the Crown, military, 
civil and ecclesiastical, at that period, influ- 
enced parliamentary elections. The colonies 
then scarcely contributed to it.f No offices 
in Scotland and few in Ireland, were bestow- 
ed for English purposes. The revenue was 
small compared with that of after times, 
even after due allowance is made for the 
subsequent change in the value of money : 
but' it was collected at such a needless ex- 
pense as to become, from the mere ignorance 
and negligence of the Government, a source 
of influence much more than proportioned 
to its amount. The Church was probably 
guarded for the moment by the zeal and 
honour of its members, against the usual 
effects of royal patronage ; and even the 
mitre lost much of its attractions, while the 
see of York was believed to be kept vacant 
for a Jesuit. A standing army of thirty 
thousand men presented new means of pro- 
vision, and objects of ambition to the young- 
gentry, who then monopolized military ap- 
pointments. The revenue, small as it now 
seems, had increased in proportion to the 
national wealth, more in the preceding half 
century than in any equal time since; and 
the army had within that period come into 
existence. It is not easy to decide whether 
the novelty and rapid increase of these means 
of bestowing gratification increased at the 
same time their power over the mind, or 
whether it was not necessarily more feeble, 
until long experience had directed the eyes 
of the community habitually towards the 
Crown as the source of income and advance- 
ment. It seems reasonable to suppose that 
it might at first produce more violent move- 
ments, and in the sequel more uniform sup- 
port. All the offices of provincial adminis- 
tration were then more coveted than they 
are now. Modern legislation and practice 
had not yet withdrawn any part of that ad- 
ministration from lieutenants, deputy-Iieu- 
tents, sheriffs, coroners, which had been 
placed in their hands by the ancient laws. 



* Of the 11th Dec. 

t Chamberlayne, Present State of England. 
London, 1674.) 



A justice of the peace exercised a power over 
his inferior never con trolled by public opinion, 
and for the exercise of which he could hardly 
be said to be practically amenable to law. 
The influence of Government has abated as 
the powers of these officers have been eon- 
tracted, or their exercise more jealously 
watched. Its patronage cannot be justly 
estimated, unless it be compared with the 
advantage. to be expected from other objects 
of pursuit. The professions called "learn- 
ed'' had then fewer stations and smaller in- 
comes than in subsequent periods: in com- 
merce, the disproportion was immense ; there 
could hardly be said to be any manufactures; 
and agriculture was unskilful, and opulent 
farmers unheard of. Perhaps the whole 
amount of income and benefits at the dis- 
posal of the Crown bore a larger proportion 
to that which might be earned in all the 
other pursuits raised above mere manual 
labour than might at first sight be supposed : 
how far the proportion was less than at pre- 
sent it is hard to say. But patronage in the 
hands of James was the auxiliary of great 
legal power through the Lord lieutenants, 
and of the direct nomination of the members 
for the corporate towns. The grossest spe- 
cies of corruption had been practised among 
members;* and the complaints which were 
at that time prevalent of the expense of 
elections, render it very probable that bribery 
was spreading among the electors. Expen- 
sive elections have, indeed, no other neces- 
sary effect than that of throwing the choice 
into the hands of wealthy candidates ; but 
they afford too specious pretexts for the 
purchase of voles, not to be employed in 
eager contests, as a disguise of that prac- 
tice. 

The rival, though sometimes auxiliary, influ-* 
ence of great proprietors, seems to have been 
at that time, at least, as considerable as at any 
succeeding moment. The direct power of 
nominating members must have been vested 
in many of them by the same state of suf- 
frage and property which confer it on them 
at present,t while they were not rivalled in 
more popular elections by a monied interest. 
The power of landholders over their tenants 
was not circumscribed; and in all country 
towns they were the only rich customers 
of tradesmen who had then only begun to 
emerge from indigence and dependence. The 
majority of these landholders were Tories, 
and now adhered to the Church; the mino- 
rity, consisting of the most opulent and noble, 
were the friends of liberty, who received 
with open arms their unwonted allies. 

From the naturally antagonist force of 
popular opinion little was probably dreaded 
by the Court. The Papal, the French, and 
the Dutch ministers, as well as the King and 
Lord Sunderland, in their unreserved confer- 
ences with the first two, seem to have point- 
ed all their expectations and solicitudes to- 
wards the uncertain conduct of powerful in- 



Pension Parliament. 



t 1826.— Ed. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



343 



■dividuals. The body of the people could not 
read : one portion of them had little knowledge 
of the sentiments of another j no publication 
was tolerated, on a level with the information 
then possessed even by the middle classes ; 
and the only channel through which they 
could be acted upon was the pulpit, which 
the King had vainly, though perfidiously, 
endeavoured to shut up. Considerable im- 
pediments stood in the way of the King's 
direct power over elections, in the difficulty 
of finding candidates for Parliament not alto- 
gether disreputable, and corporators whose 
fidelity might be relied on. The moderate 
Catholics reluctantly concurred in the preci- 
pitate measures of the Court. They were 
disqualified, by long exclusion from business, 
for those offices to which their rank and for- 
tune gave them a natural claim ; and their 
whole number was so small, that they could 
contribute no adequate supply of fit persons 
for inferior stations.* The number of the 
Nonconformists were, on the other hand, 
considerable ; amounting, probably, to a six- 
teenth of the whole people, without includ- 
ing the compulsory and occasional Conform- 
ists, whom the Declaration of Indulgence 
had now encouraged to avow their real sen- 
timents. t Many of them had acquired 
wealth by trade, which under the Republic 
and the Protectorate began to be generally 
adopted as a liberal pursuit; but they were 
confined to the great towns, and were chiefly 
of the Presbyterian persuasion, who were ill 
affected to the Court. Concerning the greater 
number, who were to form the corporations 
throughout the country, it was difficult to 
obtain accurate information, and hard to be- 
lieve that in the hour of contest, they could 
forget their enthusiastic animosity against 
the Church of Rome. As the project of in- 
troducing Catholics into the House of Com- 
mons by an exercise of the dispensing power 
had been abandoned, nothing could be ex- 
pected from them but aid in elections; and 
if one eighth — a number so far surpassing 
their natural share — should be Nonconform- 
ists, they would still bear a small proportion 
to the whole body. These intractable diffi- 
culties, founded in the situation, habits, and 
opinions of men, over which measures of 
policy or legislation have no direct or sudden 
power, early suggested to the more wary of the 
King's counsellors the propriety of attempting 
some compromise, by which he might imme- 
diately gain more advantage and securily for 
the Catholics than could have been obtained 

* By Sir William Petty's computation, which 
was the largest, the number of Catholics in Eng- 
land and Wales, about the accession of James, 
was thirty-two thousand. The survey of bishops 
in 1676, by order of Charles II., made it twenty- 
seven thousand. Barlow (Bishop of Lincoln,) Ge- 
nuine Remains, (London, 1693,) p. 312. " George 
Fox," said Petty, " made five times more Qua- 
kers in forty-four years than the Pope, with all 
his greatness, has made Papists.'' 

t Barlow, supra. — About two hundred and fifty 
thousand, when the population was little more 
than Jour millions. 



from the Episcopalian Parliament, and open 
the way for further advances in a more fa- 
vourable season. 

Shortly after the dissolution, Lord Sunder- 
land communicated to the Nuncio his opin- 
ions on the various expedients by which the 
jealousies of the Nonconformists might be 
satisfied.* "As we have wounded the An- 
glican party," said he, '-we must destroy it, 
and use every means to strengthen as well 
as conciliate the other, that the whole nation 
may not be alienated, and that the aimy may 
not discover the dangerous secret of the 
exclusive reliance of the Government upon 
its fidelity." "Among the Nonconformists 
were," he added, " three opinions relating 
to the Catholics : that of those w ho would re- 
peal all the penal laws against religious wor- 
ship, but maintain the disabilities for office 
and Parliament; that of those who would 
admit the Catholics to office, but continue 
their exclusion from both Houses of Par- 
liament; and that of a still more indul- 
gent party, who would consent to remove 
the recent exclusion of the Catholic peers, 
trusting to the oath of supremacy in the 
reign of Elizabeth, as a legal, though it had 
not proved in practice a constant, bar against 
their entrance into the House of Commons: — 
to say nothing of a fourth project, entertained 
by zealous Catholics and thorough courtiers, 
that Catholic peers and commoners should 
claim their seats in both Houses by virtue 
of royal dispensations, which would relieve 
them from the oaths and declarations against 
their religion required by law, — an attempt 
which the King himself had felt to be too 
hazardous, as being likely to excite a general 
commotion on the first day of the session, to 
produce an immediate rupture with the new 
Parliament, and to forfeit all the advantage 
which had been already gained by a deter- 
mination of both Houses against the validity 
of the dispensations." He further added, 
that : 'he had not hitherto conferred on these 
weighty matters with any but the King, that 
he wished the Nuncio to consider them, and 
was desirous to govern his own conduct by 
that prelate's decision." At the same time 
he gave D'Adda to understand, that he was 
inclined to some of the above conciliatory 
expedients, observing, " that it was better to 
go on step by step, than obstinately to aim 
at all with the risk of gaining nothing;" and 
hinting, that this pertinacity was peculiarly 
dangerous, where all depended on the life 
of James. Sunderland's purpose was to in- 
sinuate his own opinions into the mind of the 
Nuncio, who was the person most likely to 
reconcile the King and his priests to only 
partial advantages. But a prelate of the 
Roman Court, however inferior to Sunder- 
land in other respects, was more than his 
match in the art of evading the responsi- 
bility which attends advice in perilous con- 
junctures. With many commendations of 
his zeal, D'Adda professed "his incapacity 



D'Adda, 7th August.— MS. 



344 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



of judging in a case which involved the 
opinions and interests of so many individu- 
als and classes; but he declared, that the 
fervent prayers of his Holiness, and his own 
feeble supplications, would be offered to God, 
for light and guidance to his Majesty and his 
ministers in the prosecution of their wise and 
pious designs." 

William Penn proposed a plan different 
from any of the temperaments mentioned 
above ; which consisted in the exclusion of 
Catholics from the House of Commons, and 
the division of all the public offices into three 
equal parts, one of which should belong to 
the Church, another should be open to the 
Nonconformists, and a third to the Catho- 
lics:* — an extremely unequal distribution, 
if it implied the exclusion of the members 
of the Church from two thirds of the stations 
in the public service ; and not very mode- 
rate, if it should be understood only as pro- 
viding against the admission of the dissidents 
to more than two thirds of these offices. 
Eligibility to one third would have been a 
more equitable proposition, and perhaps bet- 
ter than any but that which alone is perfect- 
ly reasonable, — that the appointment to office 
should be altogether independent of religious 
opinion. An equivalent for the Test was 
held out at the same time, which had a very 
specious and alluring appearance. It was 
proposed that an Act for the establishment 
of religious liberty should be passed ; that 
all men should be sworn to its observance; 
that it should be made a part of the corona- 
tion oath, and rank among the fundamental 
laws, as the Magna Charta of Conscience ; 
and that any attempt to repeal it should be 
declared to be a capital crime. t 

The principal objections to all these miti- 
gati-d or attractive proposals arose from dis- 
trust in the King's intention. It did not de- 
pend on the conditions offered, and was as 
fatal to moderate compromise as to undis- 
tinguishing surrender. The nation were now 
in a temper to consider every concession 
made to the King as an advantage gained by 
an enemy, which mortified their pride, as 
well as lessened their safety : they regarded 
negotiation as an expedient of their adver- 
saries to circumvent, disunite, and dishearten 
them. 

The state of the House of Lords was a very 
formidable obstacle. Two lists of the pro- 
bable votes in that assembly on the Test and 
penal laws were sent to Holland, and one to 
France, which are still extant. t These vary 
in some respects from each other, according 
to the information of the writers, and proba- 
bly according to the fluctuating disposition 
of some Peers. The greatest division ad- 
verse to the Court which they present, is 

* Johnstone. 13th Jan. 1688 —MS. 
t " Good Advice." " Parliamentum Pacifi- 
cum." 

I The reports sent to Holland were communi- 
cated to me by the Duke of Portland. One of 
them purports to he drawn by Lord Willougliby. 
That sent by Barillon is from the Depot des Af 
faires Etrangeres at Paris. 



ninety-two against the repeal of the penal 
and disabling laws to thirty-five for it, be- 
sides twenty whose votes are called "doubt- 
ful," and twenty-three disabled as Catholics : 
the least is eighty-six to thirty-three, besides 
ten doubtful and twenty-one Catholic. Singu- 
lar as it may seem, Rochester, the leader of 
the Church party, is represented in all the 
lists as being for the repeal. From this 
agreement, and from his officious zeal as 
Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire, it cannot 
be doubted that he had promised his vote 
to the King; and though it is hard to say 
whether his promise was sincere, or whether 
treachery to his party or insincerity to his 
old master would be most deserving of 
blame, he cannot be acquitted of a grave 
offence either against political or personal 
morality. His brother Clarendon, a man of 
less understanding and courage, is numbered 
in one list as doubtful, and represented by 
another as a supporter of the Court. Lord 
Churchill is stated to be for the repeal, — 
probably from the confidence of the writers 
that gratitude would in him prevail over 
every other motive ; for it appears that on 
this subject he had the merit of not having 
dissembled his sentiments to his royal bene- 
factor.* Lord Godolphin, engaged rather in 
ordinary business than in political councils, 
was numbered in the ranks of official sup- 
porters. As Lord Dartmouth, Lord Preston, 
and Lord Feversham never fluctuated on 
religion, they deserve the credit of being 
rather blinded by personal attachment, than 
tempted by interest or ambition, in their 
support of the repeal.! Howard of Escrick 
and Grey de Werke, who had saved their 
own lives by contributing to take away those 
of their friends, appear in the minority as 
slaves of the Court. Of the bishops only 
four had gone so far as to be counted in all 
the lists as voters for the King.t Wood of 
Lichfield appears to be with the four in one 
list, and doubtful in another. The compli- 
ancy of Sprat had been such as to place him 
perhaps unjustly in the like situation. Old 
Barlow of Lincoln was thought doubtful. 
The other aged prelate, Crofts of Hereford, 
though he deemed himself bound to obey 
the King as a bishop, claimed the exercise 
of his own judgment as a lord of Parliament. 
Sunderland, who is marked as a disabled 
Catholic in one of the lists, and as a doubtful 
voter in another, appears to have obtained 

* Coxe, Memoirs, &c. vol. i. pp.23 — 29, where 
the authorities ate collected, to which may be ad- 
ded the testimony of Johnstone : — " Lord Church- 
ill swears he will not do what the King requires 
from him."— Letter 12th Jan. 1688.— MS. 

t Johnstone, however, who knew them, did 
not ascribe their conduct to frailties so generous : 
" Lord Feversham and Lord Dartmouth are de- 
sirous of acting honourably : but the first is mean- 
spirited ; and the second has an empty purse, yet | 
aims at living grandly. Lord Preston desires to 
be an honest man ; but if he were not your friend 
and my relation, I should say that he is both Fe- 
versham and Dartmouth." — Ibid. 

t Durham (Crew), Oxford (Parker), Chester 
(Cartwright), and St. David's (Watson). 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



345 



the royal consent to a delay of his public 
profession of the Catholic religion, that he 
might retain his ability to serve it by his vote 
in Parliament.* Mulgrave was probably in 
the same predicament. If such a majority 
was to continue immovable, the counsels of 
the King must have become desperate, or he 
must have had recourse to open force : but 
this perseverance was improbable. Among 
the doubtful there might have been some 
who concealed a determined resolution under 
the exterior of silence or of hesitation . Such, 
though under a somewhat different disguise, 
was the Marquis of Winchester, who in- 
dulged and magnified the eccentricities of 
an extravagant character; counterfeited, or 
rather affected a disordered mind, as a secu- 
rity in dangerous times, like the elder Brutus 
in the legendary history of Rome ; and tra- 
velling through England in the summer of 
1687, with a retinue of four coaches and a 
hundred horsemen, slept during the day, 
gave splendid entertainments in the night, 
and by torch-light, or early dawn, pursued 
the sports of hunting and hawking. t But 
the majority of the doubtful must have been 
persons who assumed that character to en- 
hance their price, or who lay in wait for the 
turns of fortune, or watched for the safe 
moment of somewhat anticipating her deter- 
mination: of such men the powerful never 
despair. The example of a very few would 
be soon followed by the rest, and if they or 
many of them were gained, the accession of 
strength could not fail to affect the timid and 
mercenary who are to be found in all bodies, 
and whose long adherence to the Opposition 
was already wonderful. 

But the subtile genius of Lord Sunderland. 
not content with ordinary means of seduc- 
tion and with the natural progress of deser- 
tion, had long meditated an expedient for 
quickening the latter, and for supplyinir in 
some measure the place of both. He had 
long before communicated to the Nuncio a 
plan for subduing the obstinacy of the Upper 
House by the creation of the requisite num- 
ber of new Peersi devoted to his Majesty's 
measures. He proposed to call up by writ 
the elder sons of friendly Lords ; which 
would increase his present strength, without 
the incumbrance of new peerages, whose 
future holders might be independent. Some 
of the Irish. § and probably of the Scotch no- 
bility, whose rank made their elevation to 
the English peerage specious, and whose 
fortunes disposed them to dependency on 
royal bounty, attracted his attention, as they 
did that of those ministers who carried his 
project into execution twenty-five years after- 
wards. He was so enamoured of this plan, 

* " Ministers and others about, the King, who 
have given him grounds to expect that they will 
turn Papists, say, that if they chancre before the 
Parliament they cannot be useful to H. M. in 
Parliament, as the Test will exclude them." — 
Johnstone, 8th Dec. 1687-— MS. 

t Reresby, p. 247. 

JD'Adda, 11th October, 1686— MS. 

$ Johnstone, 27th Feb. 1688.— MS. 
44 



that in a numerous company, where the re- 
sistance of the Upper House was said to be 
formidable, he cried out to Lord Churchill, 
"0 silly ! why, your troop of guards shall be 
called to the House of Lords !"* On another 
occasion (if it be not a' different version of 
the same anecdote) he declared, that sooner 
than not gain a majority in the House of 
Lords, he would make all Lord Feversham's 
troop Peers. f The power of the Crown was 
in this case unquestionable. The constitu- 
tional purpose for which the prerogative of 
creating Peers exists, is, indeed, either to 
reward public service, or to give dignity to 
important offices, or to add ability and know- 
ledge to a part of the legislature, or to repair 
the injuries of time, by the addition of new 
wealth to an aristocracy which may have 
decayed. But no law limits its exercise. t 
By the bold exercise of the prerogative of 
creating Peers, and of the then equally un- 
disputed right of granting to towns the privi- 
lege of sending members to Parliament, it is 
evident that the King possessed the fullest 
means of subverting the constitution by law. 
The obstacles to the establishment of despo- 
tism consisted in his own irresolution or un- 
skilfulness, in the difficulty of finding a suffi- 
cient number of trustworthy agents, and in 
such a determined hostility of the body of 
the people as led sagacious observers to for- 
bode an armed resistance.^ The firmness 
of the Lords has been ascribed to their fears 
of a resumption of the Church property con- 
fiscated at the Reformation : but at the dis- 
tance of a century and a half, and after the 
dispersion of much of that property by suc- 
cessive sales, such fears were too groundless 
to have had a considerable influence. But 
though they ceased to be distinctly felt, and 
to act separately, it cannot be doubted that 
the remains of apprehensions once so strong, 
still contributed to fortify that dread of Po- 
pery, which was an hereditary point of ho- 
nour among the great families aggrandized 
and enriched under the Tudors. 

At the same time the edge of religious 
animosity among the people at large was 



* Burnet. (Oxford, 1823), vol. iii. p. 249 ; Lord 
Dartmouth's note. 

t Halifax MSS. The turn of expression would 
seem to indicate different conversations. At all 
events, Halifax affords a strong corroboration. 

t It is, perhaps, not easy to devise such a limi- 
tation, unless it should be provided that no newly 
created Peer should vote till a certain period after 
his creation ; which, in cases of signal service, 
would be ungracious, and in those of official dig- 
nity inconvenient. 

§ On suivra ici le projet d'avoir un parliament 
tant qu'il ne paroitra pas impraticable ; mais s'il 
ne reussit pas, le Roi d'Angleterre pretendra (aire 
par son autorite ce qu'il n'aura pas obtenu pal la 
voie d'un parliament. C'est en ce c'as la qu'il 
aura besoin de ses amis au dedans et au dehors, et 
il recevra alors des oppositions qui approcheront 
fort d'une rebellion ouverte. On ne doit pas 
douter qu'elle ne soit soutenue par M. le Prince 
d' Orange, et que beaucoup de gens qui paroissent 
attaches au Roi d'Angleterre ne lui manquent au 
besoin ; cette epreuve sera fort perilleuse." — Ba- 
, rillon, Windsor, 9th October, 1687.— MS. 



346 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



sharpened by the controversy then revived 
between the divines of the two Churches. 
A dispute about the truth of their religion 
was insens.b y blended with contests con- 
cerning the saiety of the Establishment ; and 
complete toleration brought with it that 
hatred which is often fiercer, and always 
more irreconcilable, against the opponents 
of our religious opinions than against the 
destroyers of our most important interests. 
The Protestant Establishment and the cause 
of liberty owed much, it must be owned, to 
this dangerous and odious auxiliary; while 
the fear, jealousy, and indignation of the peo- 
ple were more legitimately excited against a 
Roman Catholic Government by the barbar- 
ous persecution of the Protestants in France, 
and by the unprovoked invasion of the val- 
leys of Piedmont : — both acts of a monarch 
of whom their own sovereign was then be- 
lieved to be, as he is now known to have 
been, the creature. 

The King had, in the preceding year, tried 
the efficacy of a progress through a part of 
the kingdom, to conciliate the nobility by 
personal intercourse, and to gratify the peo- 
ple by a royal visit to their remote abodes ; 
which had also afforded an opportunity of 
rewarding compliance by smiles, and of 
marking the contumacious. With these 
views he had again this autumn meditated a 
journey to Scotland, and a coronation in that 
kingdom : but he confined himself to an 
excursion through some southern and wes- 
tern counties, beginning at Portsmouth, and 
proceeding through Bath (at which place 
the Queen remained during his journey) 
to Chester, where he had that important 
interview with Tyrconnel. of which we 
have already spoken. James was easily 
led to consider the courtesies of the nobility 
due to his station, and the acclamations of 
the multitude naturally excited by his pre- 
sence, as symptoms of an inflexible attach- 
ment to his person, and of a general acqui- 
escence in his designs. These appearances, 
however, were not considered as of serious 
importance, either by the Dutch minister, 
who dreaded the King's popularity, or by 
the French ambassador, who desired its in- 
crease, or by the Papal Nuncio, who was so 
friendly to the ecclesiastical policy of the 
Court, and so adverse to its foreign connec- 
tions as to render him in some measure an 
impartial observer. The journey was at- 
tended by no consequences more important 
than a few addresses extorted from Dissent- 
ers by the importunity of personal canvass, 
and the unseemly explosion of royal anger 
at Oxford against the fellows of Magdalen 
College.* Scarcely any of the King's mea- 



*"The King has returned from his progress so 
far as Oxford, on his way to the Bath, and we do 
not hoar that his observations or his journey can 
give him any great encouragement. Besides 
the considerations of conscience and the public 
interest, it is grown into a point of honour uni- 
versally received by the nation not to change 
their opinions, which will make all attempts 



sures seem to have had less effect on general 
opinion, and appear less likely to have in- 
fluenced the election for which he was 
1 r rpar.ng. 

But the Royal Progress was speedily fol- 
lowed by an occurrence -which strongly 
excited the hopes and fears of the public, 
ai d at length drove the opponents of the 
King to decisive resolutions. Soon alter the 
return of the Court to Whitehall,* it began 
to be whispered that the Queen was preg- 
nant. This event in the case of a young 
princess, and of a husband still in the vigour 
of life, might seem too natural to have ex- 
cited surprise. But five years had elapsed 
since her last childbirth, and out of eleven 
children who were born to James by both 
his wives, only two had outlived the years 
of infancy. Of these, the Princess of Orange 
was childless, and the Princess Anne, who 
had had six children, lost five within the 
first year of their lives, while the survivor 
only reached the age of eleven. Such an 
apparent peculiarity of constitution, already 
transmitted from parent to child, seemed to 
the credulous passions of the majority, un- 
acquainted as they were with the latitude 
and varieties of nature, to be a sufficient 
security against such an accession to the 
royal progeny as should disturb the order of 
succession to the crown. The rumour of the 
Queen's condition suddenly dispelled this 
security. The Catholics had long and fer- 
vently prayed for the birth of a child, who 
being educated in their communion, might 
prolong the blessings which they were begin- 
ning to enjoy. As devotion, like other warm 
emotions, is apt to convert wishes into hopes, 
they betrayed a confidence in the efficacy 
of their prayers, which early excited sus- 
picions among their opponents that less 
pure means might be employed for the at- 
tainment of the object. Though the whole 
importance of the pregnancy depended upon 
a contingency so utterly beyond the reach 
of human foresight as the sex of the child, 
the passions of both parties were too much 
excited to calculate probabilities ; and the 
fears of the Protestants as well as the hopes 
of the Catholics anticipated the birth of a 
male heir. The animosity of the former 
imputed to the Roman Catholic religion, that 
unscrupulous use of any means for the at- 
tainment of an object earnestly desired, 
which might more justly be ascribed to in- 
flamed zeal for any religious system, or with 
still greater reason to all those ardent pas- 
sions of human nature, which, when shared 
by multitudes, are released from the re- 
straints of fear or shame. In the latter end 
of November a rumour that the Queen had 



to the contrary ineffectual." — Halifax to the 
Prince of Orange, 1st Sept. Dalrymple, app. to 
book v. 

* James rejoined the Queen at Bath on the 6th 
September. On the 16th he returned to Windsor, 
where the Queen came on the 6th October. On 
the 11th of that month they went to Whitehall. — 
London Gazettes. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



347 



been pregnant for two months became gene- 
rally prevalent ;* and early in December, 
surmises of imposture began to circulate at 
Court. t Time did not produce its usual 
effect of removing uncertainty, for, in the 
middle of the same monlh, the Queen's 
symptoms were represented by physicians 
as still ambiguous, in letters, which the care- 
ful balance of facts on both sides, and the 
cautious abstinence from a decisive opinion, 
seem to exempt from the suspicion of bad 
faith. t On the 23d of December, a general 
thanksgiving for the hope of increasing the 
royal family was ordered; but on the 15th 
of the next month, when that thanksgiving 
was observed in London, Lord Clarendon 
remarked with wonder, '-'that not above two 
or three in the church brought the form of 
prayer with them ; and that it was strange 
to see how the Queen's pregnancy was every 
where ridiculed, as if scarce any body be- 
lieved it to be true." The Nuncio early 
expressed his satisfaction at the pregnancy, 
as likely to contribute " to the re-establish- 
ment of the Catholic religion in these king? 
doms;"§ and in the following month, he 
pronounced to her Majesty the solemn bene- 
diction of the Sovereign Pontiff, on a preg- 
nancy so auspicious to the Church. II Of the 
other ministers most interested in this event, 
Barillon, a veteran diplomatist, too cool and 
experienced to be deluded by his wishes, 
informed his master, "that the pregnancy- 
was not believed to be true in London ; and 
that in the country, those who spread the 
intelligence were laughed at ;"1F while the 
Republican minister, Van Citters, coldly 
communicated the report, with some of the 
grounds of it, to the States-General, without 
hazarding an opinion on a matter so delicate. 
The Princess Anne, in confidential letters** 
to her sister at the Hague, when she had no 
motive to dissemble, signified her unbelief, 
which continued even after the birth of the 
child, and was neither subdued by her 
father's solemn declarations, nor by the testi- 
mony which he produced. ft On the whole, 
the suspicion, though groundless and cruel, 
was too general to be dishonest : there is no 



* Narcissus Luttrell, 28th Nov. — MS. 

t Johnstone, 8th Dec— MS. 

t Johnstone, 16th Dec. — MS., — containing a 
statement of the symptoms by Sir Charles Scar- 
borough, and another physician whose name I 
have been unable to decipher. 

« D'Adda, 2d Dec— MS. 

II Id. 20ihFeb. 1688— MS. 

IT Barillon, 11th Dec— MS. 

** March 14th— 20th, 1688.— Dalrymple, app. 
to book v. " Her being so positive it will be a 
son, and the principles of that religion being such 
that they will stick at nothing, be it ever so 
wicked, if it will promote their interest, gave 
some cause to fear that there is foul play intended." 
On the 18th June, she says, "Except they give 
very plain demonstration, which seems almost 
impossible now, I shall ever be of the number of 
unbelievers." Even the candid and loyal Evelyn 
(Diary, 10th and 17th of June) very intelligibly 
intimaies his suspicions. 

tt Clarendon, Diary, 31st Oct. 



evidence that the rumour originated "in the 
contrivance of any individuals; and it is for 
that reason more just, as well as perhaps in 
itself more probable, to conclude that it arose 
spontaneously in the minds of many, influ- 
enced by the circumstances and prejudices 
of the time. The currency of the like ru- 
mours, on a similar occasion, five years 
before, favours the opinion that they arose 
from the obstinate prejudices of the people 
rather than from the invention of design- 
ing politicians.* The imprudent confidence 
of the Catholics materially contributed to 
strengthen suspicion. When the King and 
his friends ascribed the pregnancy ,to his 
own late prayers at St. Winifred's well,t or 
to the vows while living, and intercession 
after death of the Duchess of Modena, the 
Protestants suspected that effectual mea- 
sures would be taken to prevent the inter- 
position of Heaven from being of no avail 
to the Catholic cause ; and their jealous appre- 
hensions were countenanced by the expecta- 
tion of a son, which was indicated in the pro- 
clamation for thanksgiving,!: and unreserv- 
edly avowed in private conversation. As 
straws shows the direction of the wind, the 
writings of the lowest scribblers may some- 
times indicate the temper of a party; and 
one such writing, preserved by chance, may 
probably be a sample of the multitudes which 
have perished. Mrs. Behn, a loose and paltry 
poetastress of that age, was bold enough in 
the title page of what she calls "A Poem to 
their Majesties," to add, " on the hopes of 
all loyal persons for a Prince of Wales," and 
ventures in her miserable verses already to 
hail the child of unknown sex, as " Royal 
Boy."§ The lampooners of the opposite 
party, in verses equally contemptible, show- 
ered down derision on the Romish imposture, 
and pointed the general abhorrence and alarm 
towards the new Perkin Warbeck whom the 
Jesuits w T ere preparing to be the instrument 
of their designs. 

While these hopes and fears agitated the 
multitude of both parties, the ultimate ob- 
jects of the King became gradually more 
definite, while he at the same time delibe- 
rated, or perhaps, rather decided, about the 
choice of his means. His open policy as- 
sumed a more decisive tone : Castlemaine, 
who in his embassy had acted with the 
most ostentatious defiance of the laws, and 
Petre, the most obnoxious clergyman of the 
Church of Rome, were sworn of the Privy 

* "If it had pleased God to have given his 
Highness the blessing of a son, as it proved a 
daughter, you were prepared to make a Perkin 
of him." — L'Estrange, Observator, 23d August, 
1682. 

t Life of James II., vol. ii. p. 129. 

t The object of the thanksgiving was indicated 
more plainly in the Catholic form of prayer on that 
occasion : — " Concede propitius ut famula tua re- 
gina nostra Maria partu felici prolem edat tibi 
fideliter servituram." 

§ State Poems, vol. iii. and iv.; a collection at 
once the most indecent and unpoetical probably 
extant in any language. , 



348 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



Council.* The latter was even promoted to 
an ecclesiastical office in the household of a 
prince, who still exercised all the powers of 
the supreme head of a Protestant Church. 
Corker, an English Benedictine, the superior 
of a monastery of that order in London, had 
an audience of the King in his ecclesiastical 
habits, as envoy from the Elector of Cologne.! 
doubtless by a secret understanding between 
James and that prince; — an act, which Louis 
XIV. himself condemned as unexampled in 
Catholic countries, and as likely to provoke 
heretics, whose prejudices ought not to be 
wantonly irritated. i As the animosity of 
the people towards the Catholic religion in- 
creased, the designs of James for its re-es- 
tablishment became bolder and more open. 
The monastic orders, clad in garments long 
strange and now alarming to the people, filled 
the streets; and the King prematurely exulted 
that his capital had the appearance of a Ca- 
tholic city,§ — little aware of the indignation 
with which that obnoxious appearance in- 
spired the body of his Protestant subjects. 
He must now have felt that his contest had 
reached that point in which neither party 
would submit without a total defeat. 

The language used or acquiesced in by 
him in the most confidential intercourse. 
does not leave his intention to be gathered 
by inference. For though the words, "to 
establish the Catholic religion," may denote 
no more than to secure its free exercise, 
another expression is. employed on this sub- 
ject for a long time, and by different persons, 
in correspondence with him, which has no 
equivocal sense, and allows no such limita- 
tion. On the 12th of May, 1687, Barillon 
had assured him, that the most Christian 
King "had nothing so much at heart as to 
see the success of his exertions to re-establish 
the Catholic religion." Far from limiting 
this important term, James adopted it in its 
full extent, answering, " You see that I omit 
nothing in my power;" and not content with 
thus accepting the congratulation in its ut- 
most latitude, he continued, " I hope the King 
your master will aid me ; and that we shall, 
in concert, do great things for religion." In 
a few months afterwards, when imitating 
another part of the policy of Louis XIV., he 
had established a fund for i awarding converts 
to his religion, he solicited pecuniary aid 
from the Pope for that very ambiguous pur- 
pose. The Nuncio, in answer, declared the 
sorrow of his Holiness, at being disabled by 
the impoverished state of his treasury from 
contributing money, notwithstanding "his 
paternal zeal for the promoting, in every 
way, the re-establishment of the Catholic 
religion in these kingdoms ;"|| as he had 
shortly before expressed his hope, that the 



* London Gazelle, 25th Sept. and 11th Nov. 
1687; in the last Petre is styled " Clerk of the 
Closet." 

t Narcissus Luttrell, Jan. 1688.— MS. 

t The King lo Bnrillon, 26ih Feb.— MS. 

$ D'Adda, 9th March.— MS. 

II Ibid. 2d Jan. 1688.— MS. 



Queen's pregnancy would insure "the re- 
establishment of the true religion in these 
kingdoms."* Another term in familiar use 
at Court for the final object of the royal pur- 
suit was " the great work," — a phrase bor- 
rowed from the supposed transmutation of 
metals by the alchemists, which naturally 
signified a total change, and which never 
could have been applied to mere toleration 
by those who were in system, if not in prac- 
tice, the most intolerant of an intolerant age. 
The King told the Nuncio, that Holland Avas 
the main obstacle to the establishment of the 
Catholic religion in these kingdoms; and 
D'Abbeville declared, that without humbling 
the pride of that republic, there could be no 
hope of the success "of the great work."t 
Two years afterwards, James, after review- 
ing his whole policy and its consequences, 
deliberately and decisively avows the extent 
of his own designs : — " Our subjects opposed 
our government, from the fear that we should 
introduce the orthodox faith, which we were, 
indeed, 'labouring to accomplish when the 
storm began, and which we have done in 
our kingdom of Ireland."! Mary of Este, 
during the absence of her husband in Ireland, 
exhorts the Papal minister, "to earn the 
glorious title of restorer of the faith in the 
British kingdoms," and declares, that she 
" hopes much from his administration for the 
re-establishment both of religion and the 
royal family. "§ Finally, the term "re-estab- 
lish," which can refer to no time subsequent 
to the accession of Elizabeth, had so much 
become the appropriate term, that Louis 
XIV., assured the Pope of his determination 
to aid "the King of England, and to re-estab- 
lish the Catholic religion in that island. "II 

None of the most discerning friends or op- 
ponents of the King seem at this time to have 
doubted that he meditated no less than to 
transfer to his own religion the privileges of 
an Established Church. Gourville, one of 
the most sagacious men of his age, being 
asked by the Duchess of Tyrconnel, when 
about to make a journey to London, what 
she should say to the King if he inquired 
about the opinion of his old friend Gourville, 
of his measures for the "re-establishment" 
of the Catholic religion in England, begged 
her to answer, — "If I were Pope, I should 
have excommunicated him for exposing all 
the English Catholics to the risk of being 
hanged. I have no doubt, that what he sees 
done in France is his model ; but the circum- 
stances are very different. In my opinion, 
he ought to be content with favouring the 
Catholics on every occasion, in order to aug- 
ment their number, and he should leave to 
his successors the care of gradually subject- 
ing England altogether to the authority of 



* D'AHda, 2d Dec. 1687— MS. 

t Ibid. 22d August, 1687.— MS. 

t James II. to Cardinal Ottoboni. Dublin, 
15th Feb. 1690.— Papal MSS. 

$ Mary to Ottoboni, St. Germains, 4th — 15th 
Dec. 1689.— Papal MSS. 

II Louis to the Pope, 17th Feb. 1689.— MS, 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



349 



the Pope."* Bossuet, the most learned, 
vigorous, and eloquent of controversialists, 
ventured at this critical time to foretel, that 
the pious efforts of James would speedily be 
rewarded by the reconciliation of the British 
islands to the Universal Church, and their 
filial submission to the Apostolic See t 

If Gourville considered James an injudi- 
cious imitator of Louis XIV., it is easy to 
imagine what was thought on the subject in 
England, at a time when one of the mildest, 
not to say most courtly, writers, in the quiet- 
ness and familiarity of his private diary, 
speaks of " the persecution raging in France/' 
and so far forgets his own temper, and the 
style suitable to such writings, as to call 
Louis "the French tyrant. "t Lord Halifax, 
Lord Nottingham, and Lord Danby, the three 
most important opponents of the King's mea- 
sures, disagreeing as they did very consi- 
derably in opinion and character, evidently 
agreed in their apprehension of the extent 
of his designs. § They advert to them as 
too familiar to themselves and their corres- 
pondent to require proof, or even develop- 
ment ; they speak of them as being far more 
extensive than the purposes avowed ; and 
they apply terms to them which might be 
reasonable in the present times, when many 
ar ? willing to grant and to be contented with 
religious liberty, but which are entirely fo- 
reign to the conceptions of an age when 
toleration (a term then synonomous with 
connivance) was the ultimate object of no 
great party in religion, but was sometimes 
sought by Dissenters as a -step towards es- 
tablishment, and sometimes yielded by the 
followers of an Established Church under 
the pressure of a stern necessity. Some 
even of those who, having been gained over 
by the King, were most interested in main- 
taining his sincerity, were compelled at length 
to yield to the general conviction. Colonel 
Titus, a veteran politician, who had been 
persuaded to concur in the repeal of the 
penal laws (a measure agreeable to his 
general principles), declared " that he would 
have no more to do with him ; that his ob- 
ject was only the repeal of the penal law T s ) 
that his design was to bring in his religion 
right or wrong, — to model the army in order 
to effect that purpose ; and, if that was not 
sufficient, to obtain assistance from France. "II 



* Memoires de Gourville, vol. ii. p. 254. 

t Hisioire des Variations des Eglises Protest- 
ants, liv. vii. 

X Fivelyn, vol. i. Diary, 3d Sept. 1687.— 23d 
Feb. 1688. 

§ Lord Halifax to the Prince of Orange, 7th 
Dec. 1686— 18th Jan.— 31st May, 1687. " Though 
there appears the utmost vigour to pursue the 
object which has been so long laid, there seemeth 
to be no less firmness in the nation and aversion 
to change." — " Every day will give more light to 
what is intended ; though it is already no more a 
mystery-" — Lord Nottingham to the Prince, 2d 
Sept. 1687. " For though the end at which they 
aim is very plain and visible, the methods of ar- 
riving at that end have been variable and uncer- 
tain." — Dalrymple, app. to book v. 

II Johnstone 16th Feb —MS. 



The converts to the religious or political 
party of the King were few and discreditable. 
Lord Lorn, whose predecessors and succes- 
sors were the firmest supporters of the reli- 
gion and liberty of his country, is said to 
have been reduced by the confiscation of 
his patrimony to the sad necessity of pro- 
fessing a religion which he must have re- 
garded with feelings more hostile than those 
of mere unbelief.* Lord Salisbury, whose 
father had been engaged with Russell and 
Sydney in the consultation called the '•' Rye- 
house Plot," and whose grandfather had sat 
in the House of Commons after the abolition 
of the monarchy and the peerage, embraced 
the Catholic religion, and adhered to it during 
his life. The offices of Attorney and Solici- 
tor-general, which acquire a fatal importance 
in this country under Governments hostile to 
liberty, were newly filled. Sawyer, who had 
been engaged in the worst prosecutions of 
the preceding ten years, began to tremble 
for his wealth, and retired from a post of 
dishonourable danger. He was succeeded 
by Sir Thomas Powis, a lawyer of no known 
opinions or connections in politics, who acted 
on the unprincipled maxim, that, having had 
too little concern for his country to show 
any preference for public men or measures, 
he might as lawfully accept office under any 
Government, as undertake the defence of any 
client. Sir William Williams, the confiden- 
tial adviser of Lord Russell, on whom a fine 
of 10,000?. had been inflicted, for having 
authorised, as Speaker of the House of Com- 
mons, a publication, though solemnly pledged 
both to men and measures in the face of the 
public, now accepted the office of Solicitor- 
general, without the sorry excuse of any of 
those maxims of professional ethics by which 
a powerful body countenance each other in 
their disregard of public duty. A project 
was also in agitation for depriving the Bishop 
of London by a sentence of the Ecclesiasti- 
cal Commissioners for perseverance in his 
contumacy ;t but Cartwright, of Chester, his 
intended successor, having, in one of his 
drunken moments, declared the Chancellor 
and Lord Sunderland to be scoundrels who 
would betray the King (which he first de- 
nied by his sacred order, but was at last re- 
duced to beg pardon for in tearsj), the plan 
of raising him to the see was abandoned. 
Crew, Bishop of Durham, was expected to be- 
come a Catholic, and Parker of Oxford, — the 
only prelate whose talents and learning, se- 
conded by a disregard of danger and disgrace, 
qualified him for breaking the spirit of the 
clergy of the capital, — though he had support- 
ed the Catholic party during his life, refused 
to conform to their religion on his death-bed ;k 
leaving it doubtful, by his habitual aliena- 
tion from religion and honour, to the linger- 

* Narcissus Luttrell.lst April.— MS. :—" ar- 
rested for 3000/. declares himself a Catholic." 

t Johnstone, 8th Dec. 1687— MS. 

X Johnstone, 27th Feb. — MS. Narcissus Lut 
trell. 11th Feb.— MS. 

$ Evelyn, vol. i. Diary, 23d March; 
2E 



350 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



ing remains or the faint revival of which of 
these principles the unwonted delicacy of 
•his dying moments may be most probably 
ascribed. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Remarkable quiet. — Its peculiar causes. — Coa- 
lition of Nottingham and Halifax. — Fluc- 
tuating counsels of the Court. — " Parlia- 
mentum Pacificum. r ' — Bill for liberty of 
conscience. — Conduct of Sunderland. — Je- 
suits. 

England perhaps never exhibited an ex- 
ternal appearance of more undisturbed and 
profound tranquillity than in the momentous 
seven months which elapsed from the end 
of the autumn of 1687 to the beginning of 
the following summer. Not a speck in the 
heavens seemed to the common eye to fore- 
bode a storm. None of the riots now oc- 
curred which 'were the forerunners of the 
civil war under Charles I. : nor were there 
any of those numerous assemblies of the 
people which affright by their force, when 
they do not disturb by their violence, and 
are sometimes as terrific in disciplined in- 
action, as in tumultuous outrage. Even the 
ordinary marks of national disapprobation, 
which prepare and announce a legal resist- 
ance to power, were wanting. There is no 
trace of any public meetings having been 
held iii counties or great towns where such 
demonstrations of public opinion could have 
been made. The current of flattering ad- 
dresses continued to flow towards the throne, 
uninterrupted by a single warning remon- 
strance of a more independent spirit, or 
even of a mere decent servility. It does not 
appear that in the pulpit, where alone the 
people could be freely addressed, political 
iopies were discussed; though it must be 
acknowledged that the controversial sermons 
against the opinions of the Church of Rome, 
which then abounded, proved in effect the 
most formidable obstacle to the progress of 
her ambition. 

Various considerations will serve to lessen 
our wonder at this singular state of silence 
and inactivity. Though it would be idle to 
speak gravely of the calm which precedes 
the storm, and thus to substitute a trite illus- 
tration for a reason, it is nevertheless true, 
that there are natural causes which com- 
monly produce an interval, sometimes, in- 
deed, a very short one, of more than ordinary 
quiet between the complete operation of the 
measures which alienate a people, and the 
final resolution which precedes a great 
change. Amidst the hopes and fears which 
succeed each other in such a state, every 
man has much to conceal; and it requires 
some time to acquire the boldness to disclose 
it. Distrust and suspicion, the parents of 
silence, which easily yield to sympathy in 
ordinary and legal opposition, are called into 



full activity by the first secret consciousness 
of a disposition to more daring designs. It 
is natural for men in such circumstances to 
employ time in watching their opponents, as 
well as in ascertaining the integrity and 
courage of their friends. When human na- 
ture is stirred by such mighty agents, the 
understanding, indeed, rarely deliberates ; 
but the conflict and alternation of strong 
emotions, which assume the appearance and 
receive the name of deliberation, produce 
naturally a disposition to pause before irre- 
vocable action. The boldest must occasion- 
ally contemplate their own danger with ap- 
prehension ; the most sanguine must often 
doubt their success; those who are alive to 
honourmust be visited by the sad reflection, 
that if they be unfortunate they may be in- 
sulted by the multitude for whom they sacri- 
fice themselves; and good men will be fre- 
quently appalled by the inevitable calamities 
to which they expose their country for the 
uncertain chance of deliverance. When the 
fluctuation of mind has terminated in bold 
resolution, a farther period of reserve must 
be employed in preparing the means of co- 
operation and maturing the plans of action. 

But there were some circumstances pecu- 
liar to the events now under consideration, 
which strengthened and determined the ope- 
ration of general causes, In 1640, the gentry 
and the clergy had been devoted to the 
Court, while the higher nobility and the great 
townsadhered to the Parliament. The people 
distrusted their divided superiors, and the 
tumultuous display of their force (the natural 
result of their angry suspicions) served to 
manifest their own inclinations, while it 
called forth their friends and intimidated 
their enemies among the higher orders. In 
1688, the state of the country was reversed. 
The clergy and gentry were for the first time 
discontented with- the Crown ; and the ma- 
jorityof the nobility., and the growing strength 
of the commercial classes, reinforced by 
these unusual auxiliaries, and by all who 
either hated Popery or loved liberty, were 
fully as much disaffected to the King as the 
great body of the people. The nation trusted 
their natural leaders, who, perhaps, gave, 
more than they received, the impulse on this 
occasion. No popular chiefs were necessary, 
and none arose to supply the place of their 
authority with the people, who reposed in 
quiet and confidence till the signal for action 
was made. This important circumstance- 
produced another effect : the whole guidance 
of the opposition fell gradually into fewer and 
fewer hands; it became every day easier to 
carry it on more calmly ; popular commotion 
could only have disturbed councils where 
the people did not suspect their chiefs of 
lukewarmness, and the chiefs were assured 
of the prompt and zealous support of the 
people. It was as important now to restrain 
the impetuosity of the multitude, as it might 
be m cessaty in other circumstances to in- 
dulge it. Hence arose the facility of caution 
and secrecy at one time, of energy and 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



351 



speed at another, of concert and co-operation 
throughout, which are indispensable in en- 
terprises so perilous. It must not be for- 
gotten that a coalition of parties was neces- 
sary on this occasion. It was long before the 
Tories could be persuaded to oppose the 
monarch ; and there was always some rea- 
son to apprehend, that he might by timely 
concessions recal them to their ancient 
standard : it was still longer before they 
could so far relinquish their avowed princi- 
ples as to contemplate, without horror, any 
resistance by force, however strictly defen- 
sive. Two parties, who had waged war 
against each other in the contest between 
monarchy and popular government, du ring- 
half a century, even when common danger 
tausht them the necessity of sacrificing their 
differences, had still more than common rea- 
son to examine each other's purposes before 
they at last determined on resolutely and 
heartily acting together; and it required 
some time after a mutual belief in sincerity, 
before habitual distrust could be so much 
subdued as to allow reciprocal communica- 
tion of opinion. In these moments of hesi- 
tation, the friends of liberty must have been 
peculiarly desirous not to alarm the new- 
born zeal of their important and unwonted 
confederates by turbulent scenes or violent 
councils. The state of the succession to the 
crown had also a considerable influence, as 
will afterwards more fully appear. Suffice 
it for the present to observe, that the expec- 
tation of a Protestant successor restrained 
the impetuosity of the more impatient Ca- 
tholics, and disposed the more moderate 
Protestants to an acquiescence, however 
sullen, in evils which could only be tempo- 
rary. The rumour of the Queen's pregnancy 
had roused the passions of both parties; but 
as soon as the first shock had passed, the 
uncertain result produced an armistice, dis- 
tinguished by the silence of anxious expecta- 
tion, during which each eagerly but resolutely 
waited for the event, which might extinguish 
the hopes of one, and release the other from 
the restraint of fear. 

It must be added, that to fix the precise 
moment when a wary policy is to be ex- 
changed for bolder measures, is a problem 
so important, that a slight mistake in the 
attempt to solve it may be fatal, and yet so 
difficult, that its solution must generally de- 
pend more on a just balance of firmness and 
caution in the composition of character, than 
on a superiority of any intellectual faculties. 
The two eminent persons who were now at 
the head of the coalition against the Court, 
afforded remarkable examples of this truth. 
Lord Nottingham, who occupied that leading 
station among the Tories, which the timidity 
if not treachery of Rochester had left vacant, 
was a man of firm and constant character, 
hut sol citons to excess for the maintenance 
of that uniformity of measures and language 
which, indeed, is essential to the authority 
of a decorous and grave statesman. Lord 
Halifax, sufficiently pliant, or perhaps fickle, 



though the boldest of politicians in specula- 
tion, became refined, sceptical, and irreso- 
lute, at the moment of action. Both hesi- 
tated on the brink of a great enterprise : Lord 
Nottingham pleaded conscientious scruples, 
and recoiled from the avowal of the prin- 
ciples of resistance which he had long re- 
probated ; Lord Halifax saw difficulty too 
clearly, and continued too long to advise 
delay. Those who knew the state of the 
latter's mind, observed "the war between 
his constitution and his judgment;"* in 
which, as usual, the former gained the as- 
cendant for a longer period than, in the 
midst of the rapid progress of great events, 
was conducive to his reputation. 

Some of the same causes which restrained 
the manifestation of popular discontent, con- 
tributed also to render the counsels of the 
Government inconstant. The main subject 
of deliberation, regarding the internal affairs 
of the kingdom, continued to be the possibi- 
lity of obtaining the objects sought for by a 
compliant Parliament, or the pursuit of them 
by means of the prerogative and the army. 
On these questions a more than ordinary 
fluctuation prevailed. Early in the preceding 
September, Bonrepos, who, on landing, met 
the King at Portsmouth, had been surprised 
at the frankness with which he owned, that 
the repairs and enlargements of that import- 
ant fortress were intended to strengthen it 
against his subjects ;t and at several periods 
the King and his most zealous advisers had 
spoken of the like projects with as little re- 
serve. In October it was said, " that if no- 
thing could be done by parlimenrary means, 
the King would do all by his prerogative ;" — 
an attempt from which Barillon expected that 
insurrection would ensue. X Three months 
after, the bigoted Romanists, whether more 
despairing of a Parliament or more confident 
in their own strength, and incensed at resist- 
ance, no longer concealed their contempt for 
the Protestants of the Royal Family, and the 
necessity of recurring to arms.§ The same 
temper showed itself at the eve of the birth 
of a Prince. The King then declared, that, 
rather than desert, he should pursue his ob- 
jects without a Parliament, in spite of any 
laws which might stand in his way ; — a pro- 
ject which Louis XIV., less bigoted and more 
politic, considered "as equally difficult and 
dangerous. "II But the sea might as well cease 

* Johnstone, 4th April, — MS. 

t Bonrepos to Seignelai, 4th Sept.— Fox MSS. 

X Barillon, lOih Oct. Bonrepos to Seignelai 
same date. — Fox MSS. 

§ Johnstone, 29th Jan.— MS. Lady Melfort 
overheard the priests speak to her husband of 
" blood," probably with reference to foreign war, 
as well as to the suppression of the disaffected at 
home — "Sidney vous fera savoir qu'apres des 
grandes contestations on est enfin resolu de (aire 
leurs affaires sans tin parlement." 

II Barillon. 6'h May. The King to Barillon, 
14th May.— Fox MSS. — " Le projet que fait la 
oour on vous e'es de renverser toutes les lois 
d'Angleterre pour parve' ir au but qu'elle se pro- 
pose, me paroii d'une difficile et perilleuso execu- 
tion." 



352 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



to ebb and flow, as a council to remain for so 
many months at precisely the same point in 
regard to such hazardous designs. In the 
interval between these plans of violence, 
hopes were sometimes harboured of obtaining 
from the daring fraud of returning officers, 
such a House of Commons as could not be 
hoped for from the suffrages of any electors; 
but the prudence of the Catholic gentry, who 
were named sheriffs, appears to have speed- 
ily disappointed this expectation.* Neither 
do the Court appear to have even adhered 
for a considerable time to the bold project 
of accomplishing their purposes without a 
Parliament. In moments of secret misgiv- 
ing, when they shrunk from these despe- 
rate counsels, they seem frequently to have 
sought refuge in the flattering hope, that 
their measures to fill a House of Commons 
with their adherents, though hitherto so ob- 
stinately resisted, would in due time prove 
successful. The meeting of a Parliament 
was always held out to the public, and was 
still sometimes regarded as a promising expe- 
dient :f while a considerable time for sound- 
ing and moulding the public temper yet re- 
mained before the three years within which 
the Triennial Act required that assembly to 
be called together, would elapse ; and it 
seemed needless to* cut off all retreat to le- 
gal means till that time should expire. The 
Queen's pregnancy affected these consulta- 
tions in various modes. The boldest consi- 
dered it as likely to intimidate their enemies, 
and to afford the happiest opportunity for 
immediate action. A Parliament might, they 
said, be assembled, that would either yield 
to the general joy at the approaching birth 
of a prince, or by their sullen and mutinous 
spirit justify the employment of more decisive 
measures. The more moderate, on the other 
hand, thought, that if the birth of a prince 
was followed by a more cautious policy, and 
if the long duration of a Catholic government 
were secured by the parliamentary esta- 
blishment of a regency, there was a better 
chance than before of gaining all important 
objects in no very long time by the forms of 
law and without hazard to the public quiet. 
Penn desired a Parliament, as the only mode 
of establishing toleration without subverting 
the laws, and laboured to persuade the King 
to spare the Tests, or to offer an equivalent 
for such parts of them as he wished to take 
away.t Halifax said to a friend, who argued 
for the equivalent, " Look at my nose; it is 
a very ugly one, but I would not take one 
five hundred times better as an equivalent, 
because my own is fast to my face ;"$ and 
made a more serious attack on these danger- 
ous and seductive experiments, in his mas- 
terly tract, entitled "The Anatomy of an 

♦Johnstone, 8th Dec— MS. "Many of the 
Popish sheriffs have estates, and declare that 
whoever expects false returns from them will be 
deceived." 

t Ibid. 21st Feb.— MS. 

t Ibid. 6th Feb.— MS. 

$ Ibid. 12th March.— MS. . 



Equivalent." Another tract was published 
to prepare the way for what was called " A 
Healing Parliament," which, in the midst 
of tolerant professions and conciliatory lan- 
guage, chiefly attracted notice by insult and 
menace. In this publication, which, being 
licensed by Lord Sunderland,* was treated 
as the act of the Government, the United 
Provinces were reminded, that " their com- 
monwealth was the result of an absolute 
rebellion, revolt, and defection, from their 
prince ;" and they were apprised of the re- 
spect of the King "for the inviolabdity of their 
territory, by a menace thrown out to Burnet, 
that he " might be taken out of their country, 
and cut up alive in England," in imitation 
of a supposed example in the reign of Eliza- 
beth ;t — a threat the more alarming because 
it was well known that the first part of such 
a project had been long entertained, and 
that attempts had already been made for its 
execution. Van Citters complained of this 
libel in vain : the King expressed wonder 
and indignation, that a complaint should be 
made of the publication of an universally 
acknowledged truth, — confounding the fact 
of resistance with the condemnation pro- 
nounced upon it by the opprobrious terms, 
which naturally imported and were intended 
to affirm that the resistance was criminal. X 
Another pamphlet, called "A New Test of 
the Church of England's Loyalty,"^ expos- 
ed with scurrility the inconsistency of the 
Church's recent independence with her long 
professions and solemn decrees of non-resist- 
ance, and hinted that " His Majesty would 
withdraw his royal protection, which was 
promised upon the account of her constant 
fidelity." Such menaces were very serious, 
at a moment when D' Abbeville, James' mi- 
nister at the Hague, told the Prince of Orange, 
that "upon some occasions princes must for- 
get their promises ;" and being " reminded 
by William, that the King ought to have more 
regard to the Church of England, which was 
the main body of the nation," answered, 
" that the body called the 'Church of Eng- 
land' would not have a being in two years. "|| 
The great charter of conscience was now 
drawn up, in the form of a bill, and prepared 
to be laid before Parliament. It was entitled 
" An Act for granting of Liberty of Con- 
science, without imposing of Oaths and 
Tests." The preamble thanks the King for 
the exercise of his dispensing power, and 
recognises it as legally warranting his sub- 
jects to enjoy their religion and their offices 
during his reign : but, in order to perpetuate 
his pious and Christian bounty to his people, 
the bill proceeds to enact, that all persons 
professing Christ may assemble publicly or 
privately, without any licence, for the exer- 
cise of their religious worship, and that all 
laws against nonconformity and recusancy, 

* Johnstone, 15ih Feb. 
t Parliamentum Pacificum, p. 57. 
X Barillon, 19th April.— MS. 
$ Sotners' Tracts, vol. ix. p. 195. 
II Burnet, vol. iii. p. 207. 



"REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



353 



or exacting oaths, declarations, or tests, or 
imposing disabilities or penalties on religion, 
shall be repealed j and more especially in 
order " that his Majesty may not be debarred 
of the service of his subjects, which by the 
law of nature is inseparably annexed to his 
person, and over which no Act of Parliament 
can. have any control, any further than he is 
pleased to allow of the same,"* it takes away 
the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and 
the tests and declarations required by the 
25th and 30th of the late king, as qualifica- 
tions to hold office, or to sit in either House 
of Parliament. It was, moreover, provided 
that meetings for religious worship should 
be open and peaceable ; that notice of the 
place of assembly should be given to a jus- 
tice of the peace ; that no seditious sermons 
should be preached in them ; and that in 
cathedral and collegiate churches, parish 
churches, and chapels, no persons shall offi- 
ciate but such as are duly authorised accord- 
ing to the Act of Uniformity, and no worship 
be used but what is conformable to the Book 
of Common Prayer therein established ; for 
the observance of which provision, — the only 
concession made by the bill to the fears of 
the Establishment, — it was further enacted, 
that the penalties of the Act of Uniformity 
should be maintained against the contraven- 
tion of that statute in the above respects. Had 
this bill passed into a law, and had such a 
law been permanently and honestly execu- 
ted, Great Britain would have enjoyed the 
blessings of religious liberty in a degree un- 
imagined by the statesmen of that age, and 
far surpassing all that she has herself gained 
during the century and a half of the subse- 
quent progress of almost all Europe towards 
tolerant principles. But such projects were 
examined by the nation with a view T to the 
intention of their authors, and to the ten- 
dency of their provisions in the actual cir- 
cumstances of the time and country ; and the 
practical question was, whether such inten- 
tion and tendency were not to relieve the 
minority from intolerance, but to lessen the 
security of the great majority against it. The 
speciousness of the language, and the libe- 
rality of the enactments, in which it rivalled 
the boldest speculations at that time hazard- 
ed by philosophers, were so contrary to the 
opinions, and so far beyond the sympathy, 
of the multitude, that none of the great divi- 
sions of Christians could heartily themselves 
adopt, or could prudently trust each other's 

* This language seems to have been intention- 
ally equivocal. The words " allow of the same," 
may in themselves mean till he gives his royal 
assent to the Act. But in this construction the 
paragraph would be an unmeaning boast, since no 
bill can become an Act of Parliament till it re- 
ceives the royal assent; and, secondly, it would 
be inconsistent with the previous recognition of 
the legality of the King's exercise of the dispens- 
ing power; Charles II. having given his assent 
to the Acts dispensed with. It must therefore be 
understood to declare, that Acts of Parliament 
disabling individuals from serving the public, re- 
strain the King only till he dispenses with them. 
45 



sincerity in holding them forth : they were 
regarded not as a boon, but as a snare. From 
the ally of Louis XIV., three yeais after the 
persecution of the Protestants, they had the 
appearance of an insulting mockery ; even 
though it was not then known that James 
had during his whole reign secretly congratu- 
lated that monarch on his barbarous mea- 
sures. 

The general distrust of the King's designs 
arose from many circumstances, separately 
too small to reach posterity, but, taken to- 
gether, sufficient to entitle near observers to 
form an estimate of his character. When, 
about 1679, he had visited Amsterdam, he 
declared to the magistrates of that liberal and 
tolerant city, that he (i never was for oppres- 
sing tender consciences."* The sincerity 
of these tolerant professions was soon after 
tried when holding a Parliament as Lord 
High Commissioner at Edinburgh, in 1681, 
he exhorted that assembly to suppress the 
conventicles, or, in other words, the religious 
worship of the majority of the Scottish peo- 
ple. t It being difficult for the fiercest zealots 
to devise any new mode of persecution which 
the Parliament had not already tried, he was 
content to give the royal assent to an act 
confirmatory of all those edicts of blood 
already in force against the proscribed Pres- 
byterians.* But very shortly after, when the 
Earl of Argyle, acting evidently from the 
mere dictates of conscience, added a modest 
and reasonable explanation to an oath re- 
quired of him, which without it would have 
been contradictory, the Lord Commissioner 
caused that nobleman to be prosecuted for 
high treason, and to be condemned to death 
on account of his conscientious scruples. § 
To complete the evidence of his tolerant 
spirit, it is only necessary to quote one pas- 
sage which he himself has fortunately pre- 
served. He assures us that, in his confi- 
dential communication with his brother, he 
represented it as an act of " imprudence to 
have proposed in Parliament the repeal of 
the 35th of Elizabeth," II — a statute almost 
as sanguinary as those Scottish acts which 
he had sanctioned. The folly of believing 
his assurances of equal toleration was at the 
time evinced by his appeal to those solemn 
declarations of a resolution to maintain the 
Edict of Nantz, with which Louis XIV. had 
accompanied each of his encroachments on it. 



* Account of James II.'s visit to Amsterdam, 
by William Carr, then English consul (said by 
mistake to be in 1681). — Gentleman's Magazine, 
vol. lix. part 2. p. 659. 

t Life of James II., vol. i. p. 694. The words 
of his speech are copied from his own MS. Me- 
moirs. 

t Acts of Parliament, vol. viii. p. 242. 

§ State Trials, vol. viii. p. 843. Wodrow, vol. 
i. pp. 205 — 217, — a narrative full of interest, and 
obviously written with a careful regard to truth. 
Laing, vol. iv. p. 125, — where the moral feelings 
of that upright and sagacious historian are con- 
spicuous. 

II Life of James II., vol. ii. p. 656, verbatim 
from the King's Memoirs. 
2e2 



354 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



Where a belief prevailed that a law was 
passed without an intention to observe it, all 
scrutiny of its specific provisions became 
needless : — yet it ought to be remarked, that 
though it might be fair to indemnify those 
who acted under the dispensing power, the 
recognition of its legality was at least a wan- 
ton insult to the Constitution, and appeared 
to betray a wish to reserve that power for 
further and more fatal measures. The dis- 
pensation which had been granted to the 
incumbent of Putney showed the facility 
with which such a prerogative might be 
employed to elude the whole proviso of the 
proposed bill in favour of the Established 
Church. It contained no confirmation of the 
King's promises to protect the endowments 
of the Protestant clergy : and instead of com- 
prehending, as all wise laws should do, the 
means of its own execution, it would have 
facilitated the breach of its own most im- 
portant enactments. If it had been adopted 
by the next Parliament, another still more 
compliant would have found it easier, instead 
of more difficult, to establish the Catholic 
religion, and to abolish toleration. This 
essential defect was confessed rather than 
obviated by the impracticable remedies re- 
commended in a tract.*' which, for the secu- 
rity of the great charter of religious liberty 
about to be passed, proposed " that every 
man in the kingdom should, on obtaining the 
age of twenty-one, swear to observe it; that 
no Peer or Commoner should take his seat 
in either House of Parliament till he had 
taken the like oath ; and that all sheriffs, or 
others, making false returns, or Peers or 
Commoners, presuming to sit in either House 
without taking the oath, or who should move 
or mention any thing in or out of Parliament 
that might tend to the violating or altering 
the liberty of conscience, should be hanged 
on a gallows made out of the timber of his 
own house, which was for that purpose to 
be demolished. "t It seems not to have 
occurred to this writer that the Parliament 
whom he thus proposes to. restrain, might 
have begun their operations by repealing his 
oenal laws. 

Notwithstanding the preparations for con- 
vening a Parliament, it was not believed, by 
the most discerning and well-informed, that 
any determination was yet adopted on the 
subject. Lord Nottingham early thought 
that, in case of a general election, " few Dis- 
senters would be chosen, and that such as 
were, would not, in present circumstances, 
concur in the repeal of so much as the penal 
laws; because to do it might encourage the 
Papists to greater attempts."! Lord Halifax, 



* A New Test instead of (he Old One. By 
G. S. Licensed 24th March, 1688. 

t The precedent alleged for this provision is the 
decree of Darius, for rebuilding the temple of 
Jerusalem: — "And I have made a decree that 
whoever shall alter this word, let timber be pulled 
down from his house, and being set up, let him 
be hanged thereon." — Ezra, chap. vi. v. 11. 

t Lord Nottingham to the Prince of Orange, 
2d Sept. 1687, — Dalrymple, app. to book v. 



at a later period, observes, " that the mode- 
rate Catholics acted reluctantly; that the 
Court, finding their expectations not answer- 
ed by the Dissenters, had thoughts of return- 
ing to their old friends the High Churchmen j 
and that he thought a meeting of Parliament 
impracticable, and continued as much an 
unbeliever for October, as he had before been 
for April."* In private, he mentioned, as 
one of the reasons of his opinion, that some 
of the courtiers had declined to take up a 
bet for five hundred pounds, which he had 
offered, that the Parliament would not meet 
in October; and that, though they liked him 
very little, they liked his money as well as 
any other man's. f 

The perplexities and variations of the 
Court were multiplied by the subtile and 
crooked policy of Sunderland, who, though 
willing to purchase his continuance in office 
by unbounded compliance, was yet extreme- 
ly solicitous, by a succession of various pro- 
jects and reasonings adapted to the circum- 
stances of each ^noment, to divert the mind 
of James as long as possible from assembling 
Parliament, or entering on a foreign war, or 
committing any acts of unusual severity or 
needless insult to the Constitution, or under- 
taking any of those bold or even decisive 
measures, the consequences of which to his 
own power, or to the throne of his sove- 
reign, no man could foresee. Sunderland 
had gained every object of ambition : he 
could only, lose by change, and instead of 
betraying James by violent counsels, he ap- 
pears to have better consulted his own inte- 
rest, by offering as prudent advice to him as 
he could venture without the risk of incur- 
ring the royal displeasure. He might lose 
his greatness by hazarding too good counsel, 
and he must lose it if his master was ruined. 
Thus placed between two precipices, and 
winding his course between them, he could 
find safety only by sometimes approaching 
one, and sometimes the other. Another cir- 
cumstance contributed to augment the seem- 
ing inconsistencies of the minister: — he was 
sometimes tempted to deviate from his own 
path by the pecuniary gratifications which, 
after the example of Charles and James, he 
clandestinely received from Erance ; — an in- 
famous practice, in that age very prevalent 
among European statesmen, and regarded 
by many of them as little more than forming 
part of the perquisites of office. t It will ap- 
pear in the sequel that, like his master, he 
received French money only for doing what 
he otherwise desired to do ; and that it rather 
induced him to quicken or retard, to enlarge 
or contract, than substantially to alter his 
measures. But though he was too prudent 
to hazard the power which produced all his 
emolument for a single gratuity, yet this 
dangerous practice must have multiplied the 

* Lord Halifax to the Prince of Orange, 12th 
April, 1688. — Dalrymple, app. to book v. 

t Johnstone, 27ih Feb.— MS. 

t D'Avaux, passim. See Lettres de De Witt, 
vol. iv., and Ellis, History of the Iron Mask. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



355 



windings of his course ; and from these de- 
viations arose, in some measure, the fluc- 
tuating counsels and varying language of 
the Government of which he was the chief. 
The divisions of the Court, and the variety 
of tempers and opinions by which he was 
surrounded, added new difficulties to the 
game which he played. This was a more 
simple one at first, while he coalesced with 
the Queen and the then united Catholic 
party, and professed moderation as his sole 
defence against Rochester and the Protestant 
Tories; but after the defeat of the latter, and 
the dismissal of their chief, divisions began 
to show themselves among the victorious 
Catholics, which gradually widened as the 
moment of decisive action seemed to ap- 
proach. It was then* that he made an effort 
•to strengthen himself by the revival of the 
office of Lord Treasurer in his own person; 
— a project in which he endeavoured to en- 
gage Father Petre by proposing that Jesuit 
to be his successor as Secretary of State, and 
in which he obtained the co-operation of Sir 
Nicholas Butler, a new convert, by suggest- 
ing that he should be Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer. The King, however, adhered to 
his determination that the treasury should 
be in commission notwithstanding the ad- 
vice of Butler, and the Queen declined to 
interfere in a matter where her husband ap- 
peared to be resolute. It should seem, from 
the account of this intrigue by James him- 
self, that Petre neither discouraged Sunder- 
land in his plan, nor supported it by the ex- 
erciSfe of his own ascendency over the mind 
of the King. 

In the spring of 1688, the Catholics formed 
three separate and unfriendly parties, whose 
favour it was not easy for a minister to pre- 
serve at the same time. The nobility and 
gentry of England were, as they continued 
to the last, adverse to those rash courses 
which honour obliged them apparently to 
support, but which they had always dreaded 
as dangerous to their sovereign and their re- 
ligion. Lords Powis, Bellasis, and Arundel. 
vainly laboured to inculcate their wise max- 
ims on the mind of James ; while the remains 
.of the Spanish influence, formerly so power- 
ful among British Catholics, were employed 
by the ambassador, Don Pedro Ronquillo, in 
support of this respectable party. Sunder- 
land, though he began, soon after his victory 
over Rochester, to moderate and temper the 
royal measures, was afraid of displeasing his 
impatient master by openly supporting them. 
The second party, which may be called the 
Papal, was that of the Nuncio, who had at 
first considered the Catholic aristocracy as 
lukewarm in the cause of their religion, but 
who, though he continued outwardly to coun- 
tenance all domestic efforts for the advance- 

* " A little before Christmas." — Life of James 
IT. vol. ii. p. 131 ; passages quoted from James' 
Memoirs. The King's own Memoirs are always 
deserving of great consideration, and in unmixed 
cases of fact are, 1 am willing to hope, generally 
conclusive. 



ment of the faith, became at length more 
hostile to the connection of James w r ith 
France, than zealous for the speedy accom- 
plishment of that Prince's ecclesiastical po- 
licy in England. To him the Queen seems 
to nave adhered, both from devotion to Rome, 
and from that habitual apprehension of the 
displeasure of the House of Austria which 
an Italian princess naturally entertained to- 
wards the masters of Lombardy and Na- 
ples.* When hostility towards Holland was 
more openly avowed, and when Louis XIV., 
no longer content with acquiescence, began 
to require from England the aid of arma- 
ments and threats, if not co-operation in war, 
Sunderland and the Nuncio became more 
closely united, and both drew nearer to the 
more moderate party. The third, known by 
the name of the French or Jesuit parly, sup- 
ported by Ireland and the clergy, and pos- 
sessing the personal favour and confidence 
of the King, considered all delay in the ad- 
vancement of their religion as dangerous, 
and were devoted to France as the only ally 
able and willing to insure the success of 
their designs. Emboldened by the preg- 
nancy of the Queen, and by so signal a mark 
of favour as the introduction of Father Petre 
into the Council, — an act of folly which the 
moderate Catholics would have resisted, if 
the secret had not been kept from them till 
the appointment,! — they became impatient 
of Sunderland's evasion and procrastination, 
especially of his disinclination to all hostile 
demonstrations against Holland. Their agent, 
Skelton, the British minister at Paris, repre- 
sented the minister's policy to the French 
Government, as '■' a secret opposition to all 
measures against the interest of the Prince 
of Orange ;"t and though Barillon acquits' 
him of such treachery,^ it would seem that 
from that moment he ceased to enjoy the 
full confidence of the French party. 

It was with difficulty that at the beginning 
of the year Sunderland had prevailed on the 
majority of the Council to postpone the call- 
ing a Parliament till they should be strength- 
ened by the recall of the English troops from 
the Dutch service :l| and when, two months 
later, just before the delivery of the Queen, 
(in wdiich they would have the advantage of 
the expectation of a Prince of Wales,) the 
King and the majority of the Council declared 
for this measure, conformably to his policy of 
delaying decisive, and perhaps irretrievable 

* The King to Barillon, 2d June.— MS. Louis 
heard of this partiality from his ministers at Ma- 
drid and Vienna, and desired Barillon to insinuate 
to her that neither she nor her husband had any 
thing to hope from Spain. 

t The account of Petre's advancement by Dodd 
is a specimen of the opinion entertained by the 
secular clergy of the regulars, but especially of 
the Jesuits. 

t The King to Barillon, 11th Dec. 1687.— MS. 

§ Barillon to the King, 5th Jan. 1688.— MS. 

II Johnstone, 16th Jan. — MS. " Sidney believes 
that Sunderland has prevailed, after a great strug- 
gle, to dissuade the Council from a war or a Par- 
liament." 



356 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



steps, he again resisted it with success, on 
the ground that matters were not ripe, th^t 
it required much longer time to prepare the 
corporations, and that, if the Nonconformists 
in the Parliament should prove mutinous, an 
opposition so national would render the em- 
ployment of any other means more hazard- 
ous.* Sunderland owed his support to the 
Queen, who. together with the Nuncio, pro- 
tected him from the attack of Father Petre, 
who, after a considerable period of increasing 
estrangement, had now declared against him 
with violence. f In the meantime the French 
Government, which had hitherto affected 
impartiality in the divisions of the British 
Catholics, had made advances toPetre as he 
receded from Sunderland ; while the former 
had ; as long ago as January, declared in 
Council, that the King ought to be solicitous 
only for the friendship of France. J: James 
now desired Barillon to convey the assurances 
of his high esteem for the Jesuit ;§ and the 
ambassador undertook to consider of some 
more efficacious proof of respect to him, 
agreeably to the King's commands. II 

Henceforward the power of Sunderland 
was seen to totter. It was thought that he 
himself saw that it could not, even with the 
friendship of the Queen, stand long, since 
the French ambassador had begun to trim, 
and the whole French party leant against 
him.l Petre, through whom Sunderland for- 
merly had a hold on the Jesuit party, became 
now himself a formidable rival for power, 
and was believed to be so infatuated by am- 
bition as to pursue the dignity of a cardinal, 
that he might more easily become prime 
minister of England.** At a later period, 
Barclay, the celebrated Quaker, boasted of 
having reconciled Sunderland to Melfort, 
trusting that it would be the ruin of Petre ;tt 
and Sunderland then told the Nuncio that he 
considered it as the first principle of the 
King's policy to frame all his measures with 
a view to their reception by Parliament ;t t — 
a strong proof of the aversion to extreme 
measures, to which he afterwards adhered. 
A fitter opportunity will present itself here- 
after for relating the circumstances in which 
he demanded a secret gratuity from France, 
in addition to his pension from that Court of 
60,000 livres yearly (2500/.) ; of the skill 
with which Barillon beat down his demands, 



* D'Adda, 12th March.— MS. "II y avaient 
beaucoup d'intrigues et de cabales de coursur cela 
dirigees contre mi Lord Sunderland : la reine le 
soutient, etil aemporte." — Barillon, Mazure, His- 
toire de la Revolution, vol. ii. p. 399. Shrewsbury 
to the Prince of Orange (communicating the dis- 
union), 14th March, 1688. Dalrymple, app. to 
books v. and vi. 

t Van Citters, 9th April.— MS. 

X Barillon, ad Feb.— MS. 

$ The King to Barillon, 19th March.— MS. 

II Barillon, 29th March.— MS. 

IT Johnstone. 12th March and 2d April.— MS. 

** Lettre an Roi, 1 Aout, 1687, in the Depot des 
Affaires Etrangeres at Paris, not signed, but pro- 
bably from Bonrepos. 

tt Clarendon, Diary, 23d June. 

H D'Adda, 4th June.— MS. 



and made a bargain less expensive to his 
Government ; and of the address with which 
Sunderland claimed the bribe for measures 
on which he had before determined, — so that 
he might seem rather to have obtained it 
under false pretences, than to have been 
diverted by it from his own policy. It is 
impossible to trace clearly the serpentine 
course of an intriguing minister, whose opi- 
nions were at variance with his language, 
and whose craving passions often led him 
astray from his interest: but an attempt to 
discover it is necessary to the illustration of 
the government of James. In general, then, 
it seems to be clear that, from the beginning 
of 1687, Sunderland had struggled in secret 
to moderate the measures of the Govern- 
ment; and that it was not till the spring of 
1688, when he carried that system to the 
utmost, that the decay of his power became 
apparent. As Halifax had lost his office by 
liberal principles, and Sunderland had out- 
bidden Rochester for the King's favour, so 
Sunderland himself was now 7 on the eve of 
being overthrown by the influence of Petre, 
at a time when no successor of specious pre- 
tensions presented himself. He seems to 
have made one attempt to recover strength, 
by remodelling the Cabinet Council. For a 
considerable time the Catholic counsellors 
had been summoned separately, together 
with Sunderland himself, on all confidential 
affairs, while the more ordinary business only 
.was discussed in the presence of the Protest- 
ants: — thus forming two Cabinets; one os- 
tensible, the other secret. He now proposed 
to form them into one, in order to remove the 
jealousy of the Protestant counsellors, and 
to encourage them to promote the King's 
designs. To this united Cabinet the affairs 
of Scotland and Ireland were to be commit- 
ted, which had been separately administered 
before,' with manifest disadvantage to uni- 
formity and good order. Foreign affairs, and 
others requiring the greatest secrecy, were 
still to be reserved to a smaller number. 
The public pretences for this change were 
specious : but the object was to curb the 
power of Petre, who now ruled without con- 
trol in a secret cabal of his own communion 
and selection.* 

The party which had now the undisputed 
ascendant were denominated "Jesuits." as 
a term of reproach, by the enemies of that 
famous society in the Church of Rome, as 
w-ell as by those among the Protestant com- 
munions. A short account of their origin 
and character may facilitate a faint concep- 
tion of the admiration, jealousy, fear, and 
hatred, — the profound submission or fierce 
resistance, — which that formidable name 
once inspired. Their institution originated 
in pure zeal for religion, glowing in the breast 
of Loyola, a Spanish soldier, — a man full of 
imagination and sensibility, — in a country 
where wars, rather civil than foreign, waged 
against unbelievers for ages, had rendered a 



D'Adda, 23d April.— MS. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



357 



passion for spreading the Catholic faith a 
national point of honour, and blended it with 
the pursuit of glory as well as with the me- 
mory of past renown. The legislative fore- 
thought of his successors gave form and order 
to the product of enthusiasm, and bestowed 
law r s and institutions on their society which 
were admirably fitted to its various ends.* 
Having arisen in the age of the Reformation, 
they naturally became the champions of the 
Church against her new enemies, — and in 
that also of the revival of letters, instead of 
following the example of the unlettered 
monks, who decried knowledge as the mo- 
ther of heresy, they joined in the general 
movement of mankind ; they cultivated polite 
literature with splendid success; they were 
the earliest and, perhaps, most extensive re- 
formers of European education, which, in 
their schools, made a larger stride than it has 
done at any succeeding moment:! and, by 
the just reputation of their learning, as well 
as by the weapons with which it armed them, 
they were enabled to carry on a vigorous 
contest against the most learned impugners 
of the authority of the Church. Peculiarly 
subjected to the See of Rome by their con- 
stitution, they became ardently devoted to 
its highest pretensions, in order to maintain a 
monarchical power, the necessity of which 
they felt for concert, discipline, and energy 
in their theological warfare. 

While the nations of the Peninsula hasten- 
ed with barbaric chivalry to spread religion 
by the sword in the newly explored regions 
of the East and West, the Jesuits alone, the 
missionaries of that age. either repaired or 
atoned for the evils caused by the misguided 
zeal of their countrymen. In India, they 
suffered martyrdom with heroic constancy.! 
They penetrated through the barrier which 



* Originally consisting of seven men, the so- 
ciety possessed, at the end of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, one thousand five hundred colleges, and con- 
tained twenty-two thousand avowed members. 
Parts of their constitution were allowed (by Paul 
III ) to be kept and to be altered, without the 
privity of the Pope himself. The simple institu- 
tion of lay brethren, combined with the privilege 
of secrecy, afforded the means of enlisting power- 
ful individuals, among whom Louis XIV. and 
James II. are generally numbered. 

+ " For education," says Bacon, within fifty 
years of the institution of the Order, " consult the 
schools of the Jesuits. Nothing hitherto tried in 
practice surpasses them.'' — DeAugment. Scient. 
lib. vi. cap. 4. " Education, that excellent part of 
ancient discipline, has been, in some sorts, revived 
of late times in the colleges of the Jesuits, of 
whom, in regard of this and of some other points 
of human learning and moral matters, I may say, 
" Talis cum sis utinam noster esses." — Advance- 
ment of Learning, book i. Such is the disinter- 
ested testimony of the wisest of men to the merit 
of the Jesuits, to the unspeakable importance of 
reforming education, and to the infatuation of those 
who, in civilized nations, attempt to resist new 
opinions by mere power, without calling in aid 
such a show of reason, if not the whole substance 
of reason, as cannot be maintained without a part 
of the substance. 

t See the Lettres Edifiantes, &c. 



Chinese policy opposed to the entrance of 
strangers, — cultivating the most difficult of 
languages with such success as to compose 
hundreds of volumes in it ; and, by the pub- 
lic utility of their scientific acquirements, 
obtained toleration, patronage, and personal 
honours, from that jealous government. The 
natives of America, who generally felt the 
comparative superiority of the European race 
only in a more rapid or a more gradual de- 
struction, and to whom even the excellent 
Quakers dealt out little more than penurious 
justice, were, under the paternal rule of the 
Jesuits, reclaimed from savage manners, 
and instructed in the arts and duties of civi- 
lized life. At the opposite point of society, 
they were fitted by their release from con- 
ventual life, and their allowed intercourse 
with the world, for the perilous office of 
secretly guiding the conscience of princes. 
They maintained the highest station as a 
religions body in the literature of Catholic 
countries. No other association ever sent 
forth so many disciples who reached such 
eminence in departments so various and un- 
like. While some of their number ruled 
the royal penitents at Versailles or the Escu- 
rial, others were teaching the use of the 
spade and the shuttle to the naked savages 
of Paraguay ; a third body daily endangered 
their lives in an attempt to convert the Hin- 
dus to Christianity; a fourth carried on the 
controversy against the Reformers : a portion 
were at liberty to cultivate polite literature; 
while the greater part continued to be em- 
ployed either in carrying on the education 
of Catholic Europe, or in the government of 
their society, and in ascertaining the ability 
and disposition of the junior members, so 
that well-qualified men might be selected 
for the extraordinary variety of offices in their 
immense commonwealth. The most famous 
constitutionalists, the most skilful casuists, 
the ablest schoolmasters, the most celebrated 
professors, the best teachers of the humblest 
mechanical arts, the missionaries who could 
most bravely encounter martyrdom, or who 
with most patient skill could infuse the rudi- 
ments of religion into the minds of ignorant 
tribes or prejudiced nations, were the growth 
of their fertile schools. The prosperous ad- 
ministration of such a society for two cen- 
turies, is probably the strongest proof afford- 
ed from authentic history that an artificially- 
formed system of government and education 
is capable, under some circumstances, of 
accomplishing greater things than the gene- 
ral experience of it would warrant us in ex- 
pecting. 

Even here, however, the materials were 
supplied, and the first impulse given by en- 
thusiasm ; and in this memorable instance 
the defects of such a system are discover- 
able. The whole ability of the members 
being constantly, exclusively, and intensely 
directed to the various purposes of their 
Order, their minds had not the leisure, or 
liberty, necessary for works of genius, or 
even for discoveries in science, — to say no- 



358 



MACKINTOSHES MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



thing of the original speculations in philoso- 
phy which are interdicted by implicit faith. 
That great society, which covered the world 
for two hundred years, has no names which 
can be opposed to those of Pascal and Ra- 
cine, produced by the single community of 
Port Royal, persecuted as it was during the 
greater part of its short existence. But this 
remarkable peculiarity amounts perhaps to 
little more than that they were more emi- 
m nent in active than in contemplative life. 
A far more serious objection is the manifest 
tendency of such a system, while it produces 
the precise excellences aimed at by its mode 
of cultivation,, to raise up all the neighbour- 
ing evils with a certainty and abundance, — 
a size and malignity. — unknown to the freer 
growth of nature. The mind is narrowed by 
the constant concentration of the understand- 
ing ; and those who are habitually intent on 
one object learn at last to pursue it at the 
expense of others equally or more important. 
The Jesuits, the reformers of education, 
sought to engross it, as well as to stop it at 
their own point. Placed in the front of the 
battle against the Protestants, they caught a 
more than ordinary portion of that theolo- 
gical hatred against their opponents which 
so naturally springs up where the greatness 
of the community, the fame of the contro- 
versialist, and the salvation of mankind seem 
to be at stake. Affecting more independence 
in their missions than other religious orders, 
they were the formidable enemies of episco- 
pal jurisdiction, and thus armed against them- 
selves the secular clergy, especially in Great 
Britain, where they were the chief mission- 
aries. Intrusted with the irresponsible guid- 
ance of Kings, they were too often betrayed 
into a compliant morality, — excused probably 
to themselves, by the great public benefits 
which they might thus obtain, by the nume- 
rous temptations which seemed to palliate 
royal vices, and by the real difficulties of 
determiniii"', in many instances, whether 
there was more danger of deterring such 
persons from virtue by unreasonable auste- 
rity, or of alluring them into vice by unbe- 
coming relaxation, This difficulty is indeed 
so great, that casuistry has, in general, vi- 
brated between these extremes, rather than 
rested near the centre. To exalt the Papal 
power they revived the scholastic doctrine 
of the popular origin of government, — that 
rulers might be subject to the people, while 
the people themselves, on all questions so 
difficult as those which relate to the limits 
of obedience, were to listen with reverential 
submission to the judgment of the Sovereign 
Pontiff, the common pastor of sovereigns and 
subjects, and the unerring oracle of humble 
Christians in all cases of perplexed con- 
science.* The ancient practice of excom- 

* It is true that Mariana (De Rege el Regis In- 
stitutione) only contends for the right of the people 
to depose sovereigns, without building the autho- 
rity oi the Pope on that principle, as the school- 
men have expressly done ; but his manifest appro- 
bation of the assassination of Henry III. by Cle- 



munication, which, in its original principle, 
was no more than the expulsion from a com- 
munity of an individual who did not observe 
its rules, being stretched so far as to inter- 
dict intercourse with offenders, and, by con- 
sequence, to suspend duty towards them, 
became, in the middle age, the means of ab- 
solving nations from obedience to excommu- 
nicated sovereigns.* Under these specious 
colours both Popes and Councils had been 
guilty of alarming encroachments on the 
civil authority. The Church had, indeed, 
never solemnly adopted the principle of these 
usurpations into her rule of faith or of life, 
though many famous doctors gave them a 
dangerous countenance : but she had not 
condemned or even disavowed those equally 
celebrated divines who resisted them : and 
though the Court of Rome undoubtedly pa- 
tronised opinions so favourable to its power, 
the Catholic Church, which had never pro- 
nounced a collective judgment on them, was 
still at liberty to disclaim them, without 
abandoning her haughty claim of exemption 
from fundamental error. t 

On the Jesuits, as the most staunch of the 
polemics who struggled to exalt the Church 
above the State, and who ascribed to the 
Supreme Pontiff an absolute power over the 
Church, the odium of these doctrines princi- 
pally fell. J: Among Reformed nations, and 
especially hi Great Britain, the greatest of 
them, the whole Order were regarded as in- 
cendiaries who were perpetually plotting the 
overthrow of all Protestant governments, and 
as immoral sophists who employed their 
subtle casuistry to silence the remains of 
conscience in tyrants of their own persua- 
sion. Nor was the detestation of Protestants 
rewarded by general popularity in Catholic 
countries: all other regulars envied their 
greatness; the universities dreaded their ac- 
quiring a monopoly of education ; while mo- 
narchs the most zealously Catholic, though 
they often favoured individual Jesuits, looked 
with fear and hatred on a society which 
would reduce them to the condition of vas- 
sals of the priesthood. In France, the ma- 
gistrates, who preserved their integrity and 
dignity in the midst of general servility, 
maintained a more constant conflict with 
these formidable adversaries of the inde- 
pendence of the State and the Church. The 
Kings of Spain and Portugal envied their 
well-earned authority, in the missions of 



ment, a fanatical partisan of the League, suffi- 
ciently discloses his purpose. See La Mennais, 
La Religion considered dans ses Rapports avec 
l'Ordre politique. (Paris, 1826.) 

* Fleury, Diseours sur l'Hisloire Ecclesiastique, 
No. iii. sect. 18. 

t " II est vrai que Gregoire VII. n'a jamais fait 
aucune decision sur ce point. Dieu ne Vapas per- 
mis." — Ibid. It is evident that if such a determi- 
nation had, in Fleury's opinion, subsequently been 
pronounced by the Church, the last words of this 
passage would have been unreasonable. 

t Bayle, Dictionnaire Historique, &c, article 
" Bellarmine," — who is said by that unsuspected 
judge to have had the best pen for controversy of 
any man of that age. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



359 



Paraguay and California, over districts which 
they had conquered from the wilderness. 
The impenetrable mystery in which a part 
of their constitution was enveloped, though 
it strengthened their association, and secured 
the obedience of its members, was an irre- 
sistible temptation to abuse power, and justi- 
fied the apprehensions of temporal sove- 
reigns, while it opened an unbounded scope 
for heinous accusations. Even in the eigh- 
teenth century, when many of their peculi- 
arities had become faint, and when they 
were perhaps little more than the most ac- 
complished, opulent, and powerful of religi- 
ous orders, they were charged with spread- 
ing secret confraternities over France.* The 
greatness of the body became early so in- 
vidious as to be an obstacle to the advance- 
ment of their members ; and it was generally 
believed that if Bellarmine had belonged to 
any other than the most powerful Order in 
Christendom, he would have been raised to 
the chair of Peter. t The Court of Rome 
itself, for whom they had sacrificed all, 
dreaded auxiliaries so potent that they might 
easily become masters; and these cham- 
pions of the Papal monarchy were regarded 
with jealousy by Popes whose policy they 
aspired to dictate or control. But temporary 
circumstances at this time created a more 
than ordinary alienation between them. 

In their original character of a force raised 
for the defence of the Church against the 
Lutherans, the Jesuits always devoted them- 
selves to the temporal sovereign who was at 
the head of the Catholic party. They were 
attached to Philip II., at the time when Sex- 
tus V. dreaded his success: and they now 
placed their hopes on Louis XIV., in spite of 
his patronage, for a time, of the independent 
maxims of the Galilean Church. 1 On the 
other hand, Odeschalchi, who governed the 
Church under the name of Innocent XI.. 
feared the growing power of France, resent- 
ed the independence of the Gallican Church, 
and was, to the last degree, exasperated by 
the insults offered to him in his capital by 
the command of Louis. He was born in the 
Spanish province of Lombardy, and. as an 
Italian sovereign, he could not be indifferent 
to the bombardment of Genoa, and to the 
humiliation of that respectable republic, in 
the required public submission of the Doge 
at Versailles. As soon then as James be- 
came the pensioner and creature of Louis, the 
resentments of Odeschalchi prevailed over 
his zeal for the extension of the Church. 



* Monilosier Memoire a consulter (Paris, 1826), 
pp. 20, 22, — quoted only to prove that such accu- 
sations were made. 

t Bayle, article "Bellarmine." 

t Bayle, Nouvelles de la Republique des Let- 
tres, April, 5686. " Aujourd'hui plus attaches a 
la France qu'a l'Espagne." — Ibid. Nov. They 
were charged with giving secret intelligence to 
Louis XIV. of the state of the Spanish Nether- 
lands. The French Jesuits suspended for a year 
the execution of the Pope's order to remove 
Father Maimbourg from their society, in conse- 
quence of a direction from the King. 



The Jesuits had treated him and those of his 
predecessors w T ho hesitated between them 
and their opponents with offensive liberty ;* 
but while they bore sway at Versailles and 
St. James', they were, on that account, less 
obnoxious to the Roman Court. Men of wit 
remarked at Paris, that things would never 
go on well till the Pope became a Catho- 
lic, and King James a Huguenot. f Such 
were the intricate and dark combinations of 
opinions, passions, and interests which placed 
the Nuncio in opposition to the most potent 
Order of the Church, and completed the 
alienation of the British nation from James, 
by bringing on the party which now ruled 
his councils, the odious and terrible name 
of Jesuits. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Declaration of Indulgence renewed. — Order 
that it should be read in Churches. — Delibe- 
rations of the Clergy. — Petition of the 
Bishops to the King. — Their examination 
before the Privy Council, Committal, Trial, 
and Acquittal. — Reflections. — Conversion of 
Sunderland. — Birth of the Prince of Wales. 
— State of Affairs. 

When the changes in the secret councils 
of the King had rendered them most irre- 
concilable to the national sentiments, and 
when the general discontent produced by 
progressive encroachment had quietly grown 
into disaffection, nothing was wanting to the 
least unfortunate result of such an alienation, 
but that an infatuated Government should ex- 
hibit to the public thus disposed one of those 
tragic spectacles of justice violated, of reli- 
gion menaced, of innocence oppressed, of 
unarmed dignity outraged, with all the con- 
spicuous solemnities of abused law, in the 
persons of men of exalted rank and venerated 
functions who encounter wrongs and indigni- 
ties with mild intrepidity. Such scenes, per- 
formed before a whole nation, revealed to 
each man the hidden thoughts of his fellow 
citizens, added the warmth of personal feel- 
ing to the strength of public principle, ani- 
mated patriotism by the pity and indignation 
which the sufferings of good men call forth, 
and warmed every heart by the reflection of 
the same passions from the hearts of thou- 
sands; until at length the enthusiasm of a 
nation, springing up in the bosoms of the 
generous and brave, breathed a momentary 
spirit into the most vulgar souls, and dragged 



* Ibid., Oct. and Nov. 
t " Le chevalier de Silleri, 
En parlant de ce Pape-ci, 
Souhaitoit, pour la paix publique, 
Qu'il se fut rendu Catholique, 
Et le roi Jacques Huguenot," 

La Fontaine to the Due de Vendome. 

Racine (Prologue to Esther) expresses the same 

sentiments in a milder form : — 

" Et I'enfer, couvrant tout de ses vapeursfunebres, 

Sur les yeux les plus saints a jete les tenebres." 



360 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



into its service the herd of the selfish, the 
cold, the mean, and the cowardly. The com- 
bustibles were accumulated) a spark was 
only wanting to kindle the flame. Accidents 
in themselves trivial, seem on this occasion, 
as inother times and countries, to have filled 
up the measure of provocation. In such a 
govern meat as that of James, formed of ad- 
verse parties, more intent on weakening or 
Blipplanting each other than on securing their 
common foundation, every measure was too 
much estimated by its bearing on these un- 
avowed objects, to allow a calm considera- 
tion of its effect on the interest or even on 
the temper of the public. 

On the 27th of April, the King republished 
his Declaration of the former year for Lib- 
erty of Conscience , — a measure, apparently 
insignificant,* which was probably proposed 
by Sunderland, to indulge his master in a 
harmless show of firmness, which might di- 
vert him from rasher councils.! To this 
Declaration a supplement was annexed, de- 
claring, that the King was confirmed in his 
purpose by the numerous addresses which 
had assured him of the national concurrence ; 
that he had removed all civil and military 
officers wdio had refused to co-operate with 
him; and that he trusted that the people 
would do their part, by the choice of fit 
members to serve in Parliament, which he 
was resolved to assemble in November " at 
farthest/' This last, and only important 
part of the Proclamation, was promoted by 
the contending parties in the Cabinet with 
opposite intentions. The moderate Catho- 
lics, and Penn, whose fault was only an un- 
seasonable zeal for a noble principle, desired 
a Parliament from a hope, that if its convo- 
cation w r ere not too long delayed, it might 
produce a compromise, in which the King 
might for the time be contented with an 
universal toleration of worship. The Jesuiti- 
cal party also desired a Parliament ; but it 
was because they hoped that it would pro- 
duce a final rupture, and a recurrence to 
those more vigorous means which the age of 
the King now required, and the safety of 
which the expected birth of a Prince of 
Wales appeared to warrant.! Sunderland 
acquiesced in the insertion of this pledge, 
because he hoped to keep the violent in 
check by the fear of the Parliament, and 
partly, also, because he by no means had 
determined to redeem the pledge. '-This 
language is held," said he to Barillon (who 
was alarmed at the sound of a Parliament), 
" rather to show, that Parliament will not 
meet for six months, than that it will be then 
assembled, which must depend on the pub- 
lic temper at that time."§ For 'so far, it 

* " The Declaration, so long spoken of, is pub- 
lished. As nothing is said more than last year, 
politicians cannot understand the reason of so ill- 
umed a measure." — Van Citters, 11th May. (Se- 
cret Despatch.) MS. 

t Barillon, 6th May.— MS. 

t Burnett, vol. iii. p. 211. 

$ Barillon, 13th May.— MS. 



seems, did this ingenious statesman carry 
his system of liberal interpretation, that he 
employed words in the directly opposite 
sense to that in which they were understood. 
So jarring were the motives from which this 
Declaration proceeded, and so opposite the 
constructions of which its authors represent- 
ed it to be capable. Had no other step, 
however, been taken but the publication, it 
is not probable that it would have been at- 
tended by serious consequences. 

But in a week afterwards, an Order was 
made by the King in Council, commanding 
the Declaration to be read at the usual time 
of divine service, in all the churches in Lon- 
don on the 20th and 27th of May, and in all 
those in the country on the 3d and 10th of 
June.* Who was the adviser of this Order, 
which has acquired S*uch importance from its 
immediate effects, has not yet been ascer- 
tained. It was publicly disclaimed by Sun- 
derland.! but at a time which would have 
left no value to his declaration, but what it 
might derive from being uncontradicted ; and 
it was agreeable to the general tenor of his 
policy. It now appears, however, that he 
and other counsellors disavowed it at the 
time; and they seem to have been believed 
by keen and watchful observers. Though it 
was then rumoured that Petre had also disa- 
vowed this fatal advice, the concurrent tes- 
timony of all contemporary historians ascribe 
it to him ; and it accords well with the policy 
of that party, which received in some degree 
from his ascendant over them the unpopular 
appellation of Jesuits. It must be owned, 
indeed, that it was one of the numerous 
cases in which the evil effects of an impru- 
dent measure proved far greater than any 
foresight could have apprehended. There 
was considerable reason for expecting sub- 
mission from the Church. 

The clergy had very recently obeyed a 
simdar order in two obnoxious instances. In 
compliance with an Order made in Council 
by Charles II. (officiously suggested to him, 
it is said, by Sancroft himself),! they had 
read from their pulpits that Prince's apology 
for the dissolution of his two last Parliaments, 
severally arraigning various Parliamentary 
proceedings, and among others a Resolution 
of the House of Commons against the per- 
secution of the Protestant Dissenters. § The 
compliance of the clergy on this occasion 
was cheerful, though they gave offence by it 
to many of the people. I! Now, this seemed 
to be an open interference of the ecclesiasti- 
cal order in the fiercest contests of political 



* Letter from' the Hague, 28th March, 1689.— 
MS. 

t Johnstone, 23d May.— MS. " Sunderland, 
Mellont, Penn, and, they say, Petre, deny having 
advised this Declaration."" But Van Citters. (25th 
May), says that Petre is believed to have advised! 
the order. 

t Burnet, vol. iii. p. 212. 

i London Gazette, 7th — 11th April, 1681. 

II Kennet, History, vol. iii. p. 388. Echard, 
History of England, vol. iii. p. 625. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



361 



partiesj which the duty of undistinguishing 
obedience alone could warrant.* The same 
principle appears still more necessary to jus- 
tify their reading the Declaration of Charles 
on the Rye House Plotj published within 
a week of the death of Lord Russell; when 
it was indecent for the ministers of religion 
to promulgate their approval of bloodshed, 
and unjust to inflame prejudice against those 
who remained to be tried. This Declaration 
had been immediately preceded by the 
famous decree of the University of Oxford, 
and had been followed by a peiseeution of 
the Nonconformists, on whom it reflected as 
the authors of the supposed conspiracy. \ 
These examples of compliance appeared to 
De grounded on the undefined authority 
claimed by the King, as supreme ordinary, 
on the judicial determinations, which recog- 
nised his right in that character to make or- 
dinaries for the outward rule of the Church, § 
and on the rubric of the Book of Common 
Prayer (declared, by the Act of Uniformity, II 
to be a part of that statute), which directs. 
" that nothing shall be published in church 
Dy the minister, but what is prescribed by 
this book, or enjoined by the King." These 
reasonings and examples were at least suffi- 
cient to excuse the confidence with which 
some of the Royal advisers anticipated the 
obedience either of the whole Church, or of 
so large a majority as to make it safe and 
easy to punish the disobedient. 

A variation from the precedents of a seem- 
ingly slight and formal nature seems to have 
had some effect on the success of the mea- 
sure. The bishops were now, for the first 
time, commanded by the Order published in 
the Gazette to distribute the Declaration in 
their dioceses, in order to its being read by 
the clergy. Whether the insertion of this 
unusual clause was casual, or intended to 
humble the bishops, it is now difficult to 
conjecture : it was naturally received and 
represented in the most offensive sense.T It 
fixed the eyes of the whole nation on the 
prelates, rendering the conduct of their clergy 
visibly dependent solely on their determina- 
tion, and thus concentrating, on a small num- 



* It was accompanied by a letter from the King 
to Sancroft, which seems to imply a previous usage 
in such cases. " Our will is, that you give such 
directions as have been usual in such cases for the 
reading of our said Declaration." — Kennet, supra. 
Note from Lambeth MSS. D'Oyley, Life of 
Sancroft, vol. i. p. 253. "Now," says Ralph, 
(vol. i. p. 590), " the cry of Church and King was 
echoed from one side of the kingdom to the other." 
Immediately after began the periodical libels of 
L'Estrange, and the invectives against Parliament, 
under the form of loyal addresses. 

t London Gazette, 2d— 6th August, 1683. Ken- 
net, vol. iii. p. 408. Echard, vol. iii. p. 695. 

t This fact is reluctantly admitted by Roger 
North. Examen. p. 369. 

$ Cro. Jac. p. 87. 

II 14 Car. II. chap. 4. 

If Van Citters, 15th— 25th May. MS. One 
of the objections was, that the Order was not 
transmitted in the usual and less ostentatious man- 
ner, through the Primate, as in 1681. 
46 



ber, the dishonour of submission which would 
have been lost by dispersion among the 
whole body. So strongly did the belief that 
insult was intended prevail, that Petre, to 
whom it was chiefly ascribed, was said to 
have declared it in the gross and contumeli- 
ous language used of old, by a barbarous in- 
vader, to the deputies of a besieged city.* 
But though the menace be imputed to him 
by most of his contemporaries,! yet, as they 
were all his enemies, and as no ear-witness 
is quoted, we must be content to be doubtful 
whether he actually uttered the offensive 
words, or was only so generally imprudent 
as to make it easily so believed. 

The first effect of this Order was to place 
the prelates who were then in the capital or 
its neighbourhood in a situation of no small 
perplexity. They must have been still more 
taken by surprise than the more moderate 
ministers ; and, in that age of slow convey- 
ance and rare publication, they were allowed 
only sixteen days from the Order, and thir- 
teen from its official publication^ to ascertain 
the sentiments of their brethren and of their 
clergy, without the knowledge of which their 
determination, whatever it was, might pro- 
mote that division which it was one of the 
main objects of their enemies, by this mea- 
sure, to excite. Resistance could be formida- 
ble only if it were general. It is one of the 
severest tests of human sagacity to call for 
instantaneous judgment from a few leaders 
when they have not support enough to be 
assured of the majority of their adherents. 
Had the bishops taken a single step without 
concert, they would have been assailed by 
charges of a pretension to dictatorship, — 
equally likely to provoke the proud to deser- 
tion, and to furnish the cowardly with a 
pretext for it. Their difficulties were in- 
creased by the character of the most distin- 
guished laymen whom it was fit to consult. 
Rochester was no longer trusted : Clarendon 
was zealous, but of small judgment : and 
both Nottingham, the chief of their party, 
and Halifax, with whom they were now 
compelled to coalesce, hesitated at the mo- 
ment of decision. § 

The first body whose judgment was to be 
ascertained was the clergy of London, among 
whom were, at that time, the lights and 
ornaments of the Church. They at first 
ventured only to converse and correspond 
privately with each other. || A meeting be- 
* 

* Rabshekah, the Assyrian general, to the offi- 
cers of Hezekiah, 2 Kings, xviii. 27. 

t Burnet, Echard, Oldmixon, Ralph. The 
earliest printed statement of this threat is proba- 
bly in a pamphlet, called, " An Answer from a 
Country Clergyman to the Letter of his Brother 
in the City" (Dr. Sherlock), which must have 
been published in June, 1668. — Baldwin's Farther 
State Tracts, p. 314. (London, 1692.) 

t London Gazette, 7th April. 

§ " Halifax and Nottingham wavered at first, 
which had almost ruined the business." — John- 
stone, 27th May. MS. 

II Van Citters, 28th May. (Secret Despatch.)— 
MS. 

2F 



362 



MACKINTOSH ; S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



came necessary, and was hazarded. A di- 
versity of opinions prevailed. It was urged 
on one side that a refusal was inconsistent 
with the professions and practice of the 
Church; that it would provoke the King to 
desperate extremities, expose the country to 
civil confusions, and be represented to the 
Dissenters as a proof of the incorrigible in- 
tolerance of the Establishment : that the 
reading of a Proclamation implied no assent 
to its contents ; and that it would be pre- 
sumption in the clergy to pronounce a judg- 
ment against the legality of the Dispensing 
Power, which the competent tribunal had 
already adjudged to be lawful. Those of 
better spirit answered, or might have an- 
swered, that the danger of former examples 
of obsequiousness was now so visible that 
they were to be considered as warnings 
rather than precedents; that compliance 
would bring on them command after com- 
mand, till at last another religion would be 
established ; that the reading, unnecessary 
for the purpose of publication, would be un- 
derstood as an approval of the Declaration 
by the contrivers of the Order, and by the 
body of the people ; that the Parliamentary 
condemnations of the Dispensing Power were 
a sufficient reason to excuse them from a 
doubtful and hazardous act ; that neither 
conscience nor the more worldly principle of 
honour would suffer them to dig the grave 
of the Protestant Church, and to desert the 
cause of the nobility, the gentry, and the 
whole nation ; and finally, that in the most 
unfavourable event, it was belter to fall then 
under the King's displeasure, when support- 
ed by the consolation of having fearlessly 
performed their duty, than to fall a little 
later unpitied and despised, amid the curses 
of that people whom their compliance had 
ruined. From such a fall they would rise 
no more.* One of those middle courses 
was suggested which is very apt to captivate 
a perplexed assembly : — it was proposed to 
gain time, and smooth a way to a compro- 
mise, by entreating the King to revert to the 
ancient methods of communicating his com- 
mands to the Church. The majority ap- 
peared at first to lean towards submission, or 
evasion, which was only disguised and de- 
ferred submission; when, happily, a decisive 
answer was produced to the most plausible 
argument of the compliant party. Some of 
the chief ministers and laymen among the 
Nonconformist earnestly besought the clergy 
not to judge tnem by a handful of their num- 
• ber who had been gained by the Court, but 
to be assured that, instead of being alienated 
from the Church, they would be drawn closer 
to her, by her making a stand for religion 
and liberty.! A clergyman present read a 
note of these generous declarations, which 
he was authorized by the Nonconformists to 
exhibit to the meeting. The independent 
portion of the clergy made up, by zeal and 

* Sherlock's " Letter from a Gentleman in the 
City to a Friend in the Country. "-Baldwin, p. 309. 
t Johnstone, 18th May,— MS. 



activity, for their inferiority in numbers. 
Fatal concession, however, seemed to be at 
hand, when the spirit of an individual, mani- 
fested at a critical moment, contributed to 
rescue his order from disgrace, and his coun- 
try from slavery. This person, whose fortu- 
nate virtue has hitherto remained unknown, 
was Dr. Edward Fowler, then incumbent of 
a parish in London, who, originally bred a 
Dissenter, had been slow to conform at the 
Restoration, was accused of the crime of 
Whiggism* at so dangerous a period as that 
of Monmouth's riot, and, having been pro- 
moted to the See of Gloucester, combined so 
much charity with his unsuspected oithodoxy 
as to receive the last breath of Firmin, the 
most celebrated Unitarian of that period. t 
When Fowler perceived that the courage 
of his brethren faltered, he addressed them 
shortly: — "I must be plain. There has 
been argument enough : more only will heat 
us. Let every man now say l Yea' or 'Nay.' 
I shall be sorry to give occasion to schism, 
but I cannot in conscience read the Declara- 
tion ; for that reading would be an exhortation 
to my people to obey commands which I 
deem unlawful." Stillingfleet declared, on 
the authority of lawyers, that reading the 
Declaration would be an offence, as the pub- 
lication of an unlawful document; but ex- 
cused himself from being the first subscriber 
to an agreement not to comply, on the ground 
that he was already proscribed for the pro- 
minent part which he had taken in the con- 
troversy against the Romanists. Patrick 
offered to be the first, if any man would 
second him ; and Fowler answered to the 
appeal which his own generosity had called 
forth. t They were supported by Tillotson, 
though only recovering from an attack of 
apoplexy, and by Sherlock, who then atoned 
for the slavish doctrines of former times. 
The opposite party were subdued by this 
firmness, declaring that they would not 
divide the Church :'$ and the sentiments of 
more than fourscore of the London clergyll 
were made known to the Metropolitan. 

At a meeting at Lambeth, on Saturday, 
the 12th of May, where there were present, 
besides Sancroft himself, only the Earl of 
Clarendon, three bishops, Compton, Turner, 
and White, together with Tenison, it was 
resolved not to read the Declaration, to peti- 
tion the King that he would dispense with 
that act of obedience, and to entreat all the 
prelates within reach of London, to repair 
thither to the aid of their brethren .IT It was 
fit to wait a short time for the concurrence 
of these absent bishops. Lloyd of St. Asaph, 
late of Chichester, Ken of Bath and Wells, 
and Trelawney, quickly complied with the 

* Athenae Oxonienses, vol. ii. p. 1029. 
t Birch, Life of Tillotson, p. 320. 

I Kennet, vol. iii. p. 570, note. This narrative 
reconciles Johnsione, Van Citters, and Kennet. 

§ Johnstone, 23d May.— MS. 

II This victory was early communicated to the 
Dutch ambassador. Van Citters, 25th May.— MS. 

H Clarendon, 12th May. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



363 



summons; and were present at another and 
more decisive meeting at the archiepiscopal 
palace on Friday, the 18th, where, with the 
assent of Tdlotson. Stillingfleet, Patrick, Teni- 
son, Grove, and Sherlock, it was resolved, 
that a Petition, prepared and written by San- 
croft, should be forthwith presented to His 
Majesty. It is a calumny against the memory 
of these prelates to assert, that they post- 
poned their determination till within two 
days of the Sunday appointed for reading 
the Declaration, in order to deprive the King 
of time to retire from his purpose with dignity 
or decency : for we have seen that the period 
since the publication of the Order was fully 
occupied by measures for concert and co- 
operation ; and it would have been treachery 
to the Church and the kingdom to have sa- 
crificed any portion of time so employed to 
relieve their most formidable enemy.* The 
Petition, after setting forth that " their averse- 
ness to read the King's Declaration arose 
neither from want of the duty and obedience 
which the Church of England had always 
practised, nor from want of tenderness to 
Dissenters, to whom they were willing to 
come to such a temper as might be thought 
fit in Parliament and Convocation, but be- 
cause it was founded in a Dispensing Power 
declared illegal in Parliament ; and that they 
could not in prudence or conscience make 
themselves so far parties to it as the publi- 
cation of it in the church at the time of 
divine service must amount to in common 
and reasonable construction," concludes, by 
" humbly and earnestly beseeching His Ma- 
jesty not to insist on their distributing and 
reading the said Declaration." It is easy to 
observe the skill with which the Petition 
distinguished the case from the two recent 
examples of submission, in which the Royal 
declarations, however objectionable, con- 
tained no matter of questionable legality. 
Compton, being suspended, did not subscribe 
the Petition ; and Sancroft, having had the 
"honour to be forbidden the Court nearly two 
years, took no part in presenting it. Nor 
was it thought proper that the private di- 



* Life of James II., vol. ii. p. 158. But this is 
the statement, not of the King, but of Mr. Dic- 
conson the compiler, who might have been misled 
by the angry traditions of his exiled friends. A 
week is added to the delay, by referring the com- 
mencement of it to the Declaration of the 27th of 
April, instead of the Order of the 4th of May, 
which alone called on the bishops to deliberate. 
The same suppression is practised, and the same 
calumny insinuated, in "An Answer to the 
Bishops' Petition," published at the time. — So- 
mers' Tracts, vol. ix. p. 119. In the extract made, 
-either by Carte or Macpherson, an insinuation 
against the bishops is substituted for the bold 
charge made by Dicconson. ' ' The bishops' peti- 
tion on the 18th of May, against what they are to 
read on the 20th." — (Macpherson, Original Pa- 
pers, vol. i. p. 151.) But as throughout that inac- 
curate publication no distinction is made between 
what was written by James, and what was added 
by his biographer, the disgrace of the calumnious 
insinuation is unjustly thrown on the Kings' me- 
mory. 



vines, who were the most distinguished mem- 
bers of the meeting, should attend the pre- 
sentation. 

With no needless delay, six Bishops pro- 
ceeded to Whitehall about ten o'clock in the 
evening, — no unusual hour of audience at 
the accessible courts of Charles and James. 
They were remarked, as they came from 
the landing-place, by the watchful eyes of 
the Dutch ambassador,* who was not unin- 
formed of their errand. They had remained 
at the house of Lord Dartmouth, till Lloyd 
of St. Asaph, the boldest of their number, 
should ascertain when and where the King 
would receive them. He requested Lord 
Sunderland to read the Petition, and to ac- 
quaint the King with its contents, that His 
Majesty might not be surprised at it. The 
wary minister declined, but informed the 
King of the attendance of the Bishops, who 
were then introduced into the bedchamber.! 
When they had knelt down before the mo- 
narch, St. Asaph presented the Petition, pur- 
porting to be that "of the Archbishop of 
Canterbury, with divers suffragan bishops of 
his province, in behalf of themselves and 
several of their absent brethren, and of the 
clergy of their respective dioceses." The 
King, having been told by the Bishop of 
Chestet, that they would desire no more than 
a recurrence to the former practice of send- 
ing Declarations to chancellors and arch- 
deacons,! desired them to rise, and received 
them at first graciously, saying, on opening 
the Petition, "This is my Lord of Canter- 
bury's handwriting;" but when he read it 
over, and after he had folded it up, he spoke 
to them in another tone :§ — "This is a great 
surprise to me. Here are strange words. I 
did not expect this from you. This is a 
standard of rebellion." St. Asaph replied, 
"We have adventured our lives for Your 
Majesty, and would lose the last drop of our 
blood rather than lift up a finger against 
you." The King continued: — "I tell you 
this is a standard of rebellion. I never saw 
such an address." Trelawney of Bristol, 
falling again on his knees, said, "Rebellion, 
Sir ! I beseech your Majesty not to say any 
thing so hard of us. For God's sake, do not 
believe we are or can be guilty of rebellion." 
It deserves remark, that the two who uttered 
these loud and vehement protestations were 
the only prelates present who were conscious 
of having harboured projects of more deci- 
sive resistance. The Bishops of Chichester 
and Ely made professions of unshaken loy- 



* Van Citters, 28th May.— MS. 

t Gutch, Collectanea Curiosa, vol. i. p. 335. 
Clarendon, State Papers, vol. i. p. 287, and 
D'Oyley, vol. i. p. 253. 

t Burnet, iii. 216. 

i " S. M. rispose loroconardezza." — D'Adda, 
30th May ; or, as the same circumstance was 
viewed by another through a different medium, — 
" The King answered very disdainfully, and with 
the utmost anger." — Van Citters, 1st June. The 
mild Evelyn (Diary, 18th May) says, " the King 
was so incensed, that, with threatening language, 
he commanded them to obey at their peril." 



364 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



alty, which they afterwards exemplified . The 
Bishop of Bath and Wells pathetically and 
justly said, "Sir, I hope you will give that 
liberty to us, which you allow to all man- 
kind/' He piously added, "We will honour 
the King, but fear God." James answered 
at various times, "It tends to rebellion. Is 
this what I have deserved from the Church 
of England 1 I will remember you who have 
signed this paper. I will keep this paper: I 
will not part with it. I did not expect this 
from you, especially from some of you. I 
will be obeyed." Ken, in the spirit of a 
martyr, answered only with a humble voice, 
"God's will be done." The angry monarch 
called out, "What's that?" the Bishop, 
and one of his brethren, repeated what had 
been said. James dismissed them with the 
same unseemly, unprovoked, and incoherent 
language : — i( If I think fit to alter my mind, 
I will send to you. God has given me this 
Dispensing Power, and I will maintain it. I 
tell you, there are seven thousand men, and 
of the Church of England too, that have not 
bowed the knee to Baal." Next morning, 
when on his way to chapel, he said to the 
Bishop of St. David's, "My Lord, your 
brethren presented to me, yesterday, the 
most seditious paper that ever was penned. 
It is a trumpet of rebellion." He frequently 
repeated what Lord Halifax said to him, — 
" Your father suffered for the Church, not 
the Church for him."* 

The Petition was printed and circulated 
during the night, certainly not by the Bishops, 
who delivered to the King their only copy, 
written in the hand of Sancroft, for the ex- 
press purpose of preventing publication, — 
probably, therefore, by some attendant of 
the Court, for lucre or from disaffection. In 
a few days, six other prelatesf had declared 
their concurrence in the Petition ; and the 
Bishop of Carlisle agreed to its contents, la- 
menting that he could not subscribe it, be- 
cause his diocese was not in the province of 
Canterbury:!: two others agreed to the mea- 
sure of not reading. § The archbishopric of 
York had now been kept vacant for Petre 
more than two years : and the vacancy 
which delivered Oxford from Parker had not 
yet been filled up. Lloyd of Bangor, who died 
a few months afterwards, was probably pre- 
vented by age and infirmities from taking any 
part in this transaction. The see of Lichfield, 
though not vacant, was deserted by Wood, 
who (having been appointed by the Duchess 
of Cleveland, in consequence of his bestow- 
ing his neice, a rich heiress, of whom he 
was guardian, on one of her sons,)l! had 
openly and perpetually abandoned his dio- 
cese : for this he had been suspended by 
Sancroft, and though restored on submission, 



* Van Citters, 1st June.— MS. 

t London, Norwich, Gloucester, Salisbury, 
Winchester, and Exeter. — D'Oyley, vol. i. p. 269. 

t Gutch, vol. i. p. 334. 

§ LlandafT and Worcester. — Gutch.vol. i. p. 331. 

II Kennet in Lansdowne MSS. in the British 
Museum, — D'Oyley, vol. i. p. 193. 



had continued to reside at Hackney, without 
professing to discharge any duty, till his 
death. Sprat, who would have honoured 
the episcopal dignity by his talents, if he 
had not earned it by a prostitution of 
them.* Cartwright, who had already ap- 
proved himself the ready instrument of law- 
less power against his brethren, Crewe, 
whose servility was rendered more conspi- 
cuously disgraceful by birth and wealth, 
Watson, who, after a long train of offences, 
was at length deprived of his see, together 
with Croft, in extreme old age, and Barlow, 
who had fallen into second childhood, were, 
since the death of Parker, the only faithless 
members of an episcopal body, which in its 
then incomplete state amounted to twenty- 
two. 

On Sunday, the 20th, the first day ap- 
pointed for reading the Declaration in Lon- 
don, the Order was generally disobeyed; 
though the administration of the diocese 
during the suspension of the bishop, was 
placed in the perfidious hands of Sprat and 
Crewe. Out of a hundred, the supposed 
number of the London clergy at that time, 
seven were the utmost who are, by the 
largest account, charged with submission. f 
Sprat himself chose to officiate as Dean in 
Westminster Abbey, where, as soon as he 
gave orders for the reading, so great a mur- 
mur arose that nobody could hear it ; and, 
before it was finished, no one was left in the 
church but a few prebendaries, the choris- 
ters, and the Westminster scholars. He, 
himself, could hardly hold the Proclamation 
in his hands for trembling.}: Even in the 
chapel at Whitehall, it was read by a cho- 
rister. § At Serjeant's Inn, on the Chief 
Justice desiring that it should be read, the 
clerk said that he had forgotten it. II The 
names of four complying clergymen only 
are preserved, — Elliott, Martin, Thomson, 
and Hall, — who, obscure as they were, may 
be enumerated as specimens of so rare a 
vice as the sinister courage which, for base 
ends, can brave the most generous feelings 
of all the spectators of their conduct. The 
temptation on this occasion seems to have 
been the bishopric of Oxford ; in the pursuit 
of which, Hall, who had been engaged in 
negotiations with the Duchess of Portsmouth 
for the purchase of Hampden's pardon, IF by 
such connections and services prevailed over 
his competitors. On the following Sunday 
the disobedience was equally general; and. 
the new reader at the Chapel Royal was so 
agitated as to be unable to read the Declara- 

* Narrative of the Rye House Plot. 

t " La lettura non se essequi che in pochissimi 
luoghi." D'Adda, 30th May.— MS. Clarendon 
states the number to be four; Kennet and Burnet, 
seven. Perhaps the smaller number refers to pa- 
rochial clergy, and the larger to those of every de- 
nomination. 

t Burnet, vol. iii. p. 218, note by Lord Dart- 
mouth, then present as a Westminster scholar- 

§ Evelyn, 20th May. 

II Van Citters, supra. — MS. ■ 

IT Lords' Journals, 19th Dec. 1689. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



365 



tion audibly.* In genera], the clergy of the 
country displayed the same spirit. In the 
dioceses of the faithful bishops, the example 
of the diocesan was almost universally fol- 
lowed ; in that of Norwich, which contains 
twelve hundred parishes, the Declaration 
was not read by more than three or four.t 
In Durham, on the other side, Crewe found 
so great a number of his poor clergy more 
independent than a vast revenue could 
render himself, that he suspended many for 
disobedience. The other deserters were 
disobeyed by nineteen twentieths of their 
clergy ; and not more than two hundred in 
all are said to have complied out of a body 
of ten thousand.! "The whole Church,'' 
says the Nuncio, "espouses the cause of the 
Bishops. There is no reasonable expectation 
of a division among the Anglicans, and our 
hopes from the Nonconformists are vanish- 
ed. "4 Well, indeed, might he despair of 
the Dissenters, since, on the 20th of May, 
the venerable Baxter, above sectarian inte- 
rests, and unmindful of ancient wrongs, from 
his tolerated pulpit extolled the Bishops for 
their resistance to the very Declaration to 
which he now owed the liberty of com- 
mending them. II 

It was no wonder that such an appearance 
of determined resistance should disconcert 
the Government. No prospect now remained 
of seducing some, and of punishing other 
Protestants, and, by this double example, of 
gaming the greater part of the rest. The 
King, after so many previous acts of violence, 
seemed to be reduced to the alternative of 
either surrendering to exasperated antago- 
nists, or engaging in a mortal combat with 
all his Protestant subjects. In the most 
united and vigorous government, the choice 
would have been among the most difficult 
which human wisdom is required to make. 
In the distracted councils of James, where 
secret advisers thwarted responsible minis- 
ters, and fear began to disturb the judgment 
of some, while anger inflamed the minds of 
others, a still greater fluctuation and contra- 
diction prevailed, than would have naturally 
arisen from the- great difficulty of the situa- 
tion. Pride impelled the King to advance ; 
Caution counselled him to retreat ; Calm 
Reason, even at this day, discovers nearly 
equal dangers in either movement. It is one 
of the most unfortunate circumstances in 
human affairs, that the most important ques- 
tions of practice either perplex the mind so 
much by their difficulty, as to be always 
really decided by temper, or excite passions 
too strong for such an undisturbed exercise 
of the understanding as alone affords a pro- 
bability of right judgment. The nearer ap- 
proach of perils, both political and personal, 
rendered the counsels of Sunderland more 



* Van Citters.— MS. 

t D'Oyley, vol. i. p. 270. 

t Van Citters. 25th June. — MS. 

$ D'Adda, 11th June.— MS. 

I! Johnstone, 23d May.— MS. 



decisively moderate :* in which he was sup- 
ported by the Catholic lords in office, con- 
formably to their uniform principles,! and 
by Jeffreys, who, since he had gamed the 
prize of ambition, began more and more to 
think of safety.} It appears, also, that those 
who recoiled from an irreparable breach 
with the Church, the nation, and the Pro- 
testants of the Royal Family, were now not 
unwilling that their moderation should be 
known. Jeffreys spoke to Lord Clarendon of 
'■'moderate counsels," declared, that ''some 
men would drive the King to destruction," 
and made professions of " service to the 
Bishops/' which he went so far as to desire 
him to communicate to them. William Penn, 
on a visit, after a very long interval, to Cla- 
rendon, betrayed an inquietude, which some- 
times prompts men almost instinctively to 
acquire or renew friendships. § Sunderland 
disclosed the nature and grounds of his own 
counsels, very fully, both to the Nuncio and 
to the French ambassador.il "The great 
question," he said, "was how the punish- 
ment of the Bishops would affect the pro- 
bability of accomplishing the King's purpose 
through a Parliament. Now, it was not to 
be expected, that any adequate penalty could 
be inflicted on them in the ordinary course 
of law. Recourse must be had to the Eccle- 
siastical Commission, which was already 
sufficiently obnoxious. Any legal proceed- 
ing would be long enough, in the present 
temper of men, to agitate all England. The 
suspension or deprivation by the Ecclesiasti- 
cal Commissioners, which might not exclude 
the Bishops from their Parliamentary seats, 
would, in a case of so extensive delinquency, 
raise such a fear and cry of arbitrary power, 
as to render all prospect of a Parliament des- 
perate, and to drive the King to a reliance 
on arms alone ; — a fearful resolution, not to 
be entertained without fuller assurance that 
the army was and would remain untainted." 
He therefore advised, that "His Majesty 
should content himself with publishing a de- 
claration, expressing his high and just resent- 
ment at the hardihood of the Bishops, hi dis- 
obeying the supreme head of their Church, 
and disputing a Royal prerogative recently 
recognised by all the judges of. England ; but 
stating that, in consideration of the fidelity 
of the Church of England in past times, from 
which these prelates had been the first to 
depart, his Majesty was desirous of treating 
their offence with clemency, and would re- 
fer their conduct to the consideration of the 
next Parliament, in the hope that their inter- 
mediate conduct might warrant entire for- 



* D'Adda and Barillon, 3d June.— MS. 

t " Lords Powis, Arundel, Dover, and Bellasis, 
are very zealous for moderation." — Van Citters, 
11th June.— MS. 

X Clarendon, 14th and 27th June, 5th July, 13th 
August. 

^Clarendon, 21st May. " The first time I had 
seen him for a long time. He professed great 
kindness." 

II D'Adda and Barillon, supra. 
2f2 



366 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



givenesB." It was said, an the other hand, 
"that the safety of the government depend- 
ed on an immediate blow : that the impunity 
of such audacious contumacy would embol- 
den every enemy at home and abroad : that 
all lenity" would be regarded as the effect of 
weakness and fear: and that the opportu- 
nity must now or never be seized, of em- 
ploying the Ecclesiastical Commission to 
strike down a Church, which supported the 
Crown only as long - as she dictated to it. 
and became rebellious at the moment when 
she was forbidden to be intolerant.'" To 
strengthen these topics, it was urged -'that 
the tactions had already boasted that the 
Court would not dare to proceed juridically 
against the Bishop-." 

Both the prudent ministers, to whom these 
discussions were imparted, influenced proba- 
bly by their wishes, expected that modera- 
tion would prevail.* But. after a week of 
discussion, Jeffreys, fearing that the King- 
could not be reconciled to absolute forbear- 
ance, and desirous of removing the odium 
from the Ecclesiastical Commission, of which 
he was the head.t proposed that the Bishops 
should be prosecuted in the Court of King's 
Bench, and the consideration of mercy or 
rigour postponed till after judgment ; — a com- 
promise probably more impolitic than either 
of the extremes, inasmuch as it united a con- 
spicuous and solemn mode of proceeding, 
and a form of trial partly popular, with room 
for the utmost boldness of defence, some 
probability of acquittal, and the least pun- 
ishment in case of conviction. On the even- 
ing of the 27th, the second Sunday appointed 
for reading the Declaration, it was accord- 
ingly determined to prosecute them ; and 
they were summoned to appear before the 
Privy Council on the 8th of June, to answer a 
charge of misdemeanour. 

In obedience to this summons, the Bishops 
attended at Whitehall on the day appointed, 
about five o'clock in the afternoon, and being 
called into the Council Chamber, were gra- 
ciously received by the King. The Chancel- 
lor asked the Archbishop, whether a paper 
now shown to him was the Petition written 
by him, and presented by the other Bishops 
to his Majesty. ' The Archbishop, addressing 
himself to the King, answered. •• Sir, I am 
called hither as a criminal, which I never 
was before : since I have that unhappiness. 
I hope your Majesty will not be offended that 

* D'Adda and Barillon, 11th June. — MS. 

t Van Citters. 11th June. — MS. The biogra- 
pher of James II. (Life, vol. ii. p. 158,) tells us 
that the Chancellor advised the King to prosecute 
the Bishops for tumultuous petitioning, ignorantly 
supposing the statute passed at the Restoration 
against such petitioning to be applicable to their 
case. The passage in the same page, which 
quotes the Kind's own MSS., is more naturally 
referable to the secret advisers of the Order in j 
Council. The account of Van Citters, adopted j 
in the text, reconciles the Jacobite tradition fol- 
lowed by Dicconson with the language of Jeffreys j 
to Clarendon, and wjih the former complaints of 
Catholics against his lukewarmness mentioned by I 
Barillon. 



I am cautious of answering questions which 
may tend to accuse myself." The King 
called this chicanery: adding, I hope you 
will not deny your own hand." The Arch- 
bishop said. •• The only reason for the ques- 
tion is to draw an answer which may be 
ground of accusation :" and Lloyd, of St. 
Asaph, added. "All divines of all Christian 
churches are agreed that no man in our situ- 
ation is obliged to answer such questions :" 
but the King impatiently pressing for an 
answer, the Archbishop said, " Sir, though 
not obliged to answer, yet, if Your Majesty 
commands it, we are willing to obey, trusting 
to your justice and generosity that we shall 
not suffer for our obedience." The King 
said he should not command them, and 
Jeffreys directed them to withdraw 7 . On 
their return, being commanded by the King 
to answer, they owned the Petition. There 
i6 some doubt whether they repeated the 
condition on which they made their first 
offer of obedience ;* but, if the}- did not, 
their forbearance must have arisen from a 
respectful confidence, which disposed them, 
with reason, to consider the silence of the 
King as a virtual assent to their unretracted 
condition. A tacit acceptance of conditional 
obedience is indeed as distinct a promise to 
perform the condition as the most express 
words. They were then again commanded 
to withdraw ; and on their return a third 
time, they were told by Jeffreys that they 
would be proceeded against, "but," he 
added (alluding to the obnoxious Commis- 
mission), ' ; with all fairness, in Westminister 
Hall." He desired them to enter into a re- 
cognisance (or legal engagement) to appear. 
They declared their readiness to answer, 
whenever they were called upon, without it, 
and, after some conversation, insisted on 
their privilege as Peers not to be bound by 
a recognisance in misdemeanour. After 
several ineffectual attempts to prevail on 
them to accept the offer of being discharged 
on their own recognisances, as a favour, 
they were committed to the Tower by a 
warrant, which all the Privy Councillors 
present (except Lord Berkeley and Father 
Petre) subscribed- of whom it is observable, 
that nine only were avowed Catholics, and 
nine professed members of the English 
Church, besides Sunderland, whose renun- 
ciation of that religion was not yet made 
public. f The Order for the prosecution was, 
however, sanctioned in the usual manner, 
by placing the names of all Privy Council- 
lors present at its head. 

The people who saw the Bishops as they 
walked to the barges which were to conduct 

* D'Oyley, (vol.i. p. 278,) seems on this point 
to vary from the narrative in Gutch (vol. i. p. 351.) 
It seems to me more probable that the condition 
was repeated after the second entrance ; for Dr. 
D'Oyley is certainly right in thinking that the 
statement of the Archbishop's words, as having 
been spoken " after the third or fourth coming 
in," must be a mistake. It is evidently at vari- 
ance with the whole course of the examination. 

t Gutch, vol. i. p. 353. 



.REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



367 



them to the Tower, were deeply affected by 
the spectacle, and, for the first time, manifest- 
ed their emotions in a manner which would 
have still served as a wholesome admonition 
to a wise Government. The demeanour of 
the Prelates is described by eye-witi 
as meek, composed; cheerful, betraying no 
fear, and untainted by ostentation or defiance, 
but endowed with a greater power over the 
fellow-feeling of the beholders by the ex- 
hortations to loyalty, "which were doubtless 
uttered with undesigning sincerity by the 
greater number of the venerable sufferers.* 
The mode of conveyance, though probably 
selected for mere convenience, contributed 
to deepen and prolong the interest of the 
scene. The soldiers who escorted them to 
the shore had no need to make any demon- 
strations of violence ; for the people were too 
much subdued by pity and reverence to vent 
their feelings otherwise than by tears and 
prayers. Having never before seen prelates 
in opposition to the King, and accustomed to 
look at them only in a state of pacific and 
inviolate dignity, the spectators regarded 
their fall to the condition of prisoners and 
the appearance of culprits with amazement, 
awe, and compassion. The scene seemed to 
be a procession of martyrs. " Thousands," 
says Van (Titters, probably an eye-witness, 
"begged their blessing."'!' Some ran into 
the water to implore it. Both banks of the 
Thames were lined with multitudes, who, 
when they were too distant to be heard, 
manifested their feelings by falling down on 
their knees, and raising up their hands, be- 
seeching Heaven to guard the sufferers for 
religion and liberty 7 . On landing at the Tower, 
several of the guards knelt down to receive 
their blessing ; while some even of the offi- 
cers yielded to the general impulse. As the 
Bishops chanced to land at the accustomed 
hour of evening prayer, they/ immediately- 
repaired to the chapel ; where they heard, 
in the ordinary lesson of the day. a remark- 
able exhortation to the primitive teachers of 
Christianity, "to approve themselves the 
ministers of God, in much patience, in 
afflictions, in imprisonments. "J The Court 
ordered the guard to be doubled. 

On the following days multitudes crowded 
to the To\ver,§ of whom the majority gazed ; 
on the prison with distant awe. while a few 
entered to offer homage and counsel to the , 
venerable prisoners. :: If it be a crime to: 
lament," said a learned contemporary, in a 
confidential letter, "innumerable are the 
transgressors. The nobles of both sexes, 
as it were, keep their court at the Tower, 
whither a vast concourse daily go to beg the 
holy men's blessing. The very soldiers act as 
mourners."!! The soldiers on guard, indeed, I 
drank their healths, and though reprimanded I 
by Sir Edward Hales, now Lieutenant of the j 
Tower, declared that they would persevere. 

* Reresby. p. 261. t ISth June.— MS. 

t 2 Corinthians, vi. 4. 5. 

$ Clarendon, 9th, 10th, 12th June. 

II Dr. Nelson, Gutch, vol. i. p. 360. 



The amiable Evelyn did not fail to visit 
them on the day previous to that on which 
he was to dine with the Chancellor, appear- 
ing to distribute his courtesies with the neu- 
trality of Atticue:* but we now know that 
Jeffreys himself, on the latter of these days, 
had sent a secret message by Clarendon, as- 
suring the Bishops that he was much troubled 
at the prosecution, and offering his services 
to them.t None of their visiters were more 
nmarkable than a deputation of ten Non- 
conformist ministers, which so incensed the 
King that he personallv reprimanded them : 
but they answered, that they could not but 
adhere to the Bishops, as men constant to 
the Protestant religion, — an example of mag- 
nanimity- rare in the conflicts of religious 
animosities. The Dissenting clergy seem, 
indeed, to have been nearly unanimous in 
preferring the general interest of religious 
liberty to the enlargement of their peculiar 
privileges.! Alsop was full of sorrow for 
his compliances in the former year. Lobb, 
who was seized with so enthusiastic an at- 
tachment to James, that he was long after 
known by the singular name of the " Jacob- 
ite Independent." alone persevered hi de- 
votedness to the Court ; and when the King 
asked his advice respecting the treatment 
of the Bishops, advised that they should be 
sent to the Tower. § 

No exertion of friendship or of public zeal 
was wanting to prepare the means of their 
defence, and to provide for their dignity, in 
every part of the proceeding. The Bishop 
of London, Dr. Tennyson, and Johnstone, the 
secret ajient of the Prince of Orange, appear 
to have been the most active of their friends. 
Pemberton and Pollexfen, accounted the most 
learned among the elder lawyers, were en- 
gaged in their cause. Sir John Holt, destined 
to be the chief ornament of a bench purified 
by liberty, contributed his valuable advice. 
John Somers, their in the thirty-eight year 
of his asre, was objected to at one of their 
consultations, as too young and obscure to be 
one of their counsel ; and, if we may believe 
Johnstone, it was owing to him that this me- 
morable cause afforded the earliest opportu- 
nity of making known the superior intellect 
of that great man. Twenty-eight peers were 
prepared to bail them, if bail should be re- 
quired. II Stanley, chaplain to the Princess 
of Orange, had already assured Sancroft that 
the Prince and Princess approved their firm- 
ness, and were deeply interested in their 
fate.1T One of them, probably Trelawney, 
a prelate who had served in the Civil War, 
had early told Johnstone that if they were 
sent to the Tower, he hoped the Prince of 

* Diary, 13th — 14th June. 

i" Clarendon, 14th June. 

t Johnstone, 13th June.— MS. 

§ Johnstone, 13th June.— MS. "I told the 
Archbishop of Canterbury," says Johnstone, 
' ; that their fate depended on very mean persons." 
— Burnet, vol. iii. p. 217. 

II Gutch, vol. i. p. 357, where their' names ap- 
pear. 

IT Ibid. p. 307. 



368 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



Orange would take them out, which two re- 
giments and his authority would do ;* and, 
a little later, the Bishop of St. Asaph assured 
the same trusty agent, who was then collect- 
ing the opinions of several eminent persons 
on the seasonableness of resistance, that '-the 
matter would be easily doue."f This bold 
Prelate had familiarised himself with extra- 
ordinary events, and was probably tempted 
to daring counsels by an overweening confi- 
dence in" his own interpretation of mysterious 
prophecies, which he had long laboured to 
illustrate by vain efforts of ability and learn- 
ing. He made no secret of his expectations ; 
but, at his first interview with a chaplain of 
the Archbishop, exhorted him to be of good 
courage, and declared that the happiest re- 
sults were now to be hoped ; for that the people, 
incensed by tyranny, were ready to take up 
arms to expel the Papists from the kingdom, 
and to punish the King himself, which was 
to be deprecated, by banishment or death; 
adding, that if the Bishops escaped from 
their present danger, they would reform the 
Church from the corruptions which had c-«pt 
into her frame, throw open her gates for the 
joyful entrance of the sober and pious among 
Protestant Dissenters, and relieve even those 
who should continue to be pertinacious 
in their Nonconformity from the grievous 
yoke of penal laws. J During the imprison- 
ment, Sunderland and the Catholic lords, now 
supported by Jeffreys, used every means of 
art and argument to persuade James that the 
birth of the Prince of Wales (which will pre- 
sently be related) afforded a most becoming 
opportunity for signalising that moment of 
national joy by a general pardon, which 
would comprehend the Bishops, without in- 
volving any apparent concession to them.§ 
The King, as usual, fluctuated. A Proclama- 
tion, couched in the most angry and haughty 
language, commanding all cler§| 7 men, under 
pain of immediate suspension, to read the 
Declaration, was several times sent to the 
press, and as often withdrawn.il "The King," 
said Jeffreys, " had once resolved to let the 
proceedings fall; but some men would hurry 
him to destruction. "IT The obstinacy of 
James, inflamed by bigoted advisers, and 
supported by commendation, with proffered 
aid from France, prevailed over sober coun- 
sels. 

On the 15th of June, the prisoners were 

* Johnstone, 27th May.— MS. 

t Johnstone, 18th June.— MS. The Bishop's 
observation is placed between the opinions of Mr. 
Hampden and Sir J. Lee, both zealous for imme- 
diate action. 

X Diary of Henry Wharton, 25th June, 1686. 
D'Oyley, vol. ii. p. 134. The term " ponteficious," 
which is rendered in the text by Papists, may per- 
haps be limited, by a charitable construction, to the 
more devoted partisans of Papal authority. "The 
Bishop of St. Asaph was a secret favourer of a 
foreign interest." — Life of Kettlewell, p. 175, 
compiled (London, 1718) from the papers of Hicks 
and Nelson. 

§ Johnstone, 13th June.— MS. 

II Van Citters, 8th June.— MS. 

IT Clarendon, 14th June. 



brought before the Court of King's Bench by 
a writ of Habeas Corpus. On leaving the 
Tower they refused to pay the fees required 
by Sir Edward Hales as lieutenant, whom 
they charged with discourtesy. He so far 
forgot himself as to say that the fees were 
a compensation for the irons with which he 
might have loaded them, and the bare walls 
and floor to which he might have confined 
their accommodation.* They answered, 
"We lament the King's displeasure; but 
every other man loses his breath who at- 
tempts to intimidate us." On landing from 
their barge, they were received with in- 
creased reverence by a great multitude, who 
made a lane for them, and followed them 
into Westminster Hall.t The Nuncio, un- 
used to the slightest breath of popular feel- 
ing, was subdued by these manifestations of 
enthusiasm, which he relates with more 
warmth than any other contemporary. "Of 
the immense concourse of people," says he, 
" who received them on the bank of the 
river, the majority in their immediate neigh- 
bourhood were on their knees: the Arch- 
bishop laid his hands on the heads of such 
as he could reach, exhorting them to con- 
tinue stedfast in their faith ; they cried aloud 
that all should kneel, while tears flowed 
from the eyes of many.J In the court they 
were attended by the twenty-nine Peers 
who offered to be their sureties ; and it was 
instantly filled by a crowd of gentlemen at- 
tached to their cause. 

The return of the lieutenant of the Tower 
to the writ set forth that the Bishops were 
committed under a warrant signed by cer- 
tain Privy Councillors for a seditious libel. 
The Attorney General moved, that the infor- 
mation should be read, and that the Bishops 
should be called on to plead, or, in common 
language, either to admit the fact, deny it, 
or allege some legal justification of it. The 
counsel for the Bishops objected to reading 
the information, on the ground that they 
were not legally before the court, because 
the warrant, though signed by Privy Coun- 
cillors, was not stated to be issued by them 
in that capacity, and because the Bishops, 
being Peers of Parliament, could not law- 
fully be committed for a libel. The Court 
over-ruled these objections ; — the first with 
evident justice, because the warrant of com- 
mitment set forth its execution at the Council 
Chamber, and in the presence of the King, 
which sufficiently showed it to be the act 
of the subscribing Privy Councillors acting 
as such, — the second, with much doubt 
touching the extent of privilege of Parlia- 
ment, acknowledged on both sides to exempt 
from apprehension in all cases but treason, 
felony, and breach of the peace, which last 
term "was said by the counsel for the Crown 
to comprehend all such constructive offences 

* Johnstone, 18th June.— MS. See a more 
general statement to the same effect, in Evelyn's 
Diary, 29th June. 

t Clarendon, 15th June. 

X D'Adda, 22d June.— MS. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



369 



against the peace as libels, and argued on 
behalf of the Bishops, to be confined to 
those acts or threats of violence which, in 
common language, are termed i( breaches 
. of the peace." The greatest judicial au- 
thority on constitutional law since the acces- 
sion of the House of Brunswick has pro- 
nounced the determination of the Judges in 
J 688 to be erroneous.* The question de- 
pends too much upon irregular usage and 
technical subtilties to be brought under the 
cognisance of the historian, who must be 
content with observing, that the error was 
not so manifest as to warrant an imputation 
of bad faith in the Judges. A delay of 
pleading till the next term, which is called 
an "imparlance," was then claimed. The 
officers usually referred to for the practice 
of the Court declared such for the last 
twelve years to have been that the defend- 
ants should immediately plead. Sir Robert 
Sawyer, Mr. Finch, Sir Francis Pemberton, 
and Mr. Pollexfen, bore a weighty testimony, 
from their long experience, to the more in- 
dulgent practice of the belter times which 
preceded: but Sawyer, covered with the 
guilt of so many odious proceedings, Finch, 
who was by no means free from participa- 
tion in them, and even Pemberton, who had 
the misfortune to be Chief Justice in evil 
days, seemed to contend against the prac- 
tice of their own administration with a bad 
grace : the veteran Pollexfen alone, without 
fear of retaliation, appealed to the pure age 
of Sir Matthew Hale. The Court decided 
that the Bishops should plead ; but their 
counsel considered themselves as having 
gained their legitimate object by showing 
that the Government employed means at 
least disputable against them.t The Bishops 
then pleaded "Not guilty," and were en- 
larged, on their own undertaking to appear 
on the trial, which was appointed for the 
29th of June. 

As they left the court they were sur- 
rounded by crowds, who begged their bless- 
ing. The Bishop of St. Asaph, detained in 
Palace Yard by a multitude, who kissed his 
hands and garments, was delivered from their 
importunate kindness by Lord Clarendon, 
who, taking him into his carriage, found it 
necessary to make a circuit through the Park 
to escape from the bodies of people by whom 
the streets were obstructed.? Shouts and 
huzzas broke out in the court, and were re- 
peated all around at the moment of the en- 



* Lord Camden in Wilkes' case, 1763. 

t Siate Trials, vol. xii. p. 183. The general 
reader may be referred with confidence to the 
excellent abridgment of the State Trials, by Mr. 
Fhillipps, — a work probably not to be paralleled 
by the union of discernment, knowledge, imparti- 
ality, calmness, clearness, and precision, it exhibits 
on quesiions the most angrily contested. It is, 
indeed, far superior to the huge and most unequat 
compilation of which it is an abridgment, — to say 
nothing of the instructive observations on legal 
questions in which Mr. Phillipps rejudges the 
determinations of past times. 

\ Clarendon, 15th June. 
47 



largement. The bells of the Abbey Church of 
Westminster had begun to ring a joyful peal, 
when they were stopped by Sprat amidst the 
execrations of the people.* " No one knew." 
said the Dutch minister, "what to do for 
joy." When the Archbishop landed at Lam- 
beth, the grenadiers of Lord Lichfield's regi- 
ment, though posted there by his enemies, 
received him with military honours, made a 
lane for his passage from the river to his 
palace, and fell on their knees to ask his 
blessing.t In the evening the premature 
joy at this temporary liberation displayed 
itself in bonfires, and in some outrages to 
Roman Catholics, as the supposed instigators 
of the prosecution. { 

No doubt was entertained at Court of the 
result of the trial, which the King himself 
took measures to secure by a private inter- 
view with Sir Samuel Astry, the officer 
whose province it was to form the jury.§ It 
was openly said that the Bishops would be 
condemned to pay large fines, to be im- 
prisoned till payment, and to be suspended 
from their functions and revenues. II A fund 
would thus be ready for the King's liberality 
to Catholic colleges and chapels- while the 
punishment of the Archbishop would re- 
move the only licenser of the pressIT who 
was independent of the Crown. Sunderland 
still contended for the policy of being gene- 
rous after victory, and of not seeking to 
destroy those who would be sufficiently de- 
graded ; and he believed that he had made 
a favourable impression on the King.** But 
the latter spoke of the feebleness which 
had disturbed the reign of his brother, and 
brought his father to the scaffold ; and Ba- 
rillon represents him as inflexibly resolved 
on rigour.ff which opinion seems to have 
been justified by the uniform result of every 
previous deliberation. Men of common 
understanding are much disposed to con- 
sider the contrary of the last unfortunate 
error as being always the sound policy; 
they are incapable of estimating the various 
circumstances which may render vigour or 
caution applicable at different times and in 
different stages of the same proceedings, 
and pursue their single maxim, often founded 
on shallow views, even of one case, with 
headlong obstinacy. If they be men also 
of irresolute nature, they are unable to re- 
sist the impetuosity of violent counsellors, 
they are prone to rid themselves of the pain 



* Van Citters, 25th June.— MS. 

t Johnstone, 18th June.— MS. 

X Narcissus Luttrell, MS.; and the two last- 
mentioned authorities. 

% Clarendon, 21st — 27th June, where an agent 
of the Court is said to have busied himself in 
striking the jury. 

II Barillon, 1st July.— MS. Van Citters, 2d 
July.— MS. 

IT It appears from Wharton's Diary, that the 
chaplains at Lambeth discharged this duty with 
more regard even then to the feelings of the King 
than to the rights of Protestant controversialists. 

** D'Adda, 9th July.— MS. 

tt Barillon, 1st July.— MS. 



370 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



of fluctuation by a sudden determination to 
appear decisive, and they often take refuge 
from past fears, and seek security from 
danger to come, by a rash and violent blow. 
"Lord Sunderland/' says Barillon, '-'like a 
good courtier and an able politician, every 
where vindicates, with warmth and vigour, 
the measures which he disapproved and had 
opposed."* 

The Bishops, on the appointed day, en- 
tered the court, surrounded by the lordst 
and gentlemen who, on this solemn occa- 
sion, chose that mode of once more testify- 
ing their adherence to the public cause. 
Some previous incidents inspired courage. 
Levinz, one of the counsel retained, having 
endeavoured to excuse himself from an ob- 
noxious duty, was compelled, by the threats 
of attorneys, to perform it. The venerable 
Serjeant Maynard, urged to appear for the 
Crown, in the discharge of his duty as King's 
Serjeant, boldly answered, that if he did he 
was bound also to declare his conscientious 
opinion of the case to the King's Judges. j 
The appearance of the bench was not con- 
solatory to the accused. Powell was the 
only impartial and upright Judge. Allibone, 
as a Roman Catholic, was, in reality, about 
to try the question whether he was himself 
legally qualified for his office. Wright and 
Holloway were placed there to betray the 
law. Jeffreys himself, who had appointed 
the Judges, now loaded them with the 
coarsest reproaches,§ — more, perhaps, from 
distrust of their boldness than from appre- 
hension of their independence. Symptoms 
of the overawing power of national opinion 
are indeed perceptible in the speech of the 
Attorney-General, which was not so much 
the statement of an accusation as an apology 
for a prosecution. He disclaimed all attack 
on the Bishops in their episcopal character, 
and did not now complain of their refusal to 
read the King's Declaration ; but only charged 
them with the temporal offence of composing 
and publishing a seditious libel, under pre- 
tence of presenting a humble petition to His 
Majesty. His doctrine on this head was, in- 
deed, subversive of liberty; but it has often 
been repeated in better times, though in 
milder terms, and with some reservations. 
"The Bishops," said he, "are accused of 
censuring the government, and giving their 
opinion about affairs of State. No man may 
say of the great officers of the kingdom, far 
less of the King, that they act unreasonably, 
for that may beget a desire of reformation, 



* Barillon, 1st July.— MS. 

t " Thirty-five lords." — (Johnstone, 2d Jul}'. 
MS.); probably about one half of the legally 
qualified peers then in England and able to attend. 
There were eighty-nine temporal lords who were 
Protestants. Minority, absence from the king- 
dom, and sickness, may account for nineteen. 

t Johnstone, 2d July.— MS. 

§" Rogues," ''Knaves," "Fools." — Claren- 
don, 27th June — 5th July. He called Wright " a 
beast;" but this, it must be observed, was after 
his defeat. 



and the last age will abundantly satisfy us 
whither such a thing does tend." 

The first difficulty arose as to the proof of 
the handwriting, which seems to have been 
decisive against Sancroft, sufficient against 
some others, and altogether wanting in the 
cases of Ken and Lake. All the witnesses 
on this subject gave their testimony with 
the most evident reluctance. The Court was 
equally divided on the question whether 
there was sufficient proof of it to warrant the 
reading of the Petition in evidence against 
the accused. The objection to its being so 
read was groundless-; but the answers to it 
were so feeble as to betray a general irre- 
solution and embarrassment. The counsel 
for the Crown were then driven to the ne- 
cessity of calling the clerk oi the Privy Coun- 
cil to prove the confessions before that body, 
in obedience to the commands of the King. 
When they were proved, Pemberton, with 
considerable dexterity, desired the witness 
to relate all the circumstances which at- 
tended these confessions. Blathwaite, the 
clerk, long resisted, and evaded the ques- 
tion, of which he evidently felt the impor- 
tance; but he was at length compelled to 
acknowledge that the Bishops had accom- 
panied their offer to submit to the Royal 
command, with an expression of their hope 
that no advantage would be taken of their 
confession against them. He could not pre- 
tend that they had been previously warned 
against such a hope; but he eagerly added, 
that no promise to such an effect had been 
made, — as if chicanery could be listened to 
in a matter which concerned the personal 
honour of a sovereign. Williams, the only 
one of the counsel for the Crown who was 
more provoked than intimidated by the pub- 
lic voice, drew the attention of the audience 
to this breach of faith by the vehemence 
with which he resisted the admission of the 
evidence which proved it. 

Another subtile question sprung from the 
principle of English law, that crimes are 
triable only in the county where they are 
committed. It was said that the alleged 
libel was written at Lambeth in Surrey, and 
not proved to have been published in Middle- 
sex ; so that neither of the offences charged 
could be tried in the latter county. That it 
could not have been written in Middlesex 
was proved by the Archbishop, who was the 
writer, having been confined by illness to- 
his palace for some months. The prosecutor 
then endeavoured to show by the clerks of 
the Privy Council,* that the Bishops had 
owned the delivery of the Petition to the 
King, which would have been a publication 
in Middlesex : but the witnesses proved only 
an admission of the signatures. On every 
failure, the audience showed their feelings 
by a triumphant laugh or a shout of joy. 
The Chief Justice, who at first feebly repri- 

* Pepys. the noted Secretary to the Admiralty, 
was one of the witnesses examined. He was pro- 
bably a Privy Councillor. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



371' 



manded them, soon abandoned the attempt 
to check them. In a long and irregular al- 
tercation, the advocates of the accused spoke 
with increasing boldness, and those for the 
prosecution with more palpable depression, 
— except Williams, who vented the painful 
consciousness of inconsistency, unvarnished 
by success, in transports of rage which de- 
scended to the coarsest railing. The Court 
had already, before the examination of the 
latter witnesses, determined that there was 
no evidence of publication ; notwithstanding 
which, and the failure of these last, the At- 
torney and Solicitor General proceeded to 
argue that the case was sufficient, — chiefly, 
it would seem, to prolong the brawl till the 
arrival of Lord Sunderland, by whose testi- 
mony they expected to prove the delivery 
of the Petition to the King. But the Chief 
Justice, who could no longer endure such 
wearisome confusion, began to sum up the 
evidence. to the Jury, whom, if he had ad- 
hered to his previous declarations, he must 
have instructed to acquit the accused. Finch, 
either distrusting the Jury, or excused, if not 
justified, by the Judge's character, by the 
suspicious solemnity of his professions of im- 
partiality, and by his own too long familiarity 
with the darkest mysteries of state trials, 
suspected some secret design, and respect- 
fully interrupted .Wright, in order to ascer- 
tain whether he still thought that there was 
no sufficient proof of writing in Middlesex, 
or of publication any where. Wright, who 
seemed to be piqued, said, a he was sorry 
Mr. Finch should think him capable of not 
leaving it fairly to the Jury," — scarcely con- 
taining his exultation over his supposed in- 
discretion.* Pollexfen requested the Judge 
to proceed; and Finch pressed his interrup- 
tion no farther. But Williams, who, when 
Wright had began to sum up, countermanded 
his request for the attendance of Lord Sun- 
derland as too late, seized the opportunity of 
this interruption to despatch a second mes- 
sage, urging him to come without delay, and 
begged the Court to suspend the summing- 
up, as a person of great quality was about to 
appear who would supply the defects in the 
evidence, — triumphantly adding, that there 
was a fatality in this case. Wright then said 
to the accused's counsel, " You see what 
comes of the interruption ; now we must 
stay." All the bystanders condemned Finch 



* "The C. J. said, 'Gentlemen, you do not 
know your own business ; but since you will be 
heard, you shall be heard.' " Johnstone, 2d July. 
— MS. He seems to have been present, and, as a 
Scotchman, was not very likely to have invented 
so good an illustration of the future tense. It. is 
difficult not to suspect that Wright, afteradmitting 
that there was no positive evidence of publication 
in Middlesex, did not intend to tell the Jury that 
there were circumstances proved from which they 
might reasonably infer the fact. The only cir- 
cumstance, indeed, which could render it doubtful 
that he would lay down a doctrine so well founded, 
and so suitable to his purpose, at a time when he 
could no longer be contradicted, is the confusion 
which, on this trial, seems to have more than 
usually clouded his weak understanding. 



as much as he soon afterwards compelled 
them to applaud him. An hour was spent 
in waiting for Sunderland. It appears to have 
been during this fortunate delay that the 
Bishops' counsel determined on a defence 
founded on the illegality of the Dispensing- 
Power, from which they had before been 
either deterred from an apprehension that 
they would not be suffered to question an 
adjudged point, or diverted at the moment 
by the prospect that the Chief Justice would 
sum up for an acquittal.* By this resolution, 
the verdict, instead of only insuring the es- 
cape of the Bishops, became a triumph of 
the constitution. At length Sunderland was 
carried through Westminster in a chair, the 
head of which was down ;. — no one saluting 
him, and the multitude hooting and hissing 
and crying out "Popish dog!" He was so 
disordered by this reception that when he 
came into court he trembled, changed colour 7 
and looked down, as if fearful of the coun- 
tenances of ancient friends, and unable to 
bear the contrast between his own disgrace- 
ful greatness and the honourable calamity of 
the Bishops. He only proved that the Bishops 
came to him with a petition, which he de- 
clined to read ; and that he introduced them 
immediately to the King, to whom he had 
communicated the purpose for which they 
prayed an audience. 

The general defence then began, and the 
counsel for the Bishops, without relinquish- 
ing their minor objections, arraigned the Dis- 
pensing Power, and maintained the right of 
petition with a vigour and boldness which 
entitles such of them as were only mere ad- 
vocates to great approbation, and those among 
them who were actuated by higher principles 
to the everlasting gratitude of their country. 
When Sawyer began to question the legality 
of the Declaration, Wright, speaking aside, 
said, "I must not suffer them to dispute the 
King's power of suspending laws." Powell 
answered, "They must touch that point ; for 
if the King had no such power (as clearly he 
hath not,) the Petition is no attack on the 
King's legal power, and therefore no libel." 
Wright peevishly replied, :: I know you are 
full of that doctrine, but the Bishops shall 
have no reason to say I did not hear them. 
Brother, you shall have your way for once. 
I will hear them. Let them talk till they are 
weary." The substance of the argument was, 
that a Dispensing Power was unknown to the 
ancient constitution ; that the Commons, in 
the reign of Richard II., had formally con- 
sented that the King should, with the as- 
sent of the Lords, exercise such a power re- 
specting a single law till the next Parlia- 

t "They waited about an hour for Sunderland, 
which luckily fell out, for in this time the Bishops' 
lawyers recollected themselves, in order to what 
followed." A minute examination of the trial 
explains these words of Johnstone, and remark- 
ably proves his accuracy. From the eagerness of 
Pollexfen that Wright should proceed with his j 
address to the Jury, it is evident that they did not 
then intend to make the defence which was after 
wards made. 



372 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



ment ;* that the acceptance of such a trust was 
a Parliamentary declaration against the exist- 
ence of such a prerogative ; that though there 
were many cases of dispensations from pen- 
alties granted to individuals, there never was 
an instance of a pretension to dispense with 
laws before the Restoration ; that it was in 
the reign of Charles II. twice condemned by 
Parliament, twice relinquished, and once 
disclaimed by the Crown ; that it was de- 
clared to be illegal by the House of Commons 
in their very last session : and finally, that 
the power to suspend was in effect a power 
to abrogate ; that it was an assumption of the 
whole legislative authority, and laid the laws 
and liberties of the kingdom at the mercy of 
the King. Mr. Somers, whose research had 
supplied the ancient authorities quoted by 
his seniors, closed the defence in a speech 
admirable for a perspicuous brevity well 
adapted to the stage of the trial at which he 
spoke ; in which, with a mind so unruffled 
by the passions which raged around him as 
even to preserve a beautiful simplicity of 
expression, — rarely reconcilable with anxi- 
ous condensation, — he conveyed in a few 
luminous sentences the substance of all that 
had been dispersed over a rugged, prolix, 
and disorderly controversy. "My Lord, I 
would only mention the case respecting a 
dispensation from a statute of Edward VI., 
wherein all the judges determined that there 
never could be an abrogation or suspension 
(which is a temporary abrogation) of an Act 
of Parliament but by the legislative power. 
It was, indeed, disputed how far the King 
might dispense with the penalties of such a 
particular law, as to particular persons ; but 
it was agreed by all that the King had no 
power to suspend any law. Nay, I dare ven- 
ture to appeal to Mr. Attorney-General, whe- 
ther, in the late case of Sir Edward Hales, 
he did not admit that the King could not 
suspend a law, but only grant a dispensation 
from its observance to a particular person. 
My Lord, by the law of all civilized nations, 
if the prince requires something to be done, 
which the person who is to do it takes to be 
unlawful, it is not only lawful, but his duty, 
rescribere principi^' — to petition the sove- 
reign. This is all that is done here j and that 
an the most humble manner that could be 
thought of. Your Lordships will please to 
observe how far that humble caution went; 
how careful they were that they might not. 
in any way justly offend the King : they did 
not interpose by giving advice as peers ; 
they never stirred till it was brought home to 
themselves as bishops. When they made 
this Petition, all they asked was, that it might 
not be so far insisted on by his Majesty as 
to oblige them to read it. Whatever they 
thought of it, they do not take it upon them 

* 15 Ric. II. 

t"This phrase of the Roman law, which at first 
sight seems mere pedantry, conveys a delicate and 
happy allusion to the liberty of petition, which was 
allowed even under the despotism of the Em- 
aerors of Rome. 



to desire the Declaration to be revoked. My 
Lord, as to the matters of fact alleged in the 
Petition, that they are perfectly true we have 
shown by the Journals of both Houses. In 
every one of those years which are men- 
tioned in the Petition, this power was con- 
sidered by Parliament, and upon debate 
declared to be contrary to law. There could 
then be no design to diminish the prerogative, 
for the King has no such prerogative. Sedi- 
tious, my Lord, it could not be, nor could it 
possibly stir up sedition in the minds of the 
people, because it was presented to the King 
in private and alone ; false it could not be, 
for the matter of it was true ; there could be 
nothing of malice, for the occasion was not 
sought, but the thing was pressed upon them ; 
and a libel it could not be, because the in- 
tent was innocent, and they kept within the 
bounds set up by the law that gives the sub- 
ject leave to apply to his prince by petition 
when he is aggrieved." 

The Crown lawyers, by whom this ex- 
tensive and bold defence seems to have been 
unforeseen, manifested in their reply their 
characteristic faults. Powis was feebly tech- 
nical, and Williams was offensively violent.* 
Both evaded the great question of the pre- 
rogative by professional common-places of 
no avail with the Jury or the public. They 
both relied on the usual topics employed by 
their predecessors and successors, that the 
truth of a libel could not be the subject of in- 
quiry ; and that the falsehood, as well as the 
malice and sedition charged by the informa- 
tion, were not matters of fact to be tried by 
the Jury, but qualifications applied by the 
law to every writing derogatory to the go- 
vernment. Both triumphantly urged that 
the Parliamentary proceedings of the last 
and present reign, being neither acts nor 
judgments of Parliament, were no proof of 
the illegality of what they condemned, — • 
without adverting to the very obvious con- 
sideration that the Bishops appealed to them 
only as such manifestations of the sense of 
Parliament as it would be imprudent in them 
to disregard. Williams, in illustration of 
this argument, asked "Whether the name 
of 'a declaration in Parliament' could be 
given to the Bill of Exclusion, because it had 
passed the Commons (where he himself had 
been very active in promoting it)?" This 
indiscreet allusion was received with a gene- 
ral hiss.t He was driven to the untenable 
position, that a petition from these prelates 
was warrantable only to Parliament ; and 
that they were bound to delay it till Parlia- 
ment should be assembled. 



* " Pollexfen and Finch took no small pains to 
inveigh against the King's Dispensing power. 
The counsel for the Crown waived that point, 
though Mr. Solicitor was fiercely earnest against 
the Bishops, and took the management upon him- 
self; JVIr. Attorney's province being to put a 
smooth question now and then." — Mr. (after- 
wards Baron) Price to the Duke of Beaufort. — 
Maopherson, Original Papers, vol. i. p. 266. 

t Van Citters, 9th July.— MS. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



373 



Wright, waiving the question of the Dis- 
pensing Power,* instructed the Jury that a 
delivery to the King was a publication ; and 
that any writing which was adapted to dis- 
turb the government, or make a stir among 
the people, was a libel ; — language of fearful 
import, but not peculiar to him, nor confined 
to his time. Holloway thought, that if the 
intention of the Bishops was only to make 
an innocent provision for their own security, 
the writing could not be a libel. Powell de- 
clared that they were innocent of sedition, or 
of any other crime, saying, " If such a Dis- 
pensing Power be allowed, there will need 
no Parliament • all the legislature will be in 
the King. I leave the issue to God and to 
your consciences." Allibone overleaped all 
the fences of decency or prudence so far as 
to affirm, "that no man can take upon him- 
self to write against the actual exercise of 
the government, unless he have leave from 
the government, but he makes a libel, be 
what he writes true or false. The govern- 
ment ought not to be impeached by argu- 
ment. This is a libel. No private man can 
write concerning the government at all, un- 
less his own interest be stirred, and then he 
must redress himself by law. Every man 
may petition in what relates to his private in- 
terest ; but neither the Bishops, nor any other 
man, has a right to intermeddle in affairs of 
government." 

After a trial which lasted ten hours, the 
Jury retired at seven o'clock in the evening 
to consider their verdict. The friends of the 
Bishops watched at the door of the jury- 
room, and heard loud voices at midnight and 
at three o'clock ; so anxious were they about 
the issue, though delay be in such cases a 
sure symptom of acquittal. The opposi- 
tion of one Arnold, the brewer of the King's 
house, being at length subdued by the steadi- 
ness of the others, the Chief Justice was in- 
formed, at six o'clock in the morning, that 
the Jury were agreed in their verdict. t The 
Court met at nine o'clock. The nobility and 
gentry covered the benches ; and an im- 
mense concourse of people filled the Hall, 

* " The Dispensing Power is more effectually 
knocked on the head than it an Act of Parliament 
had been made against it. The Judges said no- 
thing about it, except Powell, who declared against 
it: so it is given up in Westminster Hall. My 
Lord Chief Justice is much blamed at Court for 
allowing it to be debated." — Johnstone, 2d July. 
—MS. 

t Letter of Ince, the solicitor for the Bishops, to 
Sancroft. Gutch, vol. i. p. 374. From this letter 
we learn that the perilous practice then prevailed 
of successful parties giving a dinner and money to 
the jury. The solicitor proposed that the dinner 
should be omitted, but that 150 or 200 guineas 
should be distributed among twenty-two of the 
panel who attended. " Most of them (/. e. the 
panel of the Jury) are Church of England men ; 
several are employed by the King in the navy and 
revenue; and some are or once were of the Dis- 
senters' party." — Ellis. Original Letters, 2d se- 
ries, vol. iv. p. 105. Of this last class we are told by 
Johnstone, that, "on beinc; sounded by the Court 
agents, they declared that if they were jurors, 
they should act according to their conscience." 



and blocked up the adjoining streets. Sir 
Robert Langiey, the foreman of the Jury, 
being, according to established form, asked 
whether the accused were guilty or not 
guilty, pronounced the verdict, '-Not guilty." 
No sooner were these words uttered than a 
loud huzza arose from the audience in the 
court, It was instantly echoed from without 
by a shout of joy, which sounded like a crack 
of the ancient and massy roof of Westminster 
Hall.* It passed with electrical rapidity from 
voice to voice along the infinite multitude 
who waited in the streets, reaching the Tem- 
ple in a few minutes. For a short time no 
man seemed to know where he was. No 
business was done for hours. The Solicitor- 
General informed Lord Sunderland, in the 
presence of the Nuncio, that never within 
the remembrance of man had there been 
heard such cries of applause mingled with 
tears of joy.t ''The acclamations," says 
Sir John Reresby, " were a very rebellion in 
noise." In no long time they ran to the 
camp at Hounslow, and were repeated with 
an ominous voice by the soldiers in the hear- 
ing of the King, who, on being told that they 
were for the acquittal of the Bishops, said, 
with an ambiguity probably arising from 
confusion, "So much the worse for them." 
The Jury were every where received with 
the loudest acclamations: hundreds, with 
tears in their eyes, embraced them as de- 
liverers, t The Bishops, almost alarmed at 
their own success, escaped from the huzzas 
of the people as privately as possible, exhort- 
ing them to -fear God and honour the King." 
Cartwright, Bishop of Chester, had remained 
in court during the trial unnoticed by any of 
the crowd of nobility and gentry, and Sprat 
met with little more regard. § The former, 
in going to his carriage, was called a " wolf 
in sheep's clothing;" and as he was very 
corpulent, the mob cried out, "Room for the 
man with a pope in his belly !" They be- 
stowed also on Sir William Williams very 
mortifying proofs ofdisrespect.il 

Money having been thrown among the 
populace for that purpose, they in the evening 
drank the healths of the King, the Bishops, 
and the Jury together with confusion to the 
Papists, amidst the ringing of bells, and 
around bonfires blazing before the windows 
of the King's palace ;ii where the Pope was 
burnt in effigy** by those who were not aware 
of his lukewarm friendship for their enemies. 
Bonfires were also kindled before the doors 
of the most distinguished Roman Catholics, 
who were required to defray the expense of 
this annoyance. Lord Arundel, and others, 
submitted: Lord Salisbury, with the zeal of 
a new convert, sent his servants to disperse 
the rabble ; but after having fired upon and 



* Clarendon. 30th June, 
t D'Adda, 16th July.— MS. 
t Van Citters, 13th July.— MS. 
§ Gutch, vol. i. p. 382. 

II Van Citters, 13th July.— MS. IT Ibid. 

** Johnstone, 2d July.— MS. Gerard, News 
Letter, 4th July. 

2G 



.374 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



killed only the parish beadle, who came to 
quenc i the bonfire, they were driven back 
into the house. All parties, Dissenters as 
well as Churchmen, rejoiced in the acquittal : 
the Bishops and their friends vainly laboured 
to temper the extravagance with which their 
joy was expressed.* The Nuncio, at first 
touched by the effusion of popular feeling, 
but now shocked by this boisterous triumph, 
declared, : 'that the fires over the whole city, 
the drinking in every street, accompanied by 
cries to the health of the Bishops and confu- 
sion to the Catholics, with the play of fire- 
works, and the discharge of fire-amis, and 
the other demonstrations of furious glad- 
ness, mixed with impious outrage against 
religion, which were continued during the 
night, formed a scene of unspeakable horror, 
displaying, in all its rancour, the malignity 
of this heretical people against the Church. "f 
The bonfires were kept up during the whole 
of Saturday ; and the disorderly rejoicings of 
,the multitude did not cease till the dawn 
of Sunday reminded them of the duties of 
iheir religion.} These same rejoicings spread 
through the principal towns. The Grand 
Jury of Middlesex refused to find indict- 
ments for a riot against some parties who 
•had tumultuously kindled bonfires, though 
four times sent out with instructions to do so.§ 

The Court also manifested its deep feelings 
on this occasion. In two days after the ac- 
quittal, the rank of a baronet was conferred 
upon Williams j while Powell for his honesty, 
and Holloway for his hesitation, were re- 
moved from the bench. The King betrayed 
the disturbance of his mind even in his 
,camp;l| and, though accustomed to unre- 
served conversation with Barillon. observed 
a silence on the acquittal which that minister 
was too prudent to interrupt.! 

In order to form a just estimate of this 
memorable trial, it is necessary to distinguish 
its peculiar grievances from the evils which 
always attend the strict administration of 
the laws against political libels. The doc- 
trine that every writing which indisposes 
the people towards the administration of 
the government, however subversive of all 
political discussion, is not one of these pecu- 
liar grievances, for it has often been held in 

* News Letter, 4th July. 

+ D'Adda, 16th July.— MS. 

t Ellis, vol. iv. p. 110. 

$ Reresby, p. 265. Gerard, News Letter, 7th 
July. 

II Reresby, supra. 

1T " His Majesty has been pleased to remove 
Sir Richard Holloway and Sir John Powell from 
being justices of the King's Bench." London 
Gazette, 6th July. In the Life of James II., (vol. 
ii. p. 163,) it is said, that " the King gave no marks 
of his displeasure to the Judges Holloway and 
Powell." It is due to the character of James, to 
say that this falsehood does not proceed from him ; 
and justice requires it to be added, that as Dic- 
conson, the compiler, thus evidently neglected 
the most accessible means of ascertaining the 
truth, very little credit is due lo those portions of 
his narrative for which, as in the present case, he 
sites no authority. 



other cases, and perhaps never distinctly dis- 
claimed ; and the position that a libel may be 
conveyed in the form of a petition is true, 
though the case must be evident and fla- 
grant which would warrant its application. 
The extravagances of Williams and Allibone 
might in strictness be laid out of the case, as 
peculiar to themselves, and not necessary to 
support the prosecution, were it not that they 
pointed out the threatening positions which 
success in it might encourage and enable the 
enemy to occupy. It was absolutely neces- 
sary for the Crown to contend that the matter 
of the writing was so inflammatory as to 
change its character from that of a petition 
to that of a libel; that the intention in com- 
posing it was not to obtain relief, but to ex- 
cite discontent; and that it was presented to 
the King to insult him, and to make its con- 
tents known to others. But the attempt to 
extract such conclusions from the evidence 
against the Bishops was an excess beyond 
the furthest limits of the law of libel, as it 
was even then received. The generous 
feelings of mankind did not, however, so 
scrupulously weigh the demerits of the pro- 
secution. The effect of this attempt was to 
throw a strong light on all the odious quali- 
ties (hid from the mind in their common 
state by familiarity) of a jealous and restric- 
tive legislation, directed against the free ex- 
ercise of reason and the fair examination of 
the interests of the community. All the 
vices of that distempered state in which a 
Government cannot endure a fearless discus- 
sion of its principles and measures/appeared 
in the peculiar evils of a single conspicuous 
prosecution. The feelings of mankind, in 
this respect more provident than their judg- 
ment, saw, in the loss of every post, the 
danger to the last entrenchments of public 
liberty. A multitude of contemporary cir- 
cumstances, wholly foreign to its character 
as a judicial proceeding, gave the trial the 
strongest hold on the hearts of the people. 
Unused to popular meetings, and little ac- 
customed to political writings, the whole 
nation looked on this first public discussion 
of their rights in a high place, surrounded 
by the majesty of public justice, with that 
new and intense interest which it is not easy 
for those who are familiar with such scenes 
to imagine. It was a prosecution of men of 
the most venerable character and of mani- 
festly innocent intention, after the success 
of which no good man could have been 
secure. It was an experiment, in some 
measure, to ascertain the means and proba- 
bilities of general deliverance. The Govern- 
ment was on its trial ; and by the verdict of 
acquittal, the King was justly convicted of a 
conspiracy to maintain usurpation by oppres- 
sion. 

The solicitude of Sunderland for modera- 
tion in these proceedings had exposed him 
to such charges of lukewarmness, that he 
deemed it necessary no longer to delay the 
long-promised and decisive proof of his iden- 
tifying his interest with that of his master. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



375 



Sacrifices of a purely religious nature cost 
him little.* Some time before, he had com- 
pounded for his own delay by causing his 
eldest son to abjure Protestantism ; '•'• choos- 
ing rather," says Barillon, "to expose his 
son than himself to future hazard." The 
specious excuse of preserving his vote in 
Parliament had hitherto been deemed suffi- 
cient ) while the shame of apostasy, and an 
anxiety not to, embroil himself irreparably 
with a Protestant successor, were the real 
motives for delay. But nothing less than a 
public avowal of his conversion would now 
suffice to shut the mouths of his enemies, 
who imputed his advice of lenity towards 
the Bishops to a desire of keeping measures 
with the adherents of the Prince of Orange. f 
It was accordingly in the week of the Bishops' 
trial that he made public his renunciation 
of the Protestant religion, but without any 
solemn abjuration, because he had the year 
before secretly performed that ceremony to 
Father Petre.l By this measure he com- 
pletely succeeded in preserving or recovering 
the favour of the King, who announced it 
with the wannest commendations to his Ca- 
tholic counsellors, and told the Nuncio that 
a resolution so generous and holy would very 
much contribute to the service of God. "I 
have, indeed, been informed," says that 
minister, " that some of the most fanatical 
merchants of the city have observed that the 
Royal party must certainly be the strongest, 
since, in the midst of the universal exaspera- 
tion of men's minds, it is thus embraced by 
a man so wise, prudent, rich, and well in- 
formed. "$ The Catholic courtiers also con- 
sidered the conversion as an indication of the 
superior strength and approaching triumph 
of their religion. Perhaps, indeed, the birth 
of the Prince of Wales might have somewhat 
encouraged him to the step; but it chiefly 
arose from the prevalence of the present fear 
for his place over the apprehension of remote 
consequences. Ashamed of his conduct, he 
employed a friend to communicate his change 
to his excellent wife, who bitterly deplored 
it. II His uncle, Henry Sidney, the most con- 

* " On ne scait pas de quelle religion il est." — 
Leitre d'un Anonyme (peut-etre Bonrepos) sur la 
Cour de Londres, 1688, MSS. in the Depot des 
Affaires Etrangeres, at Paris. 

t " II a voulu fermer la bouche a ses ennemis, 
et leur oter toute pretexts de dire qu'il peut entrer 
dans sa conduite quelque management pour la 
partie de M. le Prince d' Orange." — Barillon, 8th 
July— MS. 

t Ibid, supra. "Father Petre, though it was 
irregular, was forced to say two masses in one 
morning, because Lord Sunderland and Lord 
Mulgrave were not to know of each other's con- 
version." — Halifax MSS. The French ambas- 
sador at Constantinople informed Sir William 
Trumbull of the secret abjuration. — Ibid. " It is 
now necessary," says Van Citters (6th July), " to 
secure the King's favour; the Queen's, if she be 
regent ; and his own place in the Council of Re- 
gency, if there be one." 

% D'Adda, 9th July.— MS. 

II Evelyn, who visited Althorp a fortnight after- 
wards, thus alludes to it : " I wish from my soul 
that the Lord her husband, whose parts are other- 



fidential agent of the Prince of Orange, was 
incensed at his apostasy, and only expressed 
the warmest wishes for his downfall.* 

Two days after the imprisonment of the 
Bishops, — as if all the events which were to 
hasten the catastrophe of this reign, however 
various in their causes or unlike in their na- 
ture, were to be crowded into the same scene, 
— the Queen had been delivered in the palace 
of St. James', of a son, whose birth had been 
the object of more hopes and fears, and was 
now the hinge on which greater events turned, 
than that of any other Royal infant since hu- 
man affairs have been recorded in authentic 
history. Never did the dependence of a 
monarchical government on physical acci- 
dent more strikingly appear. On Trinity 
Sunday, the 10th of June, between nine and 
ten in the morning, the Prince of Wales was 
born, in the presence of the Queen Dowager, 
of most of the Privy Council, and of several 
ladies of quality, — of all, in short, who were 
the natural witnesses on such an! occasion, 
except the Princess Anne, who was at Bath, 
and the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was 
a prisoner in the Tower. The cannons of 
the Tower were fired ; a general thanksgiving 
was ordered; and the Lord Mayor was en- 
joined to give directions for bonfires and 
public rejoicing. Some addresses of con- 
gratulation followed ; and compliments were 
received on so happy an occasion from foreign 
powers. The British ministers abroad, in 
due time, celebrated the auspicious birth, — 
with undisturbed magnificence, at Rome, — 
amidst the loudest manifestations of dissatis- 
faction and apprehension at Amsterdam. 
From Jamaica to Madras, the distant de- 
pendencies, with which an unfrequent inter- 
course was then maintained by tedious 
voyages, continued their prescribed rejoic- 
ings long after other feelings openly prevailed 
in the mother country. The genius of Dryden, 
winch often struggled with the difficulty of 
a task imposed, commemorated the birth of 
the " son of prayer" in no ignoble verse, 
but with prophecies of glory which were 
speedily clouded, and in the end most sig- 
nally disappointed.'! 

The universal belief that the child was 
supposititious is a fact which illustrates 



wise conspicuous, were as worthy of her, as by a 
fatal apostasy and court ambition he has made 
himselrunworthy." — Diary, 18th July. 
* Johnstone, 2d July. — MS. 
t " Born in broad daylight, that the ungrateful 
rout 
May find no room for a remaining doubt : 
Truth, which itself is light, does darkness 

shun, 
And the true eaglet safely dares the sun. 
Fain would the fiends have made a dubious 

birth. 

* * * * 

No future ills, nor accidents, appear, 

To sully or pollute the sacred infant's year. 

* * * * 

But kings too tame are despicably good. 
Be this The mixture of the regal child, 
By nature manly, but by virtue mild." 

Britannia Rediviva. 



376 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



several principles of human nature, and af- 
fords a needful and wholesome lesson of 
scepticism, even in cases where many testi- 
monies seem to combine, and all judgments 
for a time agree. The historians who wrote 
while the dispute was still pending enlarge 
on the particulars: in our age, the only cir- 
cumstances deserving preservation are those 
which throw light on the origin and recep- 
tion of a false opinion which must be owned 
to have contributed to subsequent events. 
Few births are so well attested as that of the 
unfortunate Prince whom almost all English 
Protestants then believed to be spurious. 
The Queen had, for months before, alluded 
to her pregnancy, in the most unaffected 
manner, to the Princess of Orange.* The 
delivery took place in the presence of many 
persons of unsuspected veracity, a considera- 
ble number of whom were Protestants. Mes- 
sengers were early sent to fetch Dr. Cham- 
berlain, an eminent obstetrical practitioner, 
and a noted Whig, who had been oppressed 
by the King, and who would have been the 
last person summoned to be present at a 
pretended delivery.! But as not one in a 
thousand had credited the pregnancy, the 
public now looked at the. birth with a strong 
predisposition to unbelief, which a very 
natural neglect suffered for some time to 
grow stronger from being uncontradicted. 
This prejudice was provoked to greater vio- 
lence by the triumph of the Catholics; as 
suspicion had before been awakened by their 
bold predictions. The importance of the 
event had, at the earlier period of the preg- 
nancy, produced mystery and reserve, — the 
frequent attendants of fearful anxiety, — 
which were eagerly seized on as presump- 
tions of sinister purpose. When a passionate 
and inexperienced Queen disdained to take 
any measures to silence malicious rumours, 
her inaction was imputed to inability; and 
when she submitted to the use of prudent 
precautions, they were represented as be- 
traying the fears of conscious guilt. Every 
act of the Royal Family had some handle by 
which ingenious hostility could turn it against 
them. Reason was employed only to dis- 
cover argument in support of the judgment 
which passion had pronounced. In spite of 
the strongest evidence, the Princess Anne 
honestly persevered in her incredulity.}: 
Johnstone, who received minute information 
of all the particulars of the delivery from one 
of the Queen's attendants, § could not divest 
himself of suspicions, the good faith of which 
seems to be proved by his not hazarding a 

* Ellis, Original Letters, 1st series, vol. iii. p. 
348. 21st Feb. 15th May, 6th— 13th July. The 
last is decisive. 

t Dr. Chamberlain's Letter to the Princess 
Sophia. Dalrymple, app. to book v. 

i Princess Anne to the Princess of Orange. 
Ibid. 

§ Mrs. Dawson, one of the gentlewomen of the 
Queen's bedchamber, a Protestant, afterwards 
examined before the Privy Council, who commu- 
nicated all the circumstances to her friend, Mrs. 
Baillie, of Jerviswood, Johnstone's sister. 



positive judgment on the subject. By these 
the slightest incidents of a lying-in room 
were darkly coloured. No incidents in hu- 
man life could have stood the test of a trial 
by minds so prejudiced, — especially as long 
as adverse scrutiny had the advantages of 
the partial selection and skilful insinuation 
of facts, undisturbed by that full discussion 
in which all circumstances are equally sifted. 
When the before-mentioned attendant of the 
Queen declared to a large company of gain- 
sayers that "she would swear," (as she 
afterwards did " that the Queen had a child," 
it was immediately said, "How ambiguous 
is her expression ! the child might have been 
born dead." At one moment Johnstone boasts 
of the universal unbelief: at another he is 
content with saying that even wise men see 
no evidence of the birth; that, at all events, 
there is doubt enough to require a Parlia- 
mentary inquiry ; and that the general doubt 
may be lawfully employed as an argument 
by those who, even if they do not share it, 
did nothing to produce it. He sometimes 
endeavours to stifle his own scepticism with 
the public opinion, and on other occasions 
has recourse to these very ambiguous maxims 
of factious casuistry; but the whole tenour 
of his confidential letters shows the ground- 
less unbelief in the Prince's legitimacy to 
have been as spontaneous as it was general. 
Various, and even contradictory, accounts 
of the supposed imposture were circulated : 
it was said that the Queen was never preg- 
nant ; that she had miscarried at Easter ; that 
one child, and by some accounts two children 
in succession, had been substituted in the 
room of the abortion. That these tales con- 
tradicted each other, was a very slight ob- 
jection in the eye of a national prejudice : 
the people were very slow in seeing the 
contradiction; some had heard only one story, 
and some jumbled parts of more together. 
The zealous, when beat out of one version, 
retired upon another : the skilful chose that 
which, like the abortion (of which there had 
actually been a danger), had some apparent 
support from facts. When driven succes- 
sively from every post, they took refuge in 
the general remark, that so many stories 
must have a foundation ; that they all coin- 
cided in the essential circumstance of a sup- 
posititious birth, though they differed in facts 
of inferior moment ; that the King deserved, 
by his other breaches of faith, the humiliation 
which he now underwent ; and that the natu- 
ral punishment of those who have often de- 
ceived is to be disbelieved when they speak 
truth. It is the policy of most parties not to 
discourage zealous partisans. The multitude 
considered every man who hesitated in think- 
ing the worst of an enemy, as his abettor; 
and the loudness of the popular cry subdued 
the remains of candid doubt in those who 
had at first, from policy 7 , countenanced,} 
though they did not contrive, the delusion. 
In subsequent times, it was not thought the 
part of a good citizen to aid in detecting a 
prevalent error, which enabled the partisans 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



377 



of inviolable succession to adhere to the 
principles of the Revolution without incon- 
sistency during the reign of Anne,* and 
through which the House of Hanover itself 
were brought at least nearer to an hereditary 
right. Johnstone on the spot, and at the 
moment, almost worked himself into a belief 
of it; while Lloyd, Bishop of St. Asaph, ho- 
nestly adhered to it many years afterwards.! 
The collection of inconsistent rumours on 
this subject by Burnet reflects more on his 
judgment than any other passage of his his- 
tory; yet, zealous as he was, his conscience 
would not allow him to profess his own be- 
lief in what was still a fundamental article 
of the creed of his party. Echard, writing 
under George I., intimates his disbelief, for 
which he is almost rebuked by Kennet. The 
upright and judicious Rapin, though a French 
Protestant, and an officer in the army led by 
the Prince of Orange into England, yet, in the 
liberty of his foreign retirement, gave an 
honest judgment against his prejudices. 
Both parties, on this subject, so exactly 
believed what they wished, that perhaps 
scarcely any individual before -him examined 
it on grounds of reason. The Catholics were 
right by chance, and by chance the Protest- 
ants were wrong. Had it been a case of 
the temporary success of artful impostures, 
so common an occurrence would have de- 
served no notice : but the growth of a general 
delusion from the prejudice and passion of a 
nation, and the deep root which enabled it 
to keep a place in history for half a century, 
render this transaction worthy to be remem- 
bered by posterity. 

The triumph of the Bishops did not termi- 
nate all proceedings of the Ecclesiastical Com- 
missioners against the disobedient clergy. 
They issued an order} requiring the proper 
officers in each diocese to make a return of 
the names of those who had not read the 
Royal Declaration. On the day before that 
which was fixed for the giving in the return, 
a meeting of chancellors and archdeacons 
was held ; of whom eight agreed to return 
that the}- had no means of procuring the in- 
formation but at their regular visitation, 
which did not fall within the appointed 
time ; six declined to make any return at all. 
and five excused themselves on the plea that 
the order had not been legally served upon 
them.§ The Commissioners, now content to 
shut their eyes on lukewarmness, resistance, 
or evasion, affected a belief in the reasons 
assigned for non-compliance, and directed 

* Caveat Against the Whigs, part ii. p. 50, — 
where the question is left in doubt at the critical 
' period of 1712. 

t See his account, adverted to by Burnet and 
others, published by Oldmixon, vol. i. p. 734. 
" The Bishop whom your friends know, bids me 
tell them that he had met with neither man nor 
woman who were so good as to believe the Prince 
of Wales to be a lawful child." — Johnstone, 2d 
July.- -MS. This bold bishop was probably 
Compton. 

X London Gazette, 12th July. 

§ Sayers' News-Letter, 18th August. 
48 



another return to be made on the 6th of De- 
cember, appointing a previous day for a visi 
tation.* On the day when the Board ex- 
hibited these symptomsof debility and decay, 
it received a letter from Sprat, tendering the 
resignation of his seat, which was universally 
regarded as foreboding its speedy dissolu- 
tion ;t and the last dying effort of its usurped 
authority was to adjourn to a day on which 
it was destined never to meet. Such, indeed, 
was the discredit into which these proceed- 
ings had fallen, that the Bishop of Chichester 
had the spirit to suspend one of his clergy 
for obedience to the King's order in reading 
the Declaration. t 

The Court and the Church now contended 
with each other for the alliance of the Dis- 
senters, but with very unequal success. The 
last attempt of the King to gain them, was 
the admission into the Privy Council of three 
gentlemen, who were either Nonconformists, 
or well disposed towards that body, — Sir 
John Trevor, Colonel Titus, and Mr. Vane, 
the posthumous son of the celebrated Sir 
Henry Vane.§ The Church took better means 
to unite all Protestants against a usurpation 
which clothed itself in the garb of religious 
liberty; and several consultations were held 
on the mode of coming to a better under- 
standing with the Dissenters.il The Arch- 
bishop and clergy of London had several 
conferences with the principal Dissenting 
ministers on the measures fit to be proposed 
about religion in the next Parliament.1T The 
Primate himself issued admonitions to his 
clergy, in which he exhorted them to have 
a very tender regard towards their Dissent- 
ing brethren, and to entreat them to join in 
prayer for the union of all Reformed churches 
-at home and abroad, against the common 
enemy,"** conformably to the late Petition 
of himself and his brethren, in which they 
had declared their willingness to come into 
such a temper as should be thought fit with 
the Dissenters, whenever that matter should 
be considered in Parliament and Convoca- 
tion. He even carried this new-born tender- 
ness so far as to renew those projects for 
uniting the more moderate to the Church by 
some concessions in the terms of worship, 
and for exempting those whose scruples were 
insurmountable from the severity of penal 
laws, which had been foiled by his friends, 
when they were negotiated by Hale and 
Baxter in the preceding reign, and which 

* London Gazette, 16th August. 

t Savers' News-Letter, 22d August. " The 
secretary gave this letter to the Chancellor, who 
swore that the Bishop was mad. He gave it to 
the Lord President, but it was never read to the 
Board." Such was then the disorder in their 
minds and in their proceedings. 

t Ibid. 19th Sept., Kennet, vol. iii. p. 515, note; 
in both which, the date of Sprat's letter is 15th 
August, the day before the last meeting of the 
Commissioners. 

§ London Gazette, 6th July. 

II Sayers' News-Letter, 7th July. 

IT Ibid. 21st July. Ellis, vol. iv. p. 117. 

** D'Oyley, vol. i. p. 324. 
2g2 



378 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



were again within a few months afterwards 
to be resisted, by the same party, ami with 
too much success. Among the instances of 
the disaffection of the Church the University 
of Oxford refused so small a compliance as 
that of conferring the degree of doctor of di- 
vinity on their Bishop, according to the royal 
mandamus,* and hastened to elect the young 
Duke of Ormonde to be their Chancellor on 
the death of his grandfather, in order to 
escape the imposition of Jeffreys, in whose 
favour they apprehended a recommendation 
from the Court. 

Several symptoms now indicated that the 
national discontent had infected the armed 
•force. The seamen of the squadron at the 
Nore received some monks who were sent 
to officiate among them with boisterous 
marks of derision and aversion ; and, though 
the tumult was composed by the presence 
of the King, it left behind dispositions favour- 
able to the purposes of disaffected officers. 
James' proceedings respecting the army 
were uniformly impolitic. He had, very 
early, boasted of the number of his guards 
who were converted to his religion; thus 
disclosing to them the dangerous secret of 
their importance to his designs.! The sensi- 
bility evinced at the Tower and at Lambeth, 
betokened a pronenessto fellow-feeling with 
the people, which Sunderland had before 
intimated to the Nuncio, and of which he 
had probably forewarned his master. After 
the triumph of the prelates, on which occa- 
sion the feelings of the army declared them- 
selves still more loudly, the King had re- 
course to the very doubtful expedient of 
paying open court to it. He dined twice a 
week in the camp,t and showed an anxiety 
to ingratiate himself by a display of affability, 
of precautions for the comfort, and pride in 
the discipline and appearance of the troops. 
Without the boldness which quells a muti- 
nous spirit, or the firmness which, where 
activity would be injurious, can quietly look 
at a danger till it disappears or may be sur- 
mounted, he yielded to the restless fearful- 
ness which seeks a momentary relief in rash 
and mischievous efforts, that rouse many re- 
bellious tempers and subdue none. A writ- 
ten test was prepared, which even the pri- 
vates were required to subscribe, by which 
they bound themselves to contribute to the 
repeal of the penal laws.§ It was first to be 
tendered to the regiments who were most 
confidentially expected to set a good example 
to the others. The experiment was first 
tried on Lord Lichfield's, and all who hesi- 
tated to comply with the King's commands 
were ordered to lay down their arms : — the 
whole regiment, except two captains and a 
few catholic privates, actually did lay down 
their arms. The King was thunderstruck; 
and, after a gloomy moment of silence, or- 

* Savers' News-Letter, 25th July, 
t D'Adda, 5th Dec. 1687, MS. 
t Ellis, vol. iv. p. 111. 

$ Johnstone, 2d July, MS. Oldmixon, vol. i. 
p. 739. 



dered them to take up their muskets, say- 
ing, : -'that he should not again do them the 
honour to consult them."* When the troops 
returned from the encampment to their 
quarters, another plan was attempted for se- 
curing their fidelity, by the introduction of 
trustworthy recruits. With this view, fifty 
Irish Catholics were ordered to be equally 
distributed among the ten companies of the 
Duke of Berwick's regiment at Portsmouth, 
which, having already a colonel incapacita- 
ted by law, was expected to be better dis- 
posed to the reception of recruits liable to 
the same objection. But the experiment 
was too late, and was also conducted with a 
slow formality alien to the genius of soldiers. 
The officers were now actuated by the same 
sentiments with their own class in society. 
Beaumont, the lieutenant-colonel, and the 
five captains who were present, positively 
refused to comply. They were brought to 
Windsor under an escort of cavalry, tried by 
a council of war, and sentenced to be cashier- 
ed. The King now relented, or rather fal- 
tered, offering pardon, on condition of obe- 
dience. — a fault as great as the original at- 
tempt : they all refused. The greater part 
of the other officers of the regiment threw 
up their commissions ; and, instead of inti- 
midation, a great and general discontent was 
spread throughout the army. Thus, to the 
odium incurred by an attempt to recruit it 
from those who were deemed the most hos- 
tile of foreign enemies, was superadded the 
contempt which feebleness in the execution 
of obnoxious designs never fails to inspire. t 
Thus, in the short space of three years 
from the death of Monmouth and the de- 
struction of his adherents, when all who 
were not zealously attached to the Crown 
seemed to be dependent on its mercy, were 
all ranks and parties of the English nation, 
without any previous show of turbulence, 
and with not much of that cruel oppression 
of individuals which is usually necessary to 
awaken the passions of a people, slowly and 
almost imperceptibly conducted to the brink 
of a great revolution. The appearance of 
the Prince of W'ales. filled the minds of those 
who believed his legitimacy with terror ; 
while it roused the warmest indignation of 
those who considered his supposed birth as 
a flagitious imposture. Instead of the go- 
vernment of a Protestant successor, it pre- 
sented, after the death of James, both during 
the regency of the Queen, and the reign of a 
prince educated under her superintendence, 
no prospect but an administration certainly 
not more favourable than his to religion and 
liberty. These apprehensions had been 

41 

* Kennet, vol. iii. p. 516. Ralph speaks doubt- 
Cully of this scene, of which, indeed, no writer has 
mentioned the place or time. The written test is 
confirmed by Johnstone, and Kennet could hardly 
have been deceived about the sequel. The place 
must have been the camp at Hounslow, and the 
time was probably about the middle of July. 

t Reresby, p. 270, who seems to have been a 
captain in this regiment. Burnet, vol. iii. p. 272. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



379 



brought home to the feelings of the people 
"by the trial of the Bishops, and had at last 
affected even the army, the last resource of 
power, — a tremendous weapon, which cannot 
burst without threatening destruction to all 
around, and which, if it were not sometimes 
happily so overcharged as to recoil on him 
who wields it, would rob all the slaves in the 
world of hope, and all the freemen of safety. 

The state of the other British kingdoms 
was not such as to abate the alarms of Eng- 
land. In Ireland the government of Tyrcon- 
nel was always sufficiently in advance of 
the English minister to keep the eyes of the 
nation fixed on the course which their rulers 
were steering.* Its influence in spreading 
alarm and disaffection through the other do- 
minions of the King, was confessed by the 
ablest and most zealous of his apologists. 

Scotland was also a mirror in which the 
English nation might behold their approach- 
ing doom. The natural tendency of the 
Dispensing and Suspending Powers "to ter- 
minate in the assumption of the whole au- 
thority of legislation, was visible in the De- 
clarations of Indulgence issued in that king- 
dom. They did not, as in England, profess to 
be founded on limited and peculiar preroga- 
tives of the King, either as the head of the 
Church or as the fountain of justice, nor on 
usages and determinations which, if they 
sanctioned such acts of power, at least con- 
fined them within fixed boundaries, but upon 
what the King himself displayed, in all its 
amplitude and with all its terrors, as "our 
sovereign authority, prerogative royal, and 
absolute power, which all our subjects are 
bound to obey without reservation. "t In 
the exercise of this alarming power, not only 
were all the old oaths taken away, but a new 
one, professing passive obedience, was pro- 
posed as the condition of toleration. A like 
Declaration in 1688, besides the repetition 
of so high an act of legislative power as that 
of "annulling"' oaths which the legislature 
had prescribed, proceeds to dissolve all the 
courts of justice and bodies of magistracy in 
that kingdom, in order that by their accept- 

* " I do not vindicate all that Lord Tyrconnel, 
and others, did in Ireland before the Revolution ; 
which, most of any thing, brought it on. I am 
sensible ihat their carriage gave greater occasion 
to King James' enemies than all the other mal- 
administrations charged upon his government." — 
Leslie, Answer to King's State of the Protestants, 
p. 73. Leslie is the ablest of James' apologists. 
He skilfully avoids all the particulars of Tyrcon- 
nel's government before the Revolution. That 
silence, and this general admission, may be con- 
sidered as conclusive evidence against it. 

t Proclamation, 12th Feb. 1687. Wodrow, vol. 
ii. app. no. cxxix. "We here in England see 
what we must look to. A Parliament in Scotland 
proved a little stubborn ; now absolute -power comes 
to set all right: so when the closeting has gone 
round, we may perhaps see a Parliament here : 
but if it chance to be untoward, then our reverend 
judges will copy from Scotland, and will discover 
to us this new mystery of absolute power, which 
we are all obliged to obey without reserve " — Bur- 
net, Reflections on Proclamation for Toleration. 



ance of new commissions conformably to the 
royal pleasure, they might renounce all for- 
mer oaths; — so that every member of them 
would hold his office under the Suspending 
and even Annulling Powers, on the legiti- 
macy of which the whole judicature and ad- 
ministration of the realm would thus exclu- 
sively rest.* Blood had now ceased to flow 
for religion : and the execution of Ren\vick,f 
a pious and intrepid minister, who, according 
to the principles of the Cameronians, openly 
denied James II. to be his rightful sovereign, 
is rather an apparent than a real exception : 
for the offence imputed to him was not of a 
religious nature, and must have been punish- 
ed by every established authority ; though 
an impartial observer would rather regret the 
imprudence than question the justice of such 
a declaration from the mouths of these per- 
secuted men. Books against the King's re- 
ligion were reprehended or repressed by the 
Privy Council. X Barclay, the celebrated 
Quaker, was at this time in such favour, 
that he not only received a liberal pension, 
but had influence enough to procure an in- 
decent, but successful, letter from the King- 
to the Court of Session, in effect annulling a 
judgment for a large sum of money which 
had been obtained against Sir Ewen Came- 
ron, a bold and fierce chieftain, the brother- 
in-law of the accomplished and pacific apolo- 
gist. § Though the clergy of the Established 
Church had two years before resisted an un- 
limited toleration by prerogative, yet we are 
assured by a competent witness, that their 
opposition arose chiefly from the fear that it 
would encourage the unhappy Presbyterians, 
then almost entirely ruined and scattered 
through the world. II The deprivation of two 
prelates, Bruce, Bishop of Dunkeld, for his 
conduct in Parliament, and Cairncross, Arch- 
bishop of Glasgow, in spite of subsequent 
submission, for not censuring a preacher 
against the Church of Rome.1T showed the 
English clergy that suspensions like that of 
Compton might be followed by more decisive^ 
measures ; but seems to have silenced the 

* Proclamation, 15th May. Wodrow, vol. ii. 
app. no. cxxxviii. Fountainhall, vol. i. p. 504. 
The latter writer informs us, that " this occasioned 
several sheriffs to forbear awhile." Perth, the 
Scotch Chancellor, who carried this Declaration 
to Scotland, assured the Nuncio, before leaving 
London, " that the royal prerogative was then so 
extensive as not to. require the concurrence of 
Parliament, which was only an useful corrobora- 
tion."— D'Adda, 21st May, MS. 

t On the 17th Feb. 16S8. 

% A bookseller in Edinburgh was " threatened 
for publishing an account of the persecution in 
France."— Fountainhall, 8th Feb. 1688. Cock- 
burn, a minister, was forbidden to continue a Re- 
view, taken chiefly from Le Clerc's Bibliotheque 
Universelle, containing some extracts from Ma- 
billon's Iter Italicum, which were supposed tore- 
fleet on the Church of Rome. 

$ Fountainhall, 2d June. 

II Balcarras, Affairs of Scotland, (London, 1714), 
p. 8. 

IT Skinner, Ecclesiastical History of Scotland 
vol. ii. pp. 500—504. 



380 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



complaints of the Scottish Church. From 
that time, at least, their resistance to the 
Court entirely ceased. It was followed by 
symptoms of an opposite disposition ; among 
which may probably be reckoned the other- 
wise inexplicable return, to the office of 
Lord Advocate, of the eloquent Sir George 
Mackenzie, their principal instrument in the 
cruel persecution of the Presbyterians, — who 
now accepted that station at the moment of 
the triumph of those principles by opposing 
which he had forfeited it two years before.* 
The Primate prevailed on the University of 
St. Andrews to declare, by an address to the 
King, their opinion that he might take away 
the penal laws without the consent of Par- 
liament, t No manifestation of sympathy 
appears to have been made towards the Eng- 
lish Bishops, at the moment of their danger, 
or of their triumph, by their brethren in 
Scotland. At a subsequent period, when the 
prelates of England offered wholesome and 
honest counsel to their Sovereign, those of 
Scotland presented an address to him, in 
which they prayed that u God might give 
him the hearts of his subjects and the necks 
of his enemies. "t In the awful struggle in 
which the English nation and Church were 
about to engage, they had to number the 
Established Church of Scotland araons; their 



CHAPTER IX. 

Doctrine of obedience. — Right of resistance. — 
Comparison of foreign and civil war. — 
Right of calling auxiliaries. — Relations of 
the people of England and of Holland. 

The time was now come when the people 
of England were called upon to determine, 
whether they should by longer submission 
sanction the usurpations and encourage the 
further encroachments of the Crown, or take 
up arms against the established authority of 
their Sovereign for the defence of their legal 
rights, as well as of those safeguards which 
the constitution had placed around them. 
Though the solution of this tremendous pro- 
blem requires the calmest exercise of reason, 
the circumstances which bring it forward com- 
monly call forth mightier agents, which dis- 
turb and overpower the action of the under- 
standing. In conjunctures so awful, where 
men feel more than they reason, their con- 
duct is chiefly governed by the boldness or 
wariness of their nature, by their love of 
liberty or their attachment to quiet, by their 
proneness or slowness to fellow-feeling with 
their countrymen The generous virtues and 
turbulent passions rouse the brave and aspir- 
ing- to resistance j some gentle virtues and 
useful principles second the qualities of hu- 
man nature in disposing many to submis- 

* Founlainhall, 23d February. 

tld. 29th March. 

i Skinner, vol. ii. p. 513. 



sion. The duty of legal obedience seems to 
forbid that appeal to arms which the neces- 
sity of preserving law and liberty allows, or 
rather demands. In such a conflict there is 
little quiet left for moral deliberation. Yet 
by the immutable principles of morality, and 
by them alone, must the historian try the 
conduct of all men, before he allows him- 
self to consider all the circumstances of 
time, place, opinion, example, temptation, 
and obstacle, which, though they never au- 
thorise a removal of the everlasting land- 
marks of right and wrong, ought to be well 
weighed, in allotting a due degree of com- 
mendation or censure to human actions. 

The English law, like that of most other 
countries, lays down no limits of obedience. 
The clergy of the Established Church, the 
authorised teachers of public morality, car- 
ried their principles much farther than was 
required by a mere concurrence with this 
cautious silence of the law. Not content 
with inculcating, in common with all other 
moralists, religious or philosophical obedience 
to civil government as one of the most essen- 
tia] duties of human life, the English Church 
perhaps alone had solemnly pronounced that 
in the conflict of obligations no other rule of 
duty could, under any circumstances, be- 
come more binding than that of allegiance. 
Even the duty which seems paramount to 
every other, — that which requires every citi- 
zen to contribute to the preservation of the 
community, — ceased, according to their 
moral system, to have any binding force, 
whenever it could not be performed without 
resistance to established government. Re- 
garding the power of a monarch as more 
sacred than the paternal authority from which 
they vainly laboured to derive it, they re- 
fused to nations oppressed by the most cruel 
tyrants* those rights of self-defence which 
no moralist or lawgiver had ever denied to 
children against unnatural parents. To pal- 
liate the extravagance of thus representing 
obedience as the only duty without an ex- 
ception, an appeal was made to the divine 
origin of government; — as if every other 
moral rule were not, in the opinion of all 
theists, equally enjoined and sanctioned by 
the Deity. To denote these singular doc- 
trines, it was thought necessary to devise the 
terms of "passive obedience" and "non-re- 
sistance," — uncouth and jarring forms of 
speech, not unfitly representing a violent de- 
parture from the general judgment of man- 
kind. This attempt to exalt submission so 
high as to be always the highest duty, con- 
stituted the undistinguishing loyalty of which 
the Church of England boasted as her ex- 
clusive attribute, in contradistinction to the 
other Reformed communions, as well as to 
the Church of Rome. At the dawn of the 
Reformation it had been promulgated in the 
Homilies or discourses appointed by the 
Church to be read from the pulpit to the 



* Interpretation of Romans, xiii. 1 — 7, written 
under Nero. See, among many others, South, 
Sermon on the 5th November, 1663. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



381 



people ;* and all deviations from it had been 
recently condemned by the University of 
Oxford with the solemnity of a decree from 
Rome or from Trent. t The Seven Bishops 
themselves, in the very Petition which 
brought the contest with the Crown to a 
crisis, boasted of the inviolable obedience of 
their Church, and of the honour conferred on 
them by the King's repeated acknowledg- 
ments of it. Nay, all the ecclesiastics and 
the principal laymen of the Church had re- 
corded their adherence to the same princi- 
ples, in a still more solemn and authoritative 
mode. By the Act of Uniformity,! which 
restored the legal establishment of the Epis- 
copal Church, it was enacted that every 
clergyman, schoolmaster, and private tutor 
should subscribe a declaration, affirming that 
Ci it was not lawful on any pretext to take up 
arms against the King," which members of 
corporations^ and officers of militiall were by 
other statutes of the same period also com- 
pelled to swear; — to say nothing of the still 
more comprehensive oath which the High- 
Church leaders, thirteen years before the 
trial of the Bishops, had laboured to impose 
on all public officers, magistrates, ecclesias- 
tics, and members of both Houses of Parlia- 
ment. 

That no man can lawfully promise what 
he cannot lawfully do is a self-evident pro- 
position. That there are some duties supe- 
rior to others, will be denied by no one ; 
and that when a contest arises the superior 
ought to prevail, is implied in the terms by 
which the duties are described. It can 
hardly be doubted that the highest obliga- 
tion of a citizen is that of contributing to 
preserve the community; and that every 
other political duty, even that of obedience 
to the magistrates, is derived from and must 
be subordinate to it. It is a necessary conse- 
quence of these simple truths, that no man 
who deems self-defence lawful in his own 
case, can, by any engagement, bind himself 
not to defend his country against foreign or 
domestic enemies. Though the opposite pro- 
positions really involve a contradiction in 
terms, yet declarations of their truth were 
imposed by law, and oaths to renounce the 
defence of our country were considered as 
binding, till the violent collision of such pre- 
tended obligations with the security of all 
rights and institutions awakened the national 
mind to a sense of their repugnance to the 
first principles of morality. Maxims, so arti- 
ficial and over-strained, which have no more 
root in nature than they have warrant from 
reason, must always fail in a contest against 
the affections, sentiments, habits, and inte- 
rests which are the motives of .human con- 
duct, — leaving little more than compassion- 
ate indulgence to the small number who 
conscientiously cling to them, and fixing the 
injurious imputation of inconsistency on the 

* Homilies of Edward VI. and Elizabeth, 
t Parliamentary History, 20th July, 1683. 
t 14 Ch.Il.c. 4. 
$ 13 Ch. II. stat. ii. c 1. II 14 Ch. II. c. 3. 



great body who forsake them for better 
guides. 

The war of a people against a tyrannical 
government may be tried by the same tests 
which ascertain the morality of a war be- 
tween independent nations. The employ- 
ment of force in the intercourse of reasonable 
beings is never lawful, but for the purpose 
of repelling or averting wrongful force. Hu- 
man life cannot lawfully be destroyed, or 
assailed, or endangered, for any other object 
than that of just defence. Such is the nature 
and such the boundary of legitimate self-de- 
fence in the case of individuals. Hence the 
right of the lawgiver to protect unoffending 
citizens by the adequate punishment of 
crimes : hence, also, the right of an inde- 
pendent state to take all measures necessary 
to her safety, if it be attacked or threatened 
from without : provided always that repara- 
tion cannot otherwise be obtained, that there 
is a reasonable prospect of obtaining it by 
arms, and that the evils of the contest are 
not probably greater than the mischiefs of 
acquiescence in the wrong; including" on 
both sides of the deliberation, the ordinary 
consequences of the example, as well as the 
immediate effects of the act. If reparation 
can otherwise be obtained, a nation has no 
necessary, and therefore no just cause of 
war ; if there be no probability of obtaining 
it by arms, a government cannot, with justice 
to their own nation, embark it in war; and 
if the evils of resistance should appear, on 
the whole, greater than those of submission, 
wise rulers will consider an abstinence from 
a pernicious exercise of right as a sacred 
duty to their own subjects, and a debt which 
every people owes to the great common- 
wealth of mankind, of which they and their 
enemies are alike members. A war is just 
against the wrongdoer when reparation for 
wrong cannot otherwise be obtained ; but it 
is then only conformable to all the princi- 
ples of morality, when it is not likely to ex- 
pose the nation by whom it is levied to 
greater evils than it professes to avert, and 
when it does not inflict on the nation which 
has done the wrong sufferings altogether 
disproportioned to the extent of the injury. 
When the rulers of a nation are required to 
determine a question of peace or war, the 
bare justice of their case against the wrong- 
doer never can Be the sole, and is not always 
the chief matter on which they are morally 
bound to exercise a conscientious delibera- 
tion. Prudence in conducting the affairs of 
their subjects is, in them, a part of justice. 

On the same principles the justice of a 
war made by a people against their own 
government must be examined. A govern- 
ment is entitled to obedience from the peo- 
ple, because without obedience it cannot 
perform the duty, for which alone it exists, 
of protecting them from each other's injus- 
tice. But when a government is engaged in 
systematically oppressing a people, or in 
destroying their securities against future op- 
pression, it commits the same species of 



382 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



wrong towards them which warrants an ap- 
peal to arms against a foreign enemy. A 
magistrate who degenerates into a sytematic 
oppressor shuts the gates of justice, and 
thereby restores them to the original right 
of defending them by force. As he with- 
holds the protection of law from them ; he 
forfeits his moral claim to enforce their obe- 
dience by the authority of law. Thus far 
civil and foreign war stand on the same 
moral foundation : the principles which de- 
termine the justice of both against the wrong- 
doer are. indeed, throughout the same. 

But there are certain peculiarities, of great 
importance in point of fact, which in other 
respects permanently distinguish them from 
each other. The evils of failure are greater 
in civil than in foreign war. A state gene- 
rally incurs no more than loss in war : a body 
of insurgents is exposed to ruin. The pro- 
babilities of success are more difficult to cal- 
culate in cases of internal contest than in a 
war between stales, where it is easy to com- 
pare those merely material means of attack 
and defence which may be measured or 
numbered. An unsuccessful revolt strength- 
ens the power and sharpens the cruelty of 
the tyrannical ruler ; while an unfortunate 
war may produce little of the former evil 
and of the latter nothing. It is almost pecu- 
liar to intestine war that success may be as 
mischievous as defeat. The victorious lead- 
ers may be borne along by the current of 
events far beyond their destination; a go- 
verment may be overthrown which ought to 
have been only repaired ; and anew, perhaps 
a more formidable, tyranny may spring out 
of victory. A regular government may stop 
before its fall becomes precipitate, or check 
a career of conquest when it threatens de- 
struction to itself: but the feeble authority 
of the chiefs of insurgents is rarely able, in 
the one case, to maintain the courage, in the 
other to repress *the impetuosity, of their 
voluntary adherents. Finally, the cruelty 
and misery incident to all warfare are greater 
in domestic dissension than in contests with 
foreign enemies. Foreign wars have little 
effect on the feelings, habits, or condition of 
the majority of a great nation, to most of 
whom the worst particulars of them may be 
unknown. But civil war brings the same or 
worse evils into the heart of a country and 
into the bosom of many families : it eradi- 
cates all habits of recourse to justice and 
reverence for law ; its hostilities are not 
mitigated by the usages which soften wars 
between nations; it is carried on with the 
ferocity of parties who apprehend destruc- 
tion from each other; and it may leave be- 
hind it feuds still more deadlj', which may 
render a country depraved and wretched 
through a long succession of ages. As it 
involves a wider waste of virtue and happi- 
ness than any other species of war, it can 
only be warranted by the sternest and most 
dire necessity. The chiefs of a justly dis- 
affected party are unjust to their fellows and 
their followers, as well as to all the rest of 



their countrymen, if they take up arms in a 
case where the evils of submission are not 
more intolerable, the impossibility of repa- 
ration by pacific means more apparent, and 
the chances of obtaining it by arms greater 
than are necessary to justify the rulers of a 
nation in undertaking a foreign war. A 
wanton rebellion, when considered with the 
aggravation of its ordinary consequences, is 
one of the greatest of crimes. . The chiefs 
of an inconsiderable and ill-concerted revolt, 
however provoked, incur the most formida- 
ble responsibility to their followers and their 
country. An insurrection rendered neces- 
sary by oppression, and warranted by a 
reasonable probability of a happy termina- 
tion, is an act of public virtue, always en- 
vironed with so much peril as to merit ad- 
miration. 

In proportion to the degree in which a 
revolt spreads over a large body till it ap- 
proaches unanimity, the fatal peculiarities 
of civil war are lessened. In the insurrec- 
tion of provinces, either distant or separated 
by natural boundaries, — more especially if 
the inhabitants, differing in religion and 
language, are rather subjects of the same 
government than portions of the same peo- 
ple, — hostilities which are waged only to 
sever a legal tie may assume the regularity, 
and in some measure the mildness, of foreign 
war. Free men, carrying into insurrection 
those habits of voluntary obedience to which 
they have been trained, are more easily re- 
strained from excess by the leaders in whom 
they have placed their confidence. Thus 
far it may be affirmed, happily for mankind, 
that insurgents are most humane where they 
are likely to be most successful. But it is 
one of the most deplorable circumstances in 
the lot of man, that the subjects of despotic 
governments, and still more those who are 
doomed to personal slavery, though their 
condition be the worst, and their revolt the 
most just, are disabled from conducting it to 
a beneficial result by the very magnitude of 
the evils under which they groan : for the 
most fatal effect of the yoke is, that it dark- 
ens the understanding and debases the soul : 
and that the victims of long oppression, who 
have never imbibed any noble principle of 
obedience, throw off every curb when they 
are released from the chain and the lash. 
In such wretched conditions of society, the 
rulers may, indeed, retain unlimited power 
as the moral guardians of the community, 
while they are conducting the arduous pro- 
cess of gradually transforming slaves into 
men ; but they cannot justly retain it with- 
out that purpose, or longer than its accom- 
plishment requires : and the extreme diffi- 
culty of such a reformation, as well as the 
dire effects of any other emancipation, ought 
to be deeply considered, as proofs of the 
enormous guilt of those who introduce any 
kind or degree of unlimited power, as well 
as of those who increase, by their obstinate 
resistance, the natural obstacles to the paci- 
fic amendment of evds so tremendous. 



REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 



383 



The frame of the human mind ; and the 
structure of civilized society, have adapted 
themselves to these important differences 
between civil and foreign war. Such is the 
force of the considerations which have been 
above enumerated; so tender is the regard 
of good men for the peace of their native 
country, — so numerous are the links of inter- 
est and habit which bind those of a more 
common sort to an establishment, — so diffi- 
cult and dangerous is it for the bad and bold 
to conspire against a tolerably vigilant ad- 
ministration, — the evils which exist in mode- 
rate governments appear so tolerable, and 
those of absolute despotism so incorrigible, 
that the number of unjust wars between 
states unspeakably surpasses those of wan- 
ton rebellions against the just exercise of 
authority. Though the maxim, that there 
are no unprovoked revolts, ascribed to the 
Due de Sully, and adopted by Mr. Burke.* 
cannot be received without exceptions, it 
must be owned that in civilized times man- 
kind have suffered less from a mutinous 
spirit than from a patient endurance of bad 
government. 

Neither can it be denied that the objects 
for which revolted subjects take up arms do, 
in most cases, concern their safely and well- 
being more deeply than the interests of states 
are in general affected by the legitimate 
causes of regular war. A nation may justly 
make war for the honour of her flag, or for 
dominion over a rock, if the one be insulted, 
and the other be unjustly invaded ; because 
acquiescence in the outrage or the wrong 
may lower her reputation, and thereby lessen 
her safety. But if these sometimes faint 
and remote dangers justify an appeal to 
arms, shall it be blamed in a people who 
have no other chance of vindicating the right 
to worship God according to their con- 
sciences, — to be exempt from imprisonment 
and exaction at the mere will and pleasure 
of one or a few, and to enjoy as perfect a 
security for their persons, for the free exer- 
cise of their industry, and for the undis- 
turbed enjoyment of its fruits, as can be de- 
vised by human wisdom under equal laws 
and a pure administration of justice? What 
foreign enemy could do a greater wrong to a 
community than the ruler who would reduce 
them to hold these interests by no. higher 
tenure than the duration of his pleasure ? 
What war can be more necessary than that 
which is waged in defence of ancient laws 
and venerable institutions, which, as far as 
they are suffered to act, have for ages ap- 
proved themselves to be the guard of all 
these sacred privileges, — the shield which 
protects Reason in her fearless search of 
truth, and Conscience in the performance of 
her humble duty towards God, — the nur- 
sery of genius and valour, — the spur of pro- 
bity, humanity, and generosity, — of every 
faculty of man. 

As James was unquestionably an aggres- 

* Thoughts on the Present Discontents. 



sor, and the people of England drew their 
swords only to prevent him from accom- 
plishing a revolution which would have 
changed a legal and limited power into a 
lawless despotism, it is needless, on this 
occasion, to moot the question, whether 
arms may be as justly wielded to obtain as 
to defend liberty. It may, however, be ob- 
served, that the rulers who obstinately per- 
sist in withholding from their subjects secu- 
rities for good government, obviously neces- 
sary for the permanence of that blessing, 
generally desired by competently informed 
men, and capable of being introduced with- 
out danger to public tranquillity, appear 
thereby to place themselves in a state of 
hostility against the nation whom they go- 
vern. Wantonly to prolong a state of inse- 
curity seems to be a* much an act of aggres- 
sion as to plunge a nation into it. When a 
people discover their danger, they have a 
moral claim on their governors for security 
against it. As soon as a distemper is dis- 
covered to be dangerous, and a safe and 
effectual remedy has been found, those who 
withhold the remedy are as much morally 
answerable for the deaths which may ensue 
as if they had administered poison. But 
though a reformatory revolt may in these 
circumstances become perfectly just, it has 
not the same likelihood of a prosperous issue 
with those insurrections which are more 
strictly and directly defensive. A defensive 
revolution, the sole purpose of which is to 
preserve and secure the laws, has a fixed 
boundary, conspicuously marked out by the 
well-defined object which it pursues, and 
which it seldom permanently over-reaches, 
and it is thus exempt from that succession of 
changes which disturbs all habits of peace- 
able obedience, and weakens every autho- 
rity not resting on mere force. 

Whenever war is justifiable, it is lawful 
to call in auxiliaries. But though always 
legitimate against a foreign or domestic 
enemy, it is often in civil contentions pecu- 
liarly dangerous to the wronged people 
themselves. It must always hazard national 
independence, and will therefore be the last 
resource of those who love their country. 
Good men, more especially if they are happy 
enough to be the natives of a civilized, and 
still more of a free country, religiously cul- 
tivate their natural repugnance to a remedy 
of which despair alone can warrant the em- 
ployment. Yet the dangers of seeking fo- 
reign aid vary extremely in different circum- 
stances, and these variations are chiefly 
regulated by the power, the interest, and the 
probable disposition of the auxiliary to be- 
come an oppressor. The perils are the least 
where the inferiority of national strength in 
the foreign ally is such as to forbid all pro- 
jects of conquest, and where the indepen- 
dence and greatness of the nation to be suc- 
coured are the main or sole bulwarks of his 
own. 

These fortunate peculiarities were all to 
be found in the relations between the people 



384 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



of England and the republic of the United 
Provinces ; and the two nations were farther 
united by their common apprehensions from 
Fiance, by no obscure resem blance of national 
character, by the strong sympathies of reli- 
gion and liberty ; by the remembrance of the 
renowned reign in which the glory of Eng- 
land was founded on her aid to Holland, 
and, perhaps, also by the esteem for each 
other which both these maritime nations had 
learnt in the fiercest and most memorable 
combats, which had been then celebrated in 
the annals of naval warfare. The British 
people derived a new security from the dan- 



gers of foreign interposition from the situa- 
tion of him who was to be the chief of the 
enterprise to be attempted for their deliver- 
ance, who had as deep an interest in their 
safety and well-being as in those of the na- 
tion whose forces he was to lead to their 
aid. William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, 
Stadtholder of the republic of the United Pro- 
vinces, had been, before the birth of the 
Prince of Wales, first Prince of the Blood 
Royal of England ; and his consort the Lady 
Mary, the eldest daughter of the King, was 
at that period presumptive heiress to the 
crown. 



MEMOIR 



OF THE AFFAIRS OF HOLLAND 



A. D. 1667—1686. 



The Seven United Provinces which estab- 
lished their independence made little change 
in their internal institutions. The revolt 
against Philip's personal commands was long 
carried on under colour of his own legal au- 
thority, conjointly exercised by his lieutenant, 
the Prince of Orange, and by the States, — 
composed of the nobility and of the deputies 
of towns, — who had before shared a great 
portion of it. But, being bound to each other 
in an indissoluble confederacy, established 
at Utrecht in 1579, the care of their foreign 
relations and of all their common affairs was 
intrusted to delegates, sent from each, who 
gradually assumed that name of "States- 
General," which had been originally be- 
stowed only on the occasional assemblies of 
the whole States of all the Belgic provinces. 
These arrangements, hastily adopted in times 
of confusion, drew no distinct lines of demar- 
cation between the provincial and federal 
authorities. Hostilities had been for many 
years carried on before the authority of Philip 
was finally abrogated ; and after that decisive 
measure the States showed considerable 
disposition to the revival of a monarchical 
power in the person of an Austrian or French 
prince, or of the Queen of England. William 
I., 6eems about to have been invested with the 
ancient legal character of Earl of Holland at 
the moment of his murder.* He and his 
successors were Stadtholders of the greater 
provinces, and sometimes of all : they exer- 
cised in that character a powerful influence 
on the election of the magistrates of towns; 
they commanded the forces of the confede- 

* Comtnentarii de Republica Bataviensi (Ludg. 
Bat. 1795), vol. ii. pp. 42, 43. 



racy by sea and land; they combined the 
prerogatives of their ancient magistracy with 
the new powers, the assumption of which 
the necessities of war seemed to justify; 
and they became engaged in constant dis- 
putes with the great political bodies, whose 
pretensions to an undivided sovereignty were 
as recent and as little defined as their own 
rights. While Holland formed the main 
strength of the confederacy, the cit)' of Am- 
sterdam predominated in the councils of that 
province. The provincial States of Holland, 
and the patricians in the towns from whom 
their magistrates were selected, were the 
aristocratical antagonists of the stadtholde- 
rian power, which chiefly rested on official 
patronage, on military command, on the fa- 
vour of the populace, and on the influence 
of the minor provinces in the States-General. 
The House of Nassau stood conspicuous, 
at the dawn of modern history, among the 
noblest of the ruling families of Germany. 
In the thirteenth century, Adolphus of Nas- 
sau succeeded Rodolph of Hapsburg in the 
imperial crown, — the highest dignity of the 
Christian world. A branch of this ancient 
house had acquired ample possessions in the 
Netherlands, together with the principality of 
Orange in Provence ; and under Charles V., 
William of Nassau was the most potent lord of 
the Burgundian provinces. Educated in the 
palace and almost in the chamber of the Em- 
peror, he was nominated in the earliest years 
of manhood to the government of Holland,* 
and to the command of the imperial army, by 
# that sagacious monarch, who, in the memo- 

* By the ancient name of " Stadihouder" (lieu- 
tenant). Kluit, Vetus Jus Pub. Belg. p. 364. 



MEMOIR OF THE AFFAIRS OF HOLLAND. 



385 



rable solemnity of abdication, leant upon his 
shoulder as the first of his Belgic subjects. 
The same eminent qualities which recom- 
mended him to the confidence of Charles 
awakened the jealousy of Philip, whose 
anger, breaking through all the restraints of 
his wonted simulation, burst into furious re- 
proaches against the Prince of Orange as the 
fomenter of the resistance of the Flemings 
to the destruction of their privileges. Among 
the three rulers who, perhaps unconsciously, 
were stirred up at the same moment to pre- 
serve the civil and religious liberties of man- 
kind, William I. must be owned to have 
wanted the brilliant and attractive qualities 
of Henry IV., and to have yielded to the com- 
manding genius of Elizabeth ; but his princi- 
ples were more inflexible than those of the 
amiable hero, and his mind was undisturbed 
by the infirmities and passions which lowered 
the illustrious queen. Though he perform- 
ed great actions with weaker means than 
theirs, his course was more unspotted. Faith- 
ful to the King of Spain as long as the pre- 
servation of the commonwealth allowed, he 
counselled the Duchess of Parma against all 
the iniquities by which the Netherlands were 
lost; but faithful also to his county, in his 
dying instructions he enjoined his son to be- 
ware of insiduous offers of compromise from 
the Spaniard, to adhere to his alliance with 
France and England, to observe the privi- 
leges of the provinces and towns, and to con- 
duct himself in all things as became the 
chief magistrate of the republic* Advancing 
a century beyond his contemporaries in civil 
wisdom, he braved the prejudices of the 
Calvinistic clergy, by contending for the 
toleration of Catholics, the chiefs of whom 
had sworn his destruction.!' Thoughtful, of 
unconquerable spirit, persuasive though taci- 
turn, of simple character, yet maintaining 
due dignity and becoming magnificence in 
his public character, an able commander and 
a wise statesman, he is perhaps the purest 
of those who have risen by arms from pri- 
vate station to supreme authority, and the 
greatest of the happy few who have enjoyed 
the glorious fortune of bestowing liberty upon 
a people. X The whole struggle of this illus- 
trious prince was against foreign oppression. 
His posterity, less happy, were engaged in 
domestic broils, in part arising from their 
undefined authority, and from the very com- 
plicated constitution of the commonwealth. 
Maurice, the eldest Protestant son of Wil- 
liam, surpassed his father in military genius, 
but fell far short of him in that moderation 
of temper and principle which is the most 

* D'Estrades, MSS. in the hands of his young- 
est son. 

t Burnet, History of his own time (Oxford, 
1823). vol. i. p. 547. 

t Even Strada himself bears one testimony to 
this great man. which outweighs all his vain re- 
proaches. " Nee postea mmavere (Hollandi) qui 
videbant et gloriabantur ab unius hominis conatu, 
effiptisque illi utcunque inlelicibus, assurgere in 
dies Hollandicum nomen imperiumque." — Strada, 
De Bello Belgico, dec ii. lib. v. 
49 



indispensable virtue of the leader of a free 
state. The blood of Barneveldt and the 
dungeon of Grotius have left an indelible 
stain on his memory; nor is it without appa- 
rent reason that the aristocratical party have 
charged him with projects of usurpation, — 
natural to a family of republican magistrates 
allied by blood to all the kings of Europe, 
and distinguished by many approaches and 
pretensions to the kingly power.* Henry 
Frederic, his successor, was the son of Wil- 
liam I. by Louise de Coligny, — a woman 
singular in her character as well as in her 
destiny, who, having seen her father and the 
husband of her youth murdered at the mas- 
sacre of Saint Bartholomew, was doomed to 
witness the fall of a more illustrious husband 
by the hand of an assassin of the same fac- 
tion, and who in her last widowhood won the 
affection of William's children by former 
wives, for her own virtuous son. Having 
maintained the fame of his family in war, 
he was happier than his more celebrated 
brother in a domestic administration, which 
was moderate, tolerant, and unsuspected .t 
He lived to see the final recognition of Dutch 
independence by the treaty of Munster, and 
was succeeded by his son, William It., who, 
altera short and turbulent rule, died in 1650, 
leaving his widow, the Princess Royal of 
England, pregnant. 

William III., born on the 14th of Novem- 
ber, 1650, eight days after the death of his 
father, an orphan of feeble frame, with early 
indications of" disease, seemed to be involved 
in the cloud of misfortune which then cover- 
ed the deposed and exiled family of his 
mother. The patricians of the commercial 
cities, who had gathered strength with their 
rapidly increasing wealth, were incensed at 
the late attack of William II. on Amsterdam; 
th^y were equally emboldened by the esta- 
blishment of a republic in England, and pre- 
judiced, not without reason, against the 
Stuart family, whose absurd principle of the 
divine right of kings had always disposed 
James I. to regard the Dutch as no better 
than successful rebels,! and had led his son, 
in 1631, a period of profound peace and pro- 
fessed friendship, to conclude a secret treaty 
with'Spain for the partition of the Republic, 
in which England was to be rewarded for her 
treachery and rapine by the sovereignty of 
Zealand. § They found no difficulty in per- 
suading the States to assume all the autho- 
rity hitherto exercised by the Sladtholder, 
without fixing any period for conferring on 
the infant Prince those dignities which had 
been enjoyed by three generations of his 

* Du Manlier, Memoires de la Hollande, p. 
293. Vandervynkt, Troubles des Pays Bas, vol. 
hi. p. 27- 

t D'Estrades, Lettres (Lond. 1743), vol. i. 
p. 55. 

t " In his table discourse he pronounced the 
Dutch to be rebels, and condemned their cause, 
and said that Ostend belonged to ihe ArchduKe." 
— Carte, History of England, vol. iii. p. 714. 

§ Clarendon, State Papers, vol. i. p. 49, and 
vol. ii. app. xxvii. 

2H 



386 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



family. At the peace of 1654, the States of 
Holland bound themselves by a secret article, 
yielded with no great reluctance to the de- 
mands of Cromwell, never to choose the 
Prince of Orange to be their S'adtholdsr, nor 
to consent to his being appointed Gaptaia- 
General of the forces of the confederacy; — 
a separate stipulation, at variance with the 
spirit of the union of Utrecht, and disrespect- 
ful to the judgment, if not injurious to the 
rights, of the weaker confederates.* After 
the Restoration this engagement lost its 
power. But when the Prince of Orange had 
nearly reached years of discretion, and the 
brilliant operations of a military campaign 
against England had given new vigour to the 
republican administration, John De Witt, who, 
under the modest title of - : Pensionary " of 
Holland, had long directed the affairs of the 
confederacy with a success and reputation 
due to his matchless honesty and prudence, 
prevailed on the States of that province to 
pass a '-Perpetual Edict for the Maintenance 
of Liberty." By this law they abolished the 
Stadtholdership in their own province, and 
agreed to take effectual means to obtain from 
their confederates edicts excluding all those 
who might be Captain-Generals from the 
Stadtholdership of any of the provinces, — 
binding themselves and their successors by 
oath to observe these provisions, and im- 
posing the like oath on all who might be 
appointed to the chief command by land 
or sea.t Guelderland, Utrecht, and Overys- 
sell acceded. Friesland and Groningen, then 
governed by a Stadtholder of another branch 
of the family of Nassau, were considered as 
not immediately interested in the question. 
Zealand alone, devoted to the House of 
Orange, resisted the separation of the su- 
preme military and civil officers. On this 
footing De Witt professed his readiness to 
confer the office of Captain-General on the 
Prince, as soon as he should be of fit age. 
He was allowed meanwhile to take his seat 
in the Council of State, and took an oath to 
observe the Perpetual Edict. His opponents 
struggled to retard his military appointment, 
to shorten its duration, and to limit its 
powers. His partisans, on the other hand, 
supported by England, and led by Amelia of 
Solms, the widow of Prince Henry, — a wo- 
man of extraordinary ability, who had trained 
the young Prince with parental tenderness, 
— seized every opportunity of pressing for- 
ward his nomination, and of preparing the 
way for the enlargement of his authority. 

This contest might have been longer pro- 
tracted, if the Conspiracy of Louis and 



* Cromwell was prevailed upon to content him- 
self with this separate stipulation, very imperfect 
in form, but which the strength of the ruling pro- 
vince rendered in substance sufficient. White- 
lock, Memorials, 12th May, 1684. 

t 3d August 1667. The immediate occasion of 
this edict seems to have been a conspiracy, for 
which one Buat, a spy employed by Lord Arling- 
ton, was exeruted. Hisioire de J. D. De Witt 
'Utrecht, 1709), liv. ii. chap. 2. 



Charles, and the occupation of the greater 
part of the country by the former, had not 
brought undeserved reproach on the admi- 
nistration of De Witt. Fear and distrust 
became universal; every man suspected his 
neighbour; accusations were heard with 
greedy credulity ; misfortunes were imputed 
to treachery ; and the multitude cried aloud 
for victims. The corporate officers of the 
great towns, originally chosen by the bur- 
ghers, had, on the usual plea of avoiding 
tumult, obtained the right of filling up all 
vacancies in their own number. They thus 
strengthened their power, but destroyed their 
security. No longer connected with the 
people by election, the aristocratical families 
received no fresh infusion of strength, and 
had no hold on the attachment of the com- 
munity ; though they still formed, indeed, 
the better part of the people. They had 
raised the fishermen of a few marshy dis- 
tricts to be one of the greatest nations of 
Europe; but the misfortunes of a moment 
banished the remembrance of their services. 
Their grave and harsh virtues were more 
unpopular than so many vices; while the 
needs and disasters of war served to heighten 
the plebeian clamour, and to strengthen the 
military power, which together formed the 
combined force of the Stadtholderian party. 
It was then in vain that the Republicans en- 
deavoured to satisfy that party, and to gain 
over the King of England by the nomination 
of the Prince of Orange to be Captain-Gene- 
ral : Charles was engaged in deeper designs. 
The progress of the French arms still farther 
exasperated the populace, and the Republi- 
cans incurred the reproach of treachery by a 
disposition, — perhaps carried to excess, — to 
negotiate with Louis XIV. at a moment when 
all negotiation wore the appearance of sub- 
mission. So it had formerly happened: — 
Barneveldt was friendly to peace with Spain, 
when Maurice saw no safety but in arms. 
Men equally wise and honest may differ on 
the difficult and constantly varying question, 
whether uncompromising resistance, or a 
reservation of active effort for a more favour- 
able season, be the best mode of dealing 
with a formidable conqueror. Though the 
war policy of Demosthenes terminated in 
the destruction of Athens, we dare not affirm 
that the pacific system of Phocion would 
have saved it. In the contest of Maurice 
with Barneveldt, and of De Witt with the 
adherents of the House of Orange, both 
parties had an interest distinct from that of 
the commonwealth ; for the influence of the 
States grew in peace, and the authority of 
the Captain-General was strengthened by 
war. The populace now revolted against 
their magistrates in all the towns, and the 
States of Holland were compelled to repeal 
the Edict, which they — called "Perpetual," 
to release themselves and all the officers 
from the oath which they had taken to ob- 
serve it, and to confer, on the 4th of July, 
1672, on the Prince the office of Stadtholder, 
— which, then only elective for life, was,- 



MEMOIR OF THE AFFAIRS OF HOLLAND. 



387 



after two years more, made hereditary to 
his descendants. 

The commotions which accompanied this 
revolution were stained by the murder of 
John and Cornelius De Witt, — a crime per- 
petrated with such brutal ferocity, and en- 
countered with such heroic serenity, that it 
may almost seem to be doubtful whether 
the glory of having produced such pure suf- 
ferers may not in some degree console a 
country for having given birth to assassins so 
atrocious. These excesses are singularly 
at variance with the calm and orderly cha- 
racter of the Dutch, — than whom perhaps no 
free state has, in proportion to its magnitude, 
contributed more amply to the amendment 
of mankind by examples of public virtue. 
The Prince of Orange, thus hurried to the 
supreme authority at the age of twenty-two, 
was ignorant of these crimes, and avowed 
his abhorrence of them. They were perpe- 
trated more than a month after his highest 
advancement, when they could produce no 
effect but that of bringing odium upon his 
party. But it must be for ever deplored that 
the extreme danger of his position should 
have prevented him from punishing the of- 
fences of his partisans, till it seemed too late 
to violate that species of tacit amnesty which 
time insensibly establishes. It would be im- 
possible ever to excuse this unhappy impu- 
nity, if we did not call to mind that Louis 
XIV. was at Utrecht; that it was the popu- 
lace of the Hague that had imbrued their 
hands in the blood of the De Witts ; and that 
the magistrates of Amsterdam might be dis- 
posed to avenge on their country the cause 
of their virtuous chiefs. Henceforward Wil- 
liam directed the counsels and arms of Hol- 
land, gradually forming and leading a confe- 
deracy to set bounds to the ambition of Louis 
XIV., and became, by his abilities and dis- 
positions, as much as by his position, the 
second person in Europe. 

We possess unsuspected descriptions of 
his character from observers of more than 
ordinary sagacity, who had an interest in 
watching its development, before it was sur- 
rounded by the dazzling illusions of power 
and fame. Among the most valuable of 
these witnesses were some of the subjects 
and servants of Louis XIV. At the age of 
eighteen the Prince's good sense, knowledge 
of affairs, and seasonable concealment of 
his thoughts, attracted the attention of Gour- 
ville, a man of experience and discernment. 
St. Evremond, though himself distinguished 
chiefly by vivacity and accomplishments, saw 
the superiority of William's powers through 
his silence and coldness. After long inti- 
macy, Sir William Temple describes his 
great endowments and excellent qualities, 
his — then almost singular — combination of 
t: charityand religious zeal," "his desire — 
rare in every age — to grow great rather 
by the service than the servitude of his 
country;" — language so manifestly conside- 
rate, discriminating, and unexaggerated, as 
to bear on it the inimitable stamp of truth, 



in addition to the weight which it derives 
from the probity of the writer. But there 
is no testimony so important as that of 
Charles II., who. in the early part of his 
reign, had been desirous of gaining an as- 
cendant in Holland by the restoration of the 
House of Orange, and of subverting the go- 
vernment of De Witt, whom he never for- 
gave for his share in the treaty with the Eng- 
lish Republic. Some retrospect is necessary, 
to explain the experiment by which that mo- 
narch both ascertained and made known the 
ruling principles of his nephew's mind. 

The mean negotiations about the sale of 
Dunkirk first betrayed to Louis XIV. the 
passion of Charles for French money. The 
latter had, at the same time, offered to aid 
Louis in the conquest of Flanders, on condi- 
tion of receiving French succour against the 
revolt of his own subjects,* and had strongly 
expressed his desire of an offensive and de- 
fensive alliance to Ruvigni. one of the most 
estimable of that monarch's agents.! But 
the most pernicious of Charles' vices, never 
bridled by any virtue, were often mitigated 
by the minor vices of indolence and irreso- 
lution. Even the love of pleasure, which 
made him needy and rapacious, unfitted him 
for undertakings full of toil and peril. Pro- 
jects for circumventing each other in Hol- 
land, which Charles aimed at influencing 
through the House of Orange, and Louis 
hoped to master through the Republican 
part}', retarded their secret advances to an 
entire union. De Witt was compelled to 
consent to some aggrandisement of France, 
rather than expose his country to a war 
without the co-operation of the King of Eng- 
land, who was ready to betray a hated ally. 
The first Dutch war appears to have arisen 
from the passions of both nations, and their 
pride of maritime supremacy, — employed 
as instruments by Charles wherewith to ob- 
tain booty at sea, and supply from his Parlia- 
ment, — and by Louis wherewith to seize the 
Spanish Netherlands. At the peace of Breda 
(July, 1667,) the Court of England seemed 
for a moment to have changed its policy, by 
the conclusion of the Triple Alliance, which 
prescribed some limits to the ambition of 
France, — a system which De Witt, as soon 
as he met so honest a negotiator as Sir Wil- 
liam Temple, joyfully hastened to embrace. 

Temple was, however, duped by his mas- 
ter. It is probable that the Triple Alliance 
was the result of a fraudulent project, sug- 
gested originally by Gourville to ruin De 
Witt, by embroiling him irreconcilably with 
France. t Charles made haste to disavow 
the intentions professed in it ;$ and a nego- 

* D'Estrades, vol. v. p. 450. 

t Memoire de Ruvigni au Roi. Dalrymple, 
Memoirs of Great Britain, &c. vol. ii. p. 11. 
D'Estrades, vol. v., 20th Dec. 1663. 18th Dec. 
1664. 

t Memoires de Gourville (Paris, 1724). vol. ii. 
p. 14—18, 160. 

§ Charles II. to the Duchess of Orleans, 13th 
Jan. 1668. — Dalrymple, vol. ii. p. 5. [The oi«J 
style is used throughout these references. — Ed-] 



388 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



tiation with France was immediately opened, 
partly by the personal intercourse of Charles 
with the French ministers at his court, but 
chiefly through his sister, the Duchess of 
Orleans, — an amiable princess, probably the 
only person whom he ever loved. This cor- 
respondence, which was concealed from 
those of his ministers who were not either 
Catholics or well affected to the Catholic re- 
ligion, lingered on till May, 1670, when (on 
the 22d) a secret treaty was concluded under 
cover of a visit made by the Duchess to her 
brother.* 

The essential stipulations of this unparal- 
leled compact were three : that Louis should 
.advance money to Charles, to enable him the 
more safely to execute what is called "a de- 
•claration of his adherence to the Catholic 
religion," and should support him with men 
and money, if that measure should be re- 
sisted by his subjects; that both powers 
should join their arms against Holland, the 
islands of Walcheren and Cadsand being 
alloted to England as her share of the prey 



* It was signed by Lords Arlington and Arun- 
del, Sir Thomas Clifford, and Sir Richard Bea- 
ling, on the part of England, and by Colbert de 
Croissy, the brother ot the celebrated financier, 
on the part of France. Rose, Observations on 
Fox's History, p. 51. Summary collated with 
the original, in the hands of ihe present Lord Clif- 
ford. The draft of the same treaty, sent to Paris 
by Arundel, does not materially differ. Dalrym- 
ple, vol. i. p. 44. " The Life of James II. (vol. 
i. pp. 440—450,) agrees, in most circumstances, 
with these copies ot the treaties, and wi.h the cor- 
respondence. There is one important variation. 
In the treaty it is stipulated that Charles' measures 
in favour of the Catholic religion should precede 
the war against Holland, according to the plan 
which he had always supported. 'The Lite' 
says, that the resolution was taken at Dover to 
begin with the war against Holland, and the des- 
patch of Colbert from Dover, 20th May (Dalrym- 
ple, vol. ii. p. 57), almost justifies the statement, 
which may refer to a verbal acquiescence of 
Charles, probably deemed sufficient in these clan- 
destine transactions, where that prince desired 
nothing but such assurances as satisfy gentlemen 
in private life. It is true that the narrative of the 
Life is not here supported by those quotations from 
the King's original Memoirs, on which the credit 
of the compilation essentially depends. But as in 
the eighteen years, 1660 — 1678, which exhibit no 
such quotations, there are internal proofs that some 
passages, at least, of the Life are taken from ihe 
Memoirs, the absence of quotation does not dero- 
gate so much from the credit of this part of the 
work as it would from that of any other." See 
Edinburgh Review, vol. xxvi. pp. 402 — 430. This 
treaty has been laid to the charge of the Cabinet 
called the " Cabal," unjustly ; tor, of the five 
members of that administration, two only, Clif- 
ford and Arlington, were privv to the designs of 
the King and the Duke of York. Ashley and 
Lauderdale were too zealous Protestants to be 
trusted with it. Buckingham (whatever might be 
his indifference in religion) had too much levity to 
be trusted with such secrets; but he was so pene- 
trating that it was thought prudent to divert his 
attention from the real negotiation, by engaging 
him in negotiating a simulated treaty,in which the 
articles favourable to the Catholic religion were 
left out. On the other hand, Lord Arundel and 
Sir Richard Bealing, Catholics not of the "Ca- 
bal," were negotiators. 



(which clearly left the other territories of 
the Republic at the disposal of Louis); 
and that England should aid Louis in any 
new pretensions to the crown of Spain, or, 
in other and plainer language, enable him, 
on the very probable event of Charles II. 
of Spain dying without issue,* to incorpo- 
rate with a monarchy already the greatest 
in Europe the long-coveted inheritance of the 
House of Burgundy, and the two vast penin- 
sulas of Italy and Spain. The strength of 
Louis would thus have been doubled at one 
blow, and all limitations to his farther pro- 
gress on the Continent must have been left 
to his own moderation. It is hard to imagine 
what should have hindered him from render- 
ing his monarchy universal over the civilized 
world. The port of Ostend, the island of 
Minorca, and the remission to conquer 
Spanish America, with a very vague promise 
of assistance of France, were assigned to 
England as the wages of her share of this 
conspiracy against mankind. The fearful 
stipulations for rendering the King of Eng- 
land independent of Parliament, by a secret 
supply of foreign money, and for putting into 
his hands a foreign military force, to be em- 
ployed against his subjects, were, indeed, to 
take effect only in case of the avowal of his 
reconciliation with the Church of Rome. 
But as he himself considered a re-establish- 
ment of that Church as essential to the con- 
solidation of his authority, — which the mere 
avowal of his religion would rather have 
weakened, and the bare toleration of it could 
little, if at all, have promoted; as he con- 
fessedly meditated measures for quieting the 
alarms of the possessors of Church lands, 
whom the simple letter of the treaty could 
not have much disturbed; as he proposed a 
treaty with the Pope to obtain the cup for the 
laity, and the mass in English, — concessions 
which are scarcely intelligible without the 
supposition that the Church of Rome was to 
be established ; as he concealed this article 
from Shaftesbury, who must have known his 
religion, and was then friendly to a toleration 
of it ; and as other articles were framed for 
the destruction of the only powerful Protest- 
ant state on the Continent, there cannot be 
the slightest doubt that the real object of 
this atrocious compact, however disguised 
under the smooth and crafty language of 
diplomacy, was the forcible imposition of a 
hated religion upon the British nation, and 
that the conspirators foresaw a national re- 
sistance, which must be stifled or quelled by 
a foreign army.t It was evident that the 
most tyrannical measures would have been 
necessary for the accomplishment of such 
purposes, and that the transfer of all civil, 
military, and ecclesiastical power to the 
members of a communion, who had no bar- 
rier against public hatred but the throne, 
must have tended to render the power of 
Charles absolute, and must have afforded 

* Charles II.. King of Spain, was then a feeble 
and diseased child of nine years old. 
T Dalrymple, vol. ii. p. 84. 



MEMOIR OF THE AFFAIRS OF HOLLAND. 



389 



him the most probable means of effectually 
promoting the plans of his ally for the sub- 
jugation of Europe.* If the foreign and do- 
mestic objects of this treaty be considered, 
together with the means by which they were 
to have been accomplished, and the dire con- 
sequences which must have flowed from 
their attainment, it seems probable that so 
much falsehood, treachery, and mercenary 
meanness were never before combined, in 
the decent formalities of a solemn compact 
between sovereigns, with such premeditated 
bloodshed and unbridled cruelty. The only 
semblance of virtue in the dark plot was the 
anxiety shown to conceal it ; which, how- 
ever, arose more from the fears than the 
shame of the conspirators. In spite of all 
their precautions it transpired : the secret was 
extorted from Turenne, in a moment of weak- 
ness, by a young mistress. t He also dis- 
closed some of the correspondence to Puf- 
fendorf, the Swedish minister at Paris, to de- 
tach the Swedes from the Triple Alliance ;t 
and it was made known by that minister, as 
well as by De Groot, the Dutch ambassador 
at Paris, to De Witt, who had never ceased 
to distrust the sincerity of the Stuarts towards 
Holland. § The suspicions of Temple him- 
self had been early awakened ; and he seems 
to have in some measure played the part of 
a willing dupe, in the hope of entangling his 
master in honest alliances. The substance 
of the secret treaty was the subject of gene- 
ral conversation at the Court of England at 
the time of Puffendorf's discovery.il A 
pamphlet published, or at least printed, in 
1673, intelligibly hints at its existence "about 
four years before. "T Not long after, Louis 
XIV., in a moment of dissatisfaction with 
Charles II., permitted or commanded the 
Abbate Primi to print a History of the Dutch 
War at Paris, which derived credit from 
being soon suppressed at the instance of the 
English minister, and which gave an almost 
verbally exact summary of the secret treaty, 
with respect to three of its objects, — the par- 
tition of Holland, the re-establishment of the 
Catholic religion in the British Islands, and 
the absolute authority of the King.** The 

* It is but just to mention, that Burnet calls it 
only the ' ' lolerai '.ion of popery," — vol. i. p. 522. 
He had seen only Primi's history, and he seems 
to speak of the negotiation carried on through 
Buckingham, from whom we know that the full 
extern of the plan was concealed. 

t Ramsay, Histoire de Turenne (Paris, 1735), 
vol. i. p. 429. 

* Sir W. Temple to Sir Orlando Bridgman, 
24th April. 1669. 

$ De Witt observed to Temple, even in the 
days of the Triple Alliance: — "A change of 
councils in England would be our ruin. Since 
therein of Elizabeth there has been such a fluc- 
tuation in the English councils that it has been 
impossible to concert measures with them for two 
year=." 

II Pepys' Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 336. 

IT England's Appeal from the Private Cabal at 
Whitehall. 

** Slate Trials in the reign of Wm. III. (Lond. 
1705), Introd. p. 10. 



project for the dismemberment of Holland, 
adopted by Charles I. in 1631 appears to have 
been entertained by his eldest son till the 
last years of his reign.* 

As one of the articles of the secret treaty 
had provided a petty sovereignty for the 
Prince of Orange out of the ruins of his coun- 
try, Charles took the opportunity of his 
nephew's visit to England, in October 1670, 
to sound him on a project which was thus 
baited for his concurrence. "All the Pro- 
testants," said the King, "are a factious 
body, broken among themselves since they 
have been broken from the main stock. Look 
into these things better ; do not be misled by 
your Dutch blockheads. "t The King im- 
mediately imparted the failure of this at- 
tempt to the French ambassador: "I am 
satisfied with the Prince's abilities, but I find 
him too zealous a Dutchman and a Protest- 
ant to be trusted with the secret."! But 
enough had escaped to disclose to the saga- 
cious youth the purposes of his uncle, and to 
throw a strong light on the motives of all his 
subsequent measures. The inclination of 
ChaTles towards the Church of Rome could 
never have rendered a man so regardless of 
religion solicitous for a conversion, if he had 
not considered it as subservient to projects 
for the civil establishment of that Church, — 
which, as it could subsist only by his favour, 
must have been the instrument of his abso- 
lute power. Astonished as William was by 
the discovery, he had the fortitude, during 
the life of Charles, to conceal it from all but 
one, or, at most, two friends. It was re- 
served for later times to discover that Charles 
had the inconceivable baseness to propose 
the detention of his nephew in England, 
where the temptation of a sovereignty being 
aided by the prospect of the recovery of his 
freedom, might act more powerfully on his 
mind ) and that this proposal was refused by 
Louis, either from magnanimity, or from re- 
gard to decency, or, perhaps, from reluctance 
to trust his ally with the sole disposal of so 
important a prisoner. 

Though — to return, — in 1672 the French 
army had advanced into the heart of Hol- 
land, the fortitude of the Prince was un- 
shaken. Louis offered to make him sove- 
reign of the remains of the country, under 
the protection of France and England .§ but 
at that moment of extreme peril, he answer- 
ed with his usual calmness, "I never will 
betray a trust, nor sell the liberties df my 
country, which my ancestors have so long 
defended." All around him despaired. — 
One of his very, few confidential friends, 
after having long expostulated with him on 
his fruitless obstinacy, at length asked him, 
if he had considered how and where he 
should live after Holland was lost. "'I have 
thought of that;" he replied ; " I am resolved 



* Preston Papers in the possession of Sir James 
Graham, of Netherby. 
t Burnet, vol. i. p. 475. 
X Dalrymple, vol. ii. p. 70. % Ibid, p. 79. 

2h 2 



390 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



to live on the lands I have left in Germany. 
I had rather pass ray life in hunting there ; 
than sell my country or my liberty to Fiance 
at any price."* Buckingham and Arlington 
were sent from England to try, whether, be- 
set by peril, the lure of sovereignty might 
not seduce him. The former often said. 
" Do you not see that the country is lost?" 
The answer of the Prince to the profligate 
buffoon spoke the same unmoved resolution 
with that which he had made to Zulestein 
or Fagel ; but it naturally rose a few degrees 
towards animation: — "1 see it is in great 
danger, but there is a sure way of never 
seeing it lost ; and that is, to die in the last 
ditch. "f The perfect simplicity of these 
declarations may authorise us to rank them 
among the most genuine specimens of true 
magnanimity. Perhaps the history of the 
world does not hold out a better example, 
how high above the reach of fortune the 
pure principle of obedience to the dictates 
of conscience, unalloyed by interest, passion, 
or ostentation, can raise the mind of a virtu- 
ous man. To set such an example is an un- 
speakably more signal service to mankind, 
than all the outward benefits which flow to 
them from the most successful virtue. It is 
a principle independent of events, and one 
that burns most brightly in adversity, — the 
only agent, perhaps, of sufficient power to 
call forth the native greatness of soul which 
lay hid under the cold and unattractive de- 
portment of the Prince of Orange. 

His present situation was calculated to as- 
certain whether his actions would correspond 
with his declarations. Beyond the important 
country extending from Amsterdam to Rot- 
terdam, — a district of about forty miles in 
length, the narrow seat of the government, 
wealth, and force of the commonwealth, 
which had been preserved from invasion by 
the bold expedient of inundation, and out of 
which the cities and fortresses arose like 
islands, — little remained of the republican 
territory except the fortress of Maestricht, 
the marshy islands of Zealand, and the se- 
cluded province of Friesland. A French 
army of a hundred and ten thousand men, 
encouraged by the presence of Louis, and 
commanded by Conde and Turenne, had 
their head-quarters at Utrecht, within twenty 
miles of Amsterdam, and impatiently looked 
forward to the moment when the ice should 
form a road to the spoils of that capital of 
the commercial world. On the other side, 
the hostile flag of England was seen from 
the coast. The Prince of Orange, a sickly 
youth of twenty-two, without fame or expe- 
rience, had to contend against such enemies 
at the head of a new government, of a di- 
vided people, and of a little army of twenty 
thousand men, — either raw recruits or foreign 
mercenaries, — whom the exclusively mari- 

* Temple, Works v Lund. 1721), vol. i. p 381. 
This friend was probably his uncle Zulestein, for 
the conversation passed before his intimacy with 
Bentinck. 

t Burnet, vol. i. p. 569. 



time policy of the late administration had 
left without officers of skill or name. His 
immortal ancestor, when he founded the re- 
public about a century before, saw at the 
lowest ebb of his fortune the hope of aid 
from England and France : far darker were 
the prospects of William III. The degene- 
rate successor of Elizabeth, abusing the as- 
cendant of a parental relation, sought to 
tempt him to become a traitor to his country 
for a share in her spoils. The successor of 
Henry IV. offered him only the choice of be- 
ing' bribed or crushed. Such was their fear 
of France, that the Court of Spain did not 
dare to aid him, though their only hope was 
from his success. The German branch of 
the House of Austria was then entangled in 
a secret treaty with Louis, by which the 
Low Countries were ceded to him, on con- 
dition of his guaranteeing to the Emperor 
the reversion of the Spanish monarchy on 
the death of Charles II. without issue. No 
great statesman, no illustrious commander 
but Montecucculi, no able prince but the 
great Elector of Brandenburgh, was to be 
found among the avowed friends or even 
secret well-wishers of William. The terri- 
tories of Cologne and Liege, which presented 
all the means of military intercourse between 
the French and Dutch frontiers, were ruled 
by the creatures of Louis. The final destruc- 
tion of a rebellious and heretical confederacy 
was foretold with great, but not apparently 
unreasonable confidence, by the zealots of 
absolute authority in Church and State ; and 
the inhabitants of Holland began seriously to 
entertain the heroic project of abandoning an 
enslaved country, and transporting the com- 
monwealth to their dominions in the Indian 
islands. 

At this awful moment Fortune seemed to 
pause. The unwieldly magnificence of a 
royal retinue encumbered the advance of the 
French army. Though masters of Naerden, 
which was esteemed the bulwark of Amster- 
dam, they were too late to hinder the open- 
ing of the sluices at Murden. which drowned 
the country to the gates of that city. Louis, 
more intoxicated with triumph than intent 
on conquest, lost in surveying the honours of 
victory the time which should have been 
spent in seizing its fruits. Impatient of so 
long an interruption of his pleasures, he 
hastened to display at Versailles the trophies 
of a campaign of two months, in which 
the conquest of three provinces, the capture 
of fifty fortified places, and of twenty-four 
thousand prisoners, were ascribed to him by 
his flatterers. The cumbrous and tedious 
formalities of the Dutch constitution enabled 
the Stadtholder to gain some time without 
suspicion. Even the perfidious embassy of 
Buckingham and Arlington contributed some- 
what to prolong negotiations. He amused 
them for a moment by appearing to examine 
the treaties they had brought from London, 
by which France was to gain all the fortres- 
ses which commanded the country, leaving 
Zealand to England, and the rest of the 



MEMOIR OF THE AFFAIRS OF HOLLAND. 



391 



country as a principality to himself.* Sub- 
mission seemed inevitable and speedy; still 
the inundation rendered military movements 
inconvenient and perhaps hazardous; and 
the Prince thus obtained a little leisure for 
the execution of his measures. The peo- 
ple, unable to believe the baseness of the 
Court of London, were animated by the ap- 
pearance of the ministers who came to seal 
their ruin : the Government, surrounded by 
the waters, had time to negotiate at Madrid, 
Vienna, and Berlin. The Marquis de Mon- 
terey, governor of the Catholic Netherlands, 
without instructions from the Escurial, had 
the boldness to throw tioops into the import- 
ant fortresses of Dutch ( Brabant, — Breda, 
Bergen-op-Zoom, and Bois-le-Duc, — under 
pretence of a virtual guarantee of that terri- 
tory by Spain. 

In England, the continuance of proroga- 
tions — relieving the King from parliamentary 
opposition, but depriving him of sufficient 
supply, — had driven him to resources alike 
inadequate and infamous,t and had fore- 
boded that general indignation which, after 
the combined fleets of England and France 
had been worsted by the marine of Holland! 
alone, at the very moment when the rem- 
nant of the Republic seemed a*bout to be 
swallowed up, compelled him to desist from 
the open prosecution of the odious conspiracy 
against her.$ The Emperor Leopold, roused 
to a just sense of the imminent danger of 
Europe, also concluded a defensive alliance 
with the States-General ;|| as did the Ger- 
manic body generally, including Frederic 
William of Brandenburgh, called the -'Great 
Elector." 

Turenne had been meanwhile compelled 
to march from the Dutch territory to ob- 
serve, tyid, in case of need, to oppose, the 
Austrian and Brandenburgh troops; and the 
young Prince ceased to incur the risk and to 
enjoy the glory of being opposed to that 
great commander, who was the grandson of 
William I.,1T and had been trained to arms 
under Maurice. The winter of 1672 was 
unusually late and short. As soon as the 
ice seemed sufficiently solid, Luxemburgh. 
who was left in command at Utrecht, ad- 
vanced, in the hope of surprising the Hague ; 
when a providential thaw obliged him to re- 

* The official despatches of these ambassadors 
are contained in a MS. volume, probably the pro- 
perly of Sir W. Trumbull, now in the hands of 
his descendant, the Marquis of Downshire. These 
despatches show that the worst surmises circulated 
at the time of the purposes of this embassy were 
scarcely so bad as the truth. 

t Shutting up of the Exchequer, 2d January, 
1672. 

t Battle of Southwold Bay, 28th and 29th May, 
1672. In these memorable actions even the bio- 
grapher of James II. in effect acknowledges that 
De Ruyter had the advantage. — Life, vol. i. pp. 
457—476. 

$ Peace concluded at Westminster, Feb. 19th, 
1674. 

II 25th July, 1672. 

IT By Elizabeth of Nassau, Duchess of Bouil- 
lon. 



tire. His operations were limited to the de- 
struction of two petty towns; and it seems 
doubtful whether he did not owe his own 
escape to the irresolution or treachery of a 
Dutch officer intrusted with a post which 
commanded the line of retreat. At the 
perilous moment of Luxem burgh's advance, 
took place William's long match thiough 
Brabant to the attack of Charleroi, — under- 
taken probably more with a view of raising 
the drooping spirits of his troops than in the 
hope of ultimate success. The deliveiance 
of Holland in 1672 was tfye most signal 
triumph of a free people over mighty in- 
vaders, since the defeat of Xerxes. 

In the ensuing year, William's offensive 
operations had more outward and lasting 
consequences. Having deceived Luxem- 
burgh, he recovered Naerden, and shortly 
hazarding another considerable march be- 
yond the frontier, he captured the city of 
Bonn, and thus compelled Turenne to pro- 
vide for the safet) r of his army by recrossing 
the Rhine. The Spanish governor of the 
Low Countries then declared war against 
France ; and Louis was compelled to recall 
his troops from Holland. Europe now rose 
on all sides against the monarch who not 
many months before appeared to be her un- 
disputed lord. So mighty were the effects 
of a gallant stand by a small people, under 
an inexperienced chief, without a council or 
minister but the Pensionary Fagel, — the pupil 
and adherent of De Witt, who, actuated by 
the true spirit of his great master, continued 
faithfully to serve his country, in spite of the 
saddest examples of the ingratitude of his 
countrymen. In the six years of war which 
followed, the Prince commanded in three 
battles against the greatest generals of 
France. At Senef,* it was a sufficient 
honour that he was not defeated by Conde; 
and that the veteran declared, on reviewing 
the events of the day, — "The young Prince 
has shown all the qualities of the most ex- 
perienced commander, except that he ex- 
posed his own person too much." He was 
defeated without dishonour at Cassel,f by 
Luxemburgh, under the nominal command 
of the Duke of Orleans. He gained an ad- 
vantage over the same great general, after 
an obstinate and bloody action, at St. Denis, 
near Mons. This last proceeding was of 
more doubful morality than any other of his 
military life, the battle being fought four 
days after the signature of a separate treaty 
of peace by the Dutch plenipotentiaries at 
Nimeguen.i It was not, indeed, a breach 
of faith, for there was no armistice, and the 
ratifications were not executed. It is un- 
certain, even, whether he had information 
of what had passed at Nimeguen ; the official 
despatches from the States-General reaching 
him only the next morning. The treaty had 
been suddenly and unexpectedly brought to 
a favourable conclusion by the French minis- 
ters; and the Prince, who condemned it as 



* 11th August, 1674. 
J 10th August, 1678. 



t 11 April, 1677. 



392 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



alike offensive to good faith and sound 
policy, had reasonable hopes of obtaining 
a victory, which, if gained before the final 
signature, might have determined the fluc- 
tuating counsels of the States to the side of 
vigour and honour. The morality of soldiers, 
even in our own age, is not severe in requir- 
ing proof of the necessity of bloodshed, if the 
combat be fair, the event brilliant, and, more 

Earticularly, if the commander freely exposes 
is own life. His gallant enemies warmly 
applauded this attack, distinguished, as it 
seems eminently to have been, for the daring 
valour, which was brightened by the gravity 
and modesty of his character ; and they de- 
clared it to be u the only heroic action of a 
six years' war between all the great nations 
of Europe." If the official despatches had 
not hindered him from prosecuting the attack 
on the next day with the English auxiliaries, 
who must then have joined him, he was 
likely to have changed the fortune of the 
war. 

The object of the Prince and the hope of 
his confederates had been to restore Europe 
to the condition in which it had been placed 
by the treaty of the Pyrenees.* The result 
of the negotiations at Nimeguen was to add 
the province of Franche Comte, and the most 
important fortresses of the Flemish frontier, 
to the cessions which Louis at Aix-la-Cha- 
pellet had extorted from Spain. The Spanish 
Netherlands were thus farther stripped of 
their defence, the barrier of Holland weak- 
ened, and the way opened for the reduction 
of all the posts which face the most defence- 
less parts of the English coast. The acqui- 
sition of Franche Comte broke the military 
connection between Lombardy and Flanders, 
secured the ascendant of France in Switzer- 
land, and, together with the usurpation of 
Lorraine, exposed the German empire to new 
aggression. The ambition of the French 
monarch was inflamed, and the spirit of 
neighbouring nations broken, by the ineffec- 
tual resistance as much as by the long sub- 
mission of Europe. 

The ten years which followed the peace 
of Nimeguen were the period of his highest 
elevation. The first exercise of his power 
was the erection of three courts, composed 
of his own subjects, and sitting by his autho- 
rity, at Brissac, Mentz, and Besancon, to de- 
termine whether certain territories ought not 
to be annexed to France, which he claimed 
as fiefs of the provinces ceded to him by the 
Empire by the treaty of Westphalia. These 
courts, called :( Chambers of Union," sum- 
moned the possessors of these supposed fiefs 
to answer the Kind's complaints. The justice 
of the claim and the competence of the tri- 
bunals were disputed with equal reason. 
The Chamber at Metz decreed the confisca- 
tion of eighty fiefs, for default of appearance 
by the feudatories, among whom were the 
Kings of Spain and Sweden, and the Elector 
Palatine. Some petty spiritless princes ac- 



7th Nov. 1659. 



t 2d May, 1668. 



tually did homage to Louis for territories, 
said to have been anciently fiefs of the see 
of Verdun ;* and, under colour of a pretended 
judgment of the Chamber at Brissac,t the 
city of Strasburgh, a flourishing Protestant 
republic, which commanded an important 
pass on the Rhine, was surrounded at mid- 
night, in a lime of profound peace, by a body 
of French soldiers, who compelled those 
magistrates who had not been previously 
corrupted to surrender the city to the crown 
of France,! amidst the consternation and 
affliction of the people. Almost at the same 
hour, a body of troops entered Casal, in con- 
sequence of a secret treaty with the Duke 
of Mantua, a dissolute and needy youth, who 
for a bribe of a hundred thousand pounds, 
betrayed into the hands of Louis that fortress, 
then esteemed the bulwark of Lombardy. § 
Both these usurpations were in contempt of 
a notice from the Imperial minister at Paris, 
against the occupation of Strasburgh, an Im- 
perial city, or Casal, the capital of Mont- 
ferrat, a fief of the Empire. II 

On the Belgic frontier, means were em- 
ployed more summary and open than pre- 
tended judgments or clandestine treaties. 
Taking it upon himself to determine the ex- 
tent of territory ceded to him at Nimeguen, 
Louis required from the Court of Madrid the 
possession of such districts as he thought fit. 
Much was immediately yielded. Some hesi- 
tation was shown in surrendering the town 
and district of Alost. Louis sent his troops 
into the Netherlands, there to stay till his 
demands were absolutely complied with ; 
and he notified to the governor, that the 
slightest resistance would be the signal of 
war. Hostilities soon broke out, which after 
having made him master of Luxemburg, one 
of the strongest fortresses of Europe, were 
terminated in the summer of 1684, by a 
truce for twenty years, leaving him in pos- 

* Dumont, Corps Diplomatique, vol. vii. part ii. 
p. 13. 

t Flassan, Histoire de la Diplomatie Francaise, 
vol. iv. pp. 59, 63. 

t CEuvres de Louis XIV., vol. iv. p. 194, where 
the original correspondence is published. The 
pretended capitulation is dated on the 30th Sep- 
tember, 1681. The design against Strasburg 
had been known in Jul}'. — MS. letters of Sir 
Henry Saville (minister at Paris) to Sir Leoline 
Jenkins. Downshire Papers. 

§ CEuvres de Louis XIV., vol. iv. pp. 216, 217. 
The -mutinous conscience of Catinat astonished 
and displeased the haughty Louvois. Casal had 
been ceded in 1678 by Matthioli, the Duke's mi- 
nister, who, either moved by remorse or by higher 
bribes from the House of Austria, advised his 
master not to ratify the treaty ; for which he was 
carried prisoner into France, and detained there 
in close and harsh custody. He was the famous 
man with the Iron Mask, who died in the Bas- 
tile. The bargain for Casal was disguised in the 
diplomatic forms of a convention between the 
King and the Duke. — Dumont, vol. vii. partii.j 
p. 14. An army of one thousand five hundred 
men was collected in Dauphiny, at the desire of 
the Duke, to give his sale the appearance of ne- 
cessity. — Letter of Sir Henry Saville. 

II Sir Henry Saville to Sir Leoline Jenkins. 
Fontainbleau, 12th Sept. 1681. 



MEMOIR OF THE AFFAIRS OF HOLLAND. 



393 



session of, and giving the sanction of Europe 
to, his usurpations. 

To a reader of the nineteenth century, 
familiar with the present divisions of terri- 
tory in Christendom, and accustomed to re- 
gard the greatness of France as well adapted 
to the whole state of the European system, 
the conquests of Louis XIV. may seem to 
have inspired an alarm disproportioned to 
their magnitude. Their real danger, how- 
ever, will be speedily perceived by those 
who more accurately consider the state of 
surrounding countries, and the subdivision 
of dominion in that age. Two monarchies 
only of the first class existed on the conti- 
nent, as the appellation of " the two Crowns," 
then commonly used in speaking of France 
and Spain, sufficiently indicate. But Spain, 
which, under the last Austrian king, had 
perhaps reached the lowest point of her ex- 
traordinary fall, was in truth no longer able 
to defend herself. The revenue of some- 
what more than two millions sterling was in- 
adequate to the annual expense.* Ronquillo, 
the minister of this vast empire in London, 
was reduced to the necessity of dismissing 
his servants without payment. f An invader 
who had the boldness to encounter the sha- 
dow of a great name had little to dread, ex- 
cept from the poverty of the country, which 
rendered it incapable of feeding an army. 
Naples, Lombard)*, and the Catholic Nether- 
lands, though the finest provinces of Europe, 
were a drain and a burden in the hands of a 
government sunk into imbecile dotage, and 
alike incapable of ruling and of maintaining 
these envied possessions. While Spain, a 
lifeless and gigantic body, covered the South 
of Europe, the manly spirit and military skill 
of Germany were rendered of almost as little 
avail by the minute subdivisions of its terri- 
tory. From the Rhine to the Vistula, a hun- 
dred princes, jealous of each other, fearful 
of offending the conqueror-, and often com- 
petitors for his disgraceful bounty, broke into 
fragments the strength of the Germanic race. 
The houses of Saxony and Bavaria, Branden- 
burg and Brunswick, Wurtemburg, Baden, 
and Hesse, though among the most ancient 
and noble of the ruling families of Europe, 
were but secondary states. Even the genius 
of the late Elector of Brandenburg did not 
exempt him from the necessity or the temp- 
tation of occasional compliance with Louis. 
From the French frontier to the Baltic, no 
one firm mass stood in the way of his arms. 
Prussia was not yet a monarchy, nor Russia 
an European state. In the south-eastern 
provinces of Germany, where Rodolph of 
Hapsburg had laid the foundations of his 
family, the younger branch had, from the 
death of Charles V. formed a monarchy 
which, aided by the Spanish alliance, the 



* Memoires de Gourville, vol. ii. p. 82. An ac- 
count apparently prepared with rare. I adopt the 
proportion of thirteen livres to the pound sterling, 
which is the rate of exchange given by Barillon, 
in 1679. 

t Ronquillo, MS. letter. 
50 



imperial dignity, and a military position on 
the central frontier of Christendom, render- 
ing it the bulwark of the Empire against 
the irruptions of the Turkish barbarians, 
rose during the thirty years' war to such a 
power, that it was prevented only by Gus- 
tavus Adolphus from enslaving the whole of 
Germany. France, which under Richelieu 
had excited and aided that great prince and 
his followers, was for that reason regarded 
for a time as the protector of the German 
States against the Emperor. Bavaria, the 
Palatinate, and the three ecclesiastical Elec- 
torates, partly from remaining jealousy of 
Austria, and partly from growing fear of 
Louis, were disposed to seek his protection 
and acquiesce in many of his encroach- 
ments.* This numerous, weak, timid, and 
mercenary body of German princes, supplied 
the chief materials out of which it was pos- 
sible that an alliance against the conqueror 
might one day be formed. On the other 
hand, the military power of the Austrian 
monarchy was crippled by the bigotry and 
tyranny of its princes. The persecution of 
the Protestants, and the attempt to establish 
an absolute government, had spread disaf- 
fection through Hungary and its vast depen- 
dencies. In a contest between one tyrant 
and many, where the people in a state of 
personal slavery are equally disregarded by 
both, reason and humanity might be neutral, 
if reflection did not remind us, that even 
the contests and factions of a turbulent aris- 
tocracy call forth an energy, and magna- 
nimity, and ability, which are extinguished 
under the quieter and more fatally lasting 
domination of a single master. The Emperor 
Leopold I., instigated by the Jesuits, of which 
order he was a lay member, rivalled and an- 
ticipated Louis XIV. t in his cruel prosecu- 
tion of the Hungarian Protestants, and there- 
by drove the nation to such despair that they 
sought refuge in the aid of the common 
enemy of the Christian name. Encouraged 
by their revolt, and stimulated by the con- 
tinued intrigues of the Court of Versailles,! 
the Turks at length invaded Austria with a 

* The Palatine, together with Bavaria, Mentz 
and Cologne, promised to vote for Louis XIV. as 
emperor in 1658. — Pfeffel, Abrege Chronologi- 
que, &c. (Paris, 1776), vol. ii. p. 360. A more 
authentic and very curious account of this extra- 
ordinary negotiation, extracted from the French 
archives, is published by Lemontey, (Monarchie 
de Louis XIV. Pieces justificative*, No. 2,) by 
which it appears that the Elector of Metz betrayed 
Mazarin, who had distributed immense bribes to 
him and his fellows. 

t He banished the Protestant clergy, of whom 
two hundred and fifty, originally condemned to 
be stoned or burnt to death, but having under 
pretence, probably, of humanity, been sold to the 
Spaniards, were redeemed from the condition of 
galley slaves by the illustrious De Ruyter after 
his victory over the French, on the coast of 
Sicilv. — Coxe, House of Austria, chap. 66. 

t Sir William Trumbull, ambassador at Con- 
stantinople from August, 1687, to July, 1691, 
names French agents employed in fomenting the 
Hungarian rebellion, and negotiating with the 
Vizier. — Downshire MSS. 



394 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



mighty army, and would have mastered the 
capital of the most noble of Christian sove- 
reigns, had not the seige of Vienna been 
# raised, after a duration of two months, by 
John Sobieski, King of Poland, — the heroic 
chief of a people, whom in less than a cen- 
tury the House of Austria contributed to 
blot out of the map of nations. While 
these dangers impended over the Austrian 
monarchy, Louis had been preparing to de- 
prive it of the Imperial sceptre, which in his 
own hands would have proved no bauble. 
By secret treaties, to which the Elector of 
Bavaria had been tempted to agree, in 1670, 
by the prospect of matrimonial alliance with 
the House of Fiance, and which were im- 
posed on the Electors of Brandenburg and 
Saxony in 1679. after the humiliation of Eu- 
rope at Ninaeguen, these princes had agreed 
to vote for Louis in case of the death of 
the Emperor Leopold, — an event which his 
infirm health had given frequent occasion 
to expect. The four Rhenish electors, 
especially after the usurpation of Stras- 
burg and Luxemburg, were already in his 
net. 

At home the vanquished party, whose an- 
tipathy to the House of Orange had been 
exasperated by the cruel fate of De Witt, 
sacrificed the care of the national inde- 
pendence to jealousy of the Stadtholderian 
princes, and carried their devotedness to 
France to an excess which there was no- 
thing in the example of their justly revered 
leader to warrant.* They had obliged the 
Prince of Orange to accede to the unequal 
conditions of Nimeguen ; they had prevented 
him from making military preparations ab- 
solutely required by safety; and they had 
compelled him to submit to that truce for 
twenty years, which left the entrances of 
Flanders, Germany, and Italy, in the hands 
of France. They had concerted all mea- 
sures of domestic opposition Avith the French 
minister at the Hague ; and, though there is 
no reason to believe that the opulent and 
creditable chiefs of the party, if they had 
received French money at all, would have 
deigned to employ it for any other than 
what they had unhappily been misled to 
regard as a public purpose, there is the ful- 
lest evidence of the employment of bribes 
to make known at Versailles the most secret 
■counsels of the commonwealth. t Amster- 
dam had raised troops for her own defence, 
declaring her determination not to contribute 
towards the hostilities which the measures 



* The speed and joy with which he and Tempie 
concluded the Triple Alliance seem, indeed, to 
prove the contrary. That treaty, so quickly con- 
cluded by two wise, accomplished, and, above all, 
honest men, is perhaps unparalleled in diplomatic 
transactions. "Nulla dies unquam mernori vox 
eximel <??uo." 

t D'Avaux, Negociations en Hollande (Paris, 
1754), vol. i. pp. 13, 23, 25, &.c. — examples of trea- 
chery, in some of which the secret was known 
only to three persons. Sometimes, copies of 
orders were obtained from the Prince's private 
repositories, vol. ii. p. 53. 



of the general government might occasion, 
and had entered into a secret correspondence 
with France. Frieslaud and Croningen had 
recalled their troops from the common de- 
fence, and bound themselves, by a secret 
convention with Amsterdam, to act in con- 
cert with that potent and mutinous city. 
The provinces of Guelderland, Overyssell, 
Utrecht, and Zealand, adhered, indeed, to 
the Prince, and he still preserved a majority 
in the. States of Holland ; but this majority 
consisted only of the order of nobles and of 
the deputies of inconsiderable towns. Fagel, 
his wise and faithful minister, appeared to 
be in danger of destruction at the hands of 
the Republicans, who abhorred him as a de^ 
serter. But Heinsius. Pensionary of Delft, 
probably the ablest man of that party, hav- 
ing, on a mission to Versailles, seen the 
effects of the civil and religious policy of 
Louis XIV., and considering consistency as 
dependent, not on names, but on principles, 
thought it the duty of a friend of liberty 
also to join the party most opposed to that 
monarch's designs. So trembling was the 
ascendant of the Prince in Holland, that the 
accession of individuals was, from their sit- 
uation or ability, of great importance to him. 
His cousin, the Stadtholder of Frieslaud, was 
gradually gained over; and Conrad Van Ben- 
ningen, one of the chiefs of Amsterdam, an 
able, accomplished, and disinterested Repub- 
lican, fickle from over-refinement, and be- 
trayed into French councils by jealousy of 
the House of Orange, as soon as he caught a 
glimpse of the abyss into which his country 
was about to fall, recoiled from the brink. 
Thus did the very country where the Prince 
of Orange held sway, fluctuate between him 
and Louis ; insomuch, indeed, that if that 
monarch had observed any measure in his 
cruelty towards French Protestants, it might 
have been impossible, till it was too late, to 
turn the force of Holland against him. 

But the weakest point in the defences of 
European independence was England. It 
was not, indeed, like the continental states, 
either attacked by other enemies, or weak- 
ened by foreign influence, or dwindling from 
inward decay. The throne was filled by a 
traitor; a creature of the common enemy 
commanded this important post : for a quarter 
of a century Charles had connived at the 
conquests of Louis. During the last ten years 
of his reign he received a secret pension; 
but when Louis became desirous of possess- 
ing Luxemburg, Charles extorted an addi- 
tional bribe for connivance at that new act 
of rapine.* After he had sold the fortress, 
he proposed himself to Spain as arbitrator in 
the dispute regarding it;t and so notorious 
was his perfidy, that the Spanish ministers 
at Paris did not scruple to justify their re- 

* " My Lord Hyde (Rochester) ne m'a pas 
cache que si son avis est suivi le Roi s'en entrera 
dans un concert secret pour avoir a V. M. la ville 
de Luxemburg." — Barillou to Louis, 7th Nov. 
1681. 

t The same to the same, 15th Dec. 



MEMOIR OF THE AFFAIRS OF HOLLAND. 



395 



fusal to his ambassador, by telling him, " that 
they refused because they had no mind to 
part with Luxemburg, which they knew 
was to be sacrificed if they accepted the 
offer."* 

William's connection with the House of 
Stuart was sometimes employed by France 
to strengthen the jealous antipathy of the 
Republicans against him ; while on other oc- 
casions he was himself obliged to profess a 
reliance on that connection which he did 
not feel, in order to gain an appearance of 
strength. As the Dutch Republicans were 
prompted to thwart his measures by a mis- 
applied zeal for liberty, so the English Whigs 
were for a moment compelled to enter into a 
correspondence with the common enemy by 
the like motives. But in his peculiar rela- 
tions with England the imprudent violence 



* Lord Preston to Secretary Jenkins, Paris, 
16th Dec. 1682. Admitted within the domestic 
differences of England, Louis had not scrupled to 
make advances to the enemies of the court ; and 
they, desirous of detaching their own sovereign 
from France, and of thus depriving him of the 
most effectual ally in his project for rendering 
himself absolute, had reprehensibly accepted the 
aid of Louis in counteracting a policy which they 
had good reason to dread. They considered this 
dangerous understanding as allowable for the pur- 
pose of satisfying their party, that in opposing 
Charles they would not have to apprehend the 
power of Louis, and disposing the King of France 
to spare the English constitution, as some curb on 
the irresolution and inconstancy of his royal de- 
pendent. To destroy confidence between the 
Courts seemed to be an object so important, as to 
warrant the use of ambiguous means ; and the 
usual sophistry, by which men who are not de- 
praved excuse to themselves great breaches of 
morality, could not be wanting. They could easily 
persuade themselves that they could stop when 
they pleased, and that the example could not be 
dangerous in a case where the danger was too 
great not to be of very rare occurrence. Some of 
them are said by Barillon to have so far copied 
their prince as to have received French money, 
though they are not charged with being, like him, 
induced by it to adopt any measures at variance 
with their avowed principles. If we must be- 
lieve, that in an age of little pecuniary delicacy, 
when large presents from sovereigns were scarcely 
deemed dishonourable, and when many princes, 
and almost all ministers, were in the pay of Louis 
XIV., the statement may be true, it is due to the 
haughty temper, not to say to the high principles 
of Sidney, — it is due, though in a very inferior de- 
gree, to the ample fortunes of others of the per- 
sons named, also to believe, that the polluted gifts 
were applied by them to elections and other public 
interests of the popular party, which there might 
be a fantastic gratification in promoting by trea- 
sures diverted from the use of the Court. These 
unhappy transactions, which in their full extent 
require a more critical scrutiny of the original do- 
cuments than that to which they have been sub- 
jected, are not pretended to originate till ten years 
after the concert of the two Courts, and were re- 
linquished as soon as that concert was resumed. 
Yet the reproach brought upon the cause of 
liberty by the infirmity of some men of great soul, 
and of others of the purest virtue, is, perhaps, the 
most wholesome admonition pronounced by the 
warning voice of history against the employment 
of sinister and equivocal means for the attainment 
of the best ends. 



of the latter party was as much an obstacle 
in his way as their alienation or opposition. 
The interest of Europe required that he 
should never relinquish the attempt to detach 
the English government from the conqueror. 
The same principle, together with legitimate 
ambition, prescribed that he should do no- 
thing, either by exciting enemies, or estrang- 
ing friends, which could endanger his own 
and the Princess' right of succession to the 
crown. It was his obvious policy, therefore, to 
keep up a good understanding with the popu- 
lar party, on whom alone he could permanent- 
ly rely ; to give a cautious countenance to 
their measures of constitutional opposition, 
and especially to the Bill of Exclusion,* — a 
more effectual mode of cutting asunder the 
chains which bound England 1o the car of 
Louis, than the proposed limitations on a Ca- 
tholic successor, which might permanently 
weaken the defensive force of the monarchy;! 
and to discourage and stand aloof from all 
violent counsels, — likely either to embroil the 
country in such lasting confusion as would 
altogether disable it for aiding the sinking 
fortunes of Europe, or, by their immediate 
suppression, to subject all national interests 
and feelings to Charles and his brother. As 
his open declaration against the King or the 
popular party would have been perhaps 
equally dangerous to English liberty and 
European independence, he was averse from 
those projects which reduced him to so in- 
jurious an alternative. Hence his conduct 
in the case of what is called the " Rye House 
Plot," in which his confidential correspon- 
dence! manifests indifference and even dis- 
like to those who were charged with projects 
of revolt ; all which might seem unnatural 
if we did not bear in mind that at the mo- 
ment of the siege of Vienna, he must have 
looked at England almost solely, as the 
only counterpoise of France. His abstinence 
from English intrigues was at this juncture 
strengthened by lingering hopes that it was 
still possible to lure Charles into those unions 
which he had begun to form against farther 
encroachment, under the modest and inoffen- 
sive name of " Associations to maintain the 
Treaty of Nimeguen," which were in three 



* Burnet, vol. ii. p. 245. Temple, vol. i. 
p. 355. "My friendship with the Prince (says 
Temple) I could think no crime, considering how 
little he had ever meddled, to my knowledge, in 
our domestic concerns since the first heats in Par- 
liament, though sensible of their influence on all 
his nearest concerns at home ; the preservation 
of Flanders from French conquests, and thereby 
of Holland from absolute dependence on that 
Crown." 

t Letters of the Prince to Sir Leoline Jenkins, 
July, 1680.— February, 1681. Dalrymple, Ap 
pendix to Review. 

t MS. letters from the Prince to Mr. Bentinck, 
in England, July and August, 1683. By the 
favour of the Duke of Portland, I possess copies 
of the whole of the Prince's correspondence with 
his friend, from 1677 to 1700 ; written with the 
unreserved frankness of warm and pure friend- 
ship, in which it is quite manifest that there ia 
nothing concealed. 



396 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



years afterwards completed by the League 
of Augsburgh, and which, in 1689, brought 
all Europe into the field to check the career 
of Louis XIV. 

The death of Charles II. gave William 
some hope of an advantageous change in 
English policy. Many worse men and more 
tyrannical kings than that prince, few per- 
sons of more agreeable qualities and brilliant 
talents have been seated on a throne. But 
his transactions with France probably afford 
the most remarkable instance of a king with 
no sense of national honour or of regal inde- 
pendence, — the last vestiges which departing 
virtue might be expected to leave behind in 
a royal bosom. More jealousy of dependence 
on a foreign prince was hoped from the ster- 
ner temper of his successor. William accord- 
ingly made great efforts and sacrifices to 
obtain the accession of England to the Euro- 
pean cause. He declared his readiness to 
sacrifice his resentments, and even his per- 
sonal interests, and to conform his conduct 
to the pleasure of the King in all things com- 
patible with his religion and with his duty 
to the republic ;* — limitations which must 
have been considered as pledges of sincerity 
by him to whom they were otherwise unac- 
ceptable. He declared his regret at the ap- 
pearance of opposition to both his uncles, 
which had arisen only from the necessity of 
resisting Louis, and he sent M. D'Auver- 
querque to England to lay his submission 
before the King. James desired that he 
should relinquish communication with the 
Duke of Monmouth,! dismiss the malcontent 



*Davaux, 13th— 26th Feb., 1685. The last 
contains an account of a conversation of William 
with Fagel, overheard by a person who reported 
it to Davaux. A passage in which Davaux shows 
his belief that the policy of the Prince now aimed 
at gaining James, is suppressed in the printed 
collection. 

t During these unexpected advances to a re- 
newal of friendship, an incident occurred, which 
has ever since, in the eyes of many, thrown some 
shade over the sincerity of William. This was 
the landing in England of the Duke of Monmouth, 
with a small number of adherents who had em- 
barked with him at Amsterdam. He had taken 
refuge in the Spanish Netherlands, and afterwards 
in Holland, during the preceding year, in conse- 
quence of a misunderstanding between him and 
the ministers of Charles respecting the nature and 
extent of the confession concerning the reality of 
the Rye House Plot, published by them in language 
which he resented as conveying unauthorised im- 
putations on his friends. The Prince and Princess 
of Orange received him wiih kindness, from per- 
sonal friendship, from compassion for his suffer- 
ings, and from his connection with the popular 
and Protestant party in England. The transient 
shadow of a pretension to the crown did not 
awaken their jealousy. They were well aware 
that whatever complaints might be made by his 
ministers, Charles himself would not be displeased 
by kindness shown towards his favourite son. 
There is, indeed, little doubt, that in the last year 
of his life, Charles had been prevailed on by Hali- 
fax to consult his ease, as well as his inclination, 
by the recall of his son, as a counterpoise to the 
Duke of York, and thus to produce the balance 
of parties at court, which was one of the darling 
refinements of that too ingenious statesman. 



English Officers in the Dutch army, and 
adapt his policy to such engagements as 

Reports were prevalent that Monmouth had pri- 
vately visited England, and that he was well 
pleased with his journey. He was assured by 
confidential letters, evidently sanctioned by his 
father, that he should be recalled in February. 
It appears also, that Charles had written with his 
own hand a letter to the Prince of Orange, be- 
seeching him to treat Monmouth kindly, which 
D' Auverquerque was directed to lay before James 
as a satisfactory explanation of whatever might 
seem suspicious in the unusual honours paid to 
him. Before he left the Hague the Prince and 
Princess approved the draft of a submissive letter 
to James, which he had laid before them •„ and 
they exacted from him a promise that he would 
engage in no violent enterprises inconsistent with 
this submission. Despairing of clemency from 
his uncle, he then appears to have entertained 
designs of retiring into Sweden, or of serving in 
the Imperial army against the Turks ; and he 
listened for a moment to the projects of some 
French Protestants, who proposed that he should 
put himself at the head of their unfortunate bre- 
thren. He himself thought the difficulties of an 
enterprise against England insuperable ; but the 
importunity of the English and Scotch refugees 
in Holland induced him to return privately there 
to be present at their consultations. He found 
the Scotch exiles, who were proportionately more 
numerous and of greater distinction, and who felt 
more bitterly from the bloody tyranny under which 
their countrymen suffered, impatiently desirous to 
make an immediate attempt for the delivery of 
their country. Ferguson, the Nonconformist 
preacher, either from treachery, or from rash- 
ness, seconded the impetuosity of his countrymen. 
Andrew Fletcher of Sajtoun, a man of heroic 
spirit, and a lover of liberty even to enthusiasm, 
who had just returned from serving in Hungary, 
dissuaded his friends from an enterprise which his 
political sagacity and military experience taught 
him to consider as hopeless. In assemblies of 
suffering and angry exiles it was to be expected 
that rash counsels should prevail ; yet Monmouth 
appears to have resisted them longer than could 
have been hoped from his judgment or temper. 
It was not till two months after the deaih of 
Charles II. (9th April, 1685,) that the vigilant 
Davaux intimated his suspicion of a design to 
land in England. Nor was it till three weeks 
that he was able to transmit to his Court the par- 
ticulars of the equipment. It was only then that 
Skelton, the minister of James, complained of 
these petty armaments to the President of the 
States-General and the magistrates of Amsterdam, 
neither of whom had any authority in the case. 
They referred him to the Admiralty of Amster- 
dam, the competent authority in such cases, who, 
as soon as they were authorised by an order from 
the States-General, proceeded to arrest the ves- 
sels freighted by Argyle. But in consequence of 
a mistake in Skelton's description of their station, 
their exertions were too late to prevent the sailing 
of the unfortunate expedition on the 5th of May. 
The natural delays of a slow and formal go- 
vernment, the jealousy of rival authorities, ex- 
asperated by the spirit of party, and the license 
shown in such a country to navigation and traffic, 
are sufficient to account for this short delay. If 
there was in this case a more than usual indisposi- 
tion to overstep the formalities of the constitution, 
or to quicken the slow pace of the administration, 
it may be well imputed to natural compassion to- 
wards the exiles, and to the strong fellow-feeling 
which arose from agreement in religious opinion, 
especially with the Scotch. If there were proof 
even of absolute connivance, it must be ascribed 
solely to the magistrates and inhabitants of Am- 



MEMOIR OF THE AFFAIRS OF HOLLAND. 



397 



the King should see fit to contract with his 
neighbours. To the former conditions the 
Prince submitted without reserve : the last, 
couched in strong language by James to 
Barillon. hid under more general expressions 
by the English minister to Davaux, but im- 
plying in its mildest form an acquiescence in 
the projects of the conqueror, was probably 
conveyed to the Prince himself in terms 
capable of being understood as amounting 
only to an engagement to avoid an interrup- 
tion of the general peace. In that inoffensive 
sense it seems to have been accepted by the 
Prince ; since the King declared to him that 
his concessions, which could have reached 
no farther, were perfectly satisfactory.* 

Sidney was sent to Holland — a choice 
which seemed to indicate an extraordinary 
deference for the wishes of the Prince, and 
which was considered in Holland as a deci- 
sive mark of good understanding between 
the two governments. The proud and hostile 
city of Amsterdam presented an address of 
congratulation to William on the defeat of 
Monmouth ; and the Republican party be- 
gan to despair of effectual resistance to the 
power of the Stadtholder, now about to be 
strengthened by the alliance with England. 
The Dutch ambassadors in London, in spite 
of the remonstrances of Barillon, succeeded 
in concluding a treaty for the renewal of 
the defensive alliance between England and 
Holland, which, though represented to Louis 
as a mere formality, was certainly a step 
which required little more than that liberal 
construction to which a defensive treaty is 
always entitled, to convert it into an acces- 
sion by England to the concert of the other 
states of Europe, for the preservation of their 
rights and dominions. The connection be- 
tween the Dutch and English governments 
answered alike the immediate purposes of 
both parties. It overawed the malcontents 
of Holland, as well as those of England ; and 
James commanded his ministers to signify 
to the magistrates of Amsterdam, that their 
support of the Stadtholder would be accept- 
able to his Majesty. 

William, who, from the peace of Nime- 
guen, had been the acknowledged chief of 

sierdam, — the ancient enemies of the House of 
Orange, — who might look with favour on an 
expedition which might prevent the Stadtholder 
from being strengthened by his connection with 
the King of England, and who, as we are told 
by Davaux himself, were afterwards filled with 
consternation when they learned the defeat of 
Monmouth. We know little with certainty of 
the particulars of his intercourse with his inex- 
orable uncle, from his capture till his execution, 
except the compassionate interference of the 
Queen Dowager in his behalf; but whatever it 
was, trom the King's conduct immediately after, 
it tended rather to strengthen than to shake his 
confidence in the Prince. 

* James to the Prince of Orange, 6th, 16th, and 
17th March. — Dalrymple, app. to part i. 



the confederacy gradually forming to protect 
the remains of Europe, had now slowly and 
silently removed all the obstacles to its for- 
mation, except those which arose from the 
unhappy jealousies of the friends of liberty 
at home, and the fatal progress towards ab- 
solute monarchy in England. Good sense, 
which, in so high a degree as his, is one of 
the rarest of human endowments, had full 
scope for its exercise in a mind seldom in- 
vaded by the disturbing passions of fear and 
anger. With all his determined firmness, 
no man was ever more solicitous not to 
provoke or keep up needless enmity. It is 
no wonder that he should have been influ- 
enced by this principle in his dealings with 
Charles and James, for there are traces of it 
even in his rare and transient intercourse 
with Louis XIV. He caused it to be inti- 
mated to him "that he was ambitious of 
being restored to his Majesty's favour ;"* to 
which it was haughtily answered, " that 
when such a disposition was shown in his 
conduct, the King would see what was to be 
done." Yet Davaux believed that the Prince 
really desired to avoid the enmity of Louis, 
as far as was compatible with his duties to 
Holland, and his interests in England. In a 
conversation with Gourville,! which affords 
one of the most characteristic specimens of 
intercourse between a practised courtier and 
a man of plain inoffensive temper, when the 
minister had spoken to him in more soothing 
language, he professed his warm wish to 
please the King, and proved his sincerity by 
adding that he never could neglect the safety 
of Holland, and that the decrees of re-union, 
together with other marks of projects of uni- 
versal monarchy, were formidable obstacles 
to good understanding. It was probably 
after one of these attempts that he made the 
remarkable declaration, — '• Since I cannot 
earn his Majesty's favour, I must endeavour 
to earn his esteem." Nothing but an extra- 
ordinary union of wariness with persever- 
ance — two qualities which he possessed in a 
higher degree, and united in juster propor- 
tions, perhaps, than any other man — could 
have fitted him for that incessant, unwearied, 
noiseless exertion which alone suited his 
difficult situation. His mind, naturally dis- 
passionate, became, by degrees, steadfastly 
and intensely fixed upon the single object 
of his high calling. Brilliant only on the field 
of battle ; loved by none but a few intimate 
connections; considerate and circumspect in 
council ; in the execution of his designs bold 
even to rashness, and inflexible to the verge 
of obstinacy, he held his onward way with 
a quiet and even course, which wore down 
opposition, outlasted the sallies of enthusi- 
asm, and disappointed the subtle contriv- 
ances of a refined policy. 

* Davaux, vol. i. p. 5. 
t Gourville, vol. ii. p. 204. 
21 



398 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



DISCOURSE 



READ AT THE OPENING OF 



THE LITERARY SOCIETY OF BOMBAY, 



[26th Nov. 1804.] 



Gentlemen. — The smallest society, brought 
together by the love of knowledge, is respect- 
able in the eye of Reason ; and the feeblest 
efforts of infant Literature in barren and in- 
hospitable regions are in some respects more 
interesting than the most elaborate works 
and the most successful exertions of the hu- 
man mind. They prove the diffusion, at 
least, if not the advancement of science ; 
and they afford some sanction to the hope, 
that Knowledge is destined one day to visit 
the whole earth, and, in her beneficial pro- 
gress, to illuminate and humanise the whole 
race of man. It is, therefore, with singular 
pleasure that I see a small but respectable 
body of men assembled here by such a prin- 
ciple. I hope that we agree in considering 
all Europeans who visit remote countries, 
whatever their separate pursuits may be, as 
detachments of the main body of civilized 
men, sent out to levy contributions of know- 
ledge, as well as to gain victories over bar- 
barism. 

When a large portion of a country so inte- 
resting as India fell into the hands of one of 
the most intelligent and inquisitive nations 
of the world, it was natural to expect that its 
ancient and present state should at last be 
fully disclosed. These expectations were, 
indeed, for a time disappointed : during the 
tumult of revolution and war it would have 
been unreasonable to have entertained them ; 
and when tranquillity was established in 
that country, which continues to be the 
centre of the British power in Asia,* it ought 
not to have been forgotten that every Eng- 
lishman was fully occupied by commerce, 
by military service, or by administration; 
that we had among us no idle public of 
readers, and, consequently, no separate pro- 
fession of writers; and that every hour be- 
stowed on study was to be stolen from the 
leisure of men often harassed by business, 
enervated by the climate, and more disposed 
to seek amusement than new occupation, in 
the intervals of their appointed toils. 

It is, besides, a part of our national charac- 
ter, that we are seldom eager to display, and 
not always ready to communicate, what we 
have acquired. In this respect we differ 
considerably from other lettered nations. 
Our ingenious and polite neighbours on the 



* Bengal. — Ed. 



continent of Europe, — to whose enjoyment 
the applause of others seems more indispen- 
sable, and whose faculties aie more nimble 
and restless, if not more vigorous than ours, 
— are neither so patient of repose, nor so 
likely to be contented with a secret hoard of 
knowledge. They carry even into their lite- 
rature a spirit of bustle and parade ; — a bus- 
tle, indeed, which springs from activity, and 
a parade which animates enterprise, but 
which are incompatible with our sluggish 
and sullen dignity. Pride disdains ostenta- 
tion, scorns false pretensions, despises even 
petty merit, refuses to obtain the objects of 
pursuit by flattery or importunity, and scarce- 
ly values any praise but that which she has 
the right to command. Pride, with which 
foreigners charge us, and which under the 
name of a -sense of dignity' we claim for 
ourselves, is a lazy and unsocial quality; 
and is in these respects, as in most others, 
the very reverse of the sociable and good- 
humoured vice of vanity. It is not, there- 
fore, to be wondered at, if in India our na- 
tional character, co operating with local cir- 
cumstances, should have produced some real 
and perhaps more apparent inactivity in 
working the mine of knowledge of which we 
had become the masters. 

Yet some of the earliest exertions of pri- 
vate Englishmen are too important to be 
passed over in silence. The compilation of 
laws by Mr. Halhed, and the Ayeen Akba- 
ree, translated by Mr. Gladwin, deseive 
honourable mention. Mr. Wilkins gained 
the memorable distinction of having opened 
the treasures of a new learned language to 
Europe. 

But, notwithstanding the merit of these 
individual exertions, it cannot be denied that 
the era of a general direction of the mind of 
Englishmen in this country towards learned 
inquiries, was the foundation of the Asiatic 
Society by Sir William Jones. To give such 
an impulse to the public understanding is 
one of the greatest benefits that a man can 
confer on his fellow men. On such an occa- 
sion as the present, it is impossible to pro- 
nounce the name of Sir William Jones with- 
out feelings of gratitude and reverence. He 
was among the distinguished persons who 
adorned one of the brightest periods of Eng- 
lish literature. It was no mean distinction 
to be conspicuous in the age of Burke and 



OPENING OF THE LITERARY SOCIETY OF BOMBAY. 



399 



Johnson, of Hume and Smith, of Gray and 
Goldsmith, of Gibboii and Robertson, of 
Reynolds and Garrick. It was the fortune 
of Sir William Jones to have been the friend 
of the greater part of these illustrious men. 
Without him, the age in which he lived 
would have been inferior to past times in 
one kind of literary glory : he surpassed all 
his contemporaries, and perhaps even the 
most laborious scholars of the two former 
centuries, in extent and variety of attainment. 
His facility in acquiring was almost prodi- 
gious; and he possessed that faculty of ar- 
ranging and communicating his knowledge 
which these laborious scholars very generally 
wanted. Erudition, which in them was 
often disorderly and rugged, and had some- 
thing of an illiberal and almost barbarous 
air, was by him presented to the world with 
all the elegance and amenity of polite litera- 
ture. Though he seldom directed his mind 
to those subjects the successful investigation 
of which confers the name of a "philosopher," 
yet he possessed in a very eminent degree 
that habit of disposing his knowledge in 
regular and analytical order, which is one 
of the properties of a philosophical under- 
standing. His talents as an elegant writer 
in verse were among his instruments for at- 
taining knowledge, and a new example of 
the variety of his accomplishments. In his 
easy and flowing prose we justly admire that 
order of exposition and transparency of lan- 
guage, which are the most indispensable 
qualities of style, and the chief excellencies 
of which it is capable, when it is employed 
solely to instruct. His writings everywhere 
breathe pure taste in morals as well as in 
literature; and it may be said with truth, 
that not a single sentiment has escaped him 
which does not indicate the real elegance 
and dignity which pervaded the most secret 
recesses of his mind. He had lived, per- 
haps, too exclusively in the world of learning 
for the cultivation of his practical under- 
standing. Other men have meditated more 
deeply on the constitution of society, and 
have taken more comprehensive views of its 
complicated relations and infinitely varied in- 
terests. Others have, therefore, often taught 
sounder principles of political science; but 
no man more warmly felt, and no author is 
better calculated to inspire, those generous 
sentiments of liberty, without which the 
most just principles are useless and lifeless, 
and which will, I trust, continue to flow 
through the channels of eloquence and poe- 
try into the minds of British youth. It has, 
indeed, been somewhat lamented that he 
should have exclusively directed inquiry to- 
wards antiquities. But every man must be 
allowed to recommend most strongly his 
own favourite pursuits; and the chief diffi- 
culty as well as the chief merit is his. who 
first raises the minds of men to the love of 
any part of knowledge. When mental ac- 
tivity is once roused, its direction is easily 
changed; and the excesses of one writer, if 
they are not checked by public reason, are 



compensated by the opposite ones of his 
successor. u Whatever withdraws us from 
the dominion of the senses — whatever makes 
the past, the distant, and the future, pre- 
dominate over the present, advances us in 
the dignity of thinking beings."* 

It is not for me to attempt an estimate of 
those exertions for the advancement of know- 
ledge which have arisen from the example 
and exhortations of Sir William Jones. In 
all judgments pronounced on our contempo- 
raries it is so certain that we shall be ac- 
cused, and so piobable that we may be 
justly accused, of either partially bestowing. 
or invidiously withholding praise, that it is 
in general better to attempt no encroach- 
ment on the jurisdiction of Time, which 
alone impartially and justly estimates the 
works of men. But it would be unpardon- 
able not to speak of the College at Calcutta, 
the original plan of which was doubtless the 
most magnificent attempt ever made for the 
promotion of learning in the East. I am not 
conscious that I am biassed either by per- 
sonal feelings, or literary prejudices Avhen I 
say, that I consider that original plan as a 
wise and noble proposition, the adoption of 
which in its full extent would have had the 
happiest tendency in securing the good go- 
vernment of India, as well as in promoting 
the interest of science. Even in its present 
mutilated state we have seen, at the last 
public exhibition, Sanscrit declamation by 
English youth ;t — a circumstance so extra- 
ordinary, that, if it be followed by suitable 
advances, it will mark an epoch hi the his- 
tory of learning. 

Among the humblest fruits of this spirit I 
take the liberty to mention the project of 
forming this Society, which occurred to me 
before I left England, but which never could 
have advanced even to its present state with- 
out your hearty concurrence, and which must 
depend on your active co-operation for all 
hopes of future success. 

You will not suspect me of presuming to 
dictate the nature and object of our common 
exertions. To be valuable they must be 
spontaneous; and no literary society can 
subsist on any other principle than that of 
equality. In the observations which I shall 
make on the plan and subject of our in- 
quiries, I shall offer myself to you only as 
the representative of the curiosity of Europe. 
I am ambitious of no higher office than that 
of faithfully conveying to India the desires 
and wants of the learned at home, and of 
stating the subjects on which they wish and 
expect satisfaction, from inquiries which can 
be pursued only in India. 

In fulfilling the duties of this mission, I 
shall not be expected to exhaust so vast a 
subject; nor is it necessary that I should at- 
tempt an exact distribution of science. A 
very general sketch is all that I can pro- 



* Dr. Johnson at Tona. — Ed. 
t It must be remembered that this was written 
in 1804.— Ed. 



400 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



mise; in which I shall pass over many sub- 
jects rapidly, and dwell only on those parts 
on which from my own habits of study I 
may think myself least disqualified to offer 
useful suggestions. 

The objects of these inquiries, as of all 
human knowledge, are reducible to two 
classes, which, for want of more significant 
and precise terms, we must be content to 
.call -Physical" and "Moral." — aware of 
the laxity and ambiguity of these words, but 
not affecting a greater degree of exactness 
than is necessary for our immediate purpose. 

The physical sciences afford so easy and 
pleasing an amusement; they are so directly 
subservient to the useful arts; and in their 
higher forms they so much delight our ima- 
gination and flatter our pride, by the display 
of the authority of man over nature, that 
there can be no need of arguments to prove 
their utility, and no want of powerful and 
obvious motives to dispose men to their cul- 
tivation. The whole extensive and beautiful 
science of Natural History, which is the 
foundation of all physical knowledge, has 
many additional charms in a country where 
so many treasures must still be unexplored. 

The science of Mineralogy, which has 
been of late years cultivated with great ac- 
tivity in Europe, has such a palpable con- 
nection with the useful arts of life, that it 
cannot be necessary to recommend it to the 
attention of the intelligent and curious. India 
is a country which I believe no mineralogist 
has yet examined, and which would doubt- 
less amply repay the labour of the first 
scientific adventurers who explore it. The 
discovery of new sources of wealth would 
probably be the result of such an investiga- 
tion ; and something might perhaps be con- 
tributed towards the accomplishment of the 
ambitious projects of those philosophers, who 
from the arrangement of earths and minerals 
have been bold enough to form conjectures 
respecting the general laws which have go- 
verned the past revolutions of our planet, 
and which preserve its parts in their present 
order. 

The Botany of India has been less ne- 
glected, but it cannot be exhausted. The 
higher parts of the science, the structure, 
the functions, the habits of vegetables, — all 
subjects intimately connected with the first 
of physical sciences, though, unfortunately, 
the most dark and difficult, the philosophy 
of life, — have in general been too much sa- 
crificed to objects of value, indeed, but of a 
value far inferior: and professed botanists 
have usually contented themselves with ob- 
serving enough of plants to give them a 
name in their scientific language, and a 
place in their artificial arrangement. 

Much information also remains to be 
gleaned on that part of natural history which 
regards Animals. The manners of many 
tropical races must have been imperfectly 
observed in a few individuals separated 
from their fellows, and imprisoned in the 
unfriendly climate of Europe. 



The variations of temperature, the state 
of the atmosphere, all the appearances that 
are comprehended under the words " wea- 
ther" and •' climate," are the conceivable 
subject of a science of which no rudiments 
yet exist. It will probably require ihe ob- 
servations of centuries to lay the foundations 
of theory on this subject. There can scarce 
be any region oft the world more favourably 
circumstanced for observation than India; 
for there is none in which the operation of 
these causes is more ,regular, more power- 
ful, or more immediately disc6verable in 
their effect on vegetable and animal nature. 
Those philosophers who have denied the in- 
fluence of climate on the human character 
were not inhabitants of a tropical country. 

To the members of the learned profession 
of medicine, who are necessarily spread 
over every part of India, all the above inqui- 
ries peculiarly, though not exclusively, be- 
long. Some of them are eminent for science; 
many must be well-informed ; and their pro- 
fessional education must have given to all 
some tincture of physical knowledge. With 
even moderate preliminary acquirements 
they may be very useful, if they will but 
consider themselves as philosophical col- 
lectors, whose duty it is never to neglect 
a favourable opportunity for observations on 
weather and climate, to keep exact journals 
of whatever they observe, and to transmit, 
through their immediate superiors, to ihe 
scientific depositories of Great Britain, speci- 
mens of every mineral, vegetable, or animal 
production which they conceive to be singu- 
lar, or with respect to which they suppose 
themselves to have observed any new and 
important facts. If their previous studies 
have been imperfect, they will, no doubt, be 
sometimes mistaken: but these mistakes 
are perfectly harmless. It is better that ten 
useless specimens should be sent to Lon- 
don, than that one curious one should be 
neglected. 

But it is on another and still more im- 
portant subject that we expect the most 
valuable assistance from our medical asso- 
ciates : — this is, the science of Medicine 
itself. It must be allowed not to be quite 
so certain as it is important. But though 
every man ventures to scoff at its uncer- 
tainty as long as he is in vigorous health, yet 
the hardiest sceptic becomes credulous as 
soon as his head is fixed to the pillow. Those 
who examine the history of medicine w ith- 
out either scepticism or blind admiration, 
will find that every civilized age, after all 
the fluctuations of systems, opinions, and 
modes of practice, has at length left some 
balance, however small, of new truth to the 
succeeding generation; and that the stock 
of human knowledge in this as well as in 
other departments is constantly, though, it 
must be owned, very slowly, increasing. 
Since my arrival here. I have had sufficient 
reason to believe that the practitioners of 
medicine in India are not unworthy of their 
enlightened and benevolent profession. — 



OPENING OF THE LITERARY SOCIETY OF BOMBAY. 



401 



From them, therefore, I hope the public may 
derive, through the medium of this Society, 
information of the highest value. Diseases 
and modes of cure unknown to European 
physicians maybe disclosed to them; and 
if the causes of disease are more active in 
this country than in England, remedies are 
employed and diseases subdued, at least in 
some cases, with a certainty which might 
excite the wonder of the most successful 
practitioners in Europe. By full and faithful 
narratives of their modes of treatment they 
will conquer that distrust of new plans of 
cure, and that incredulity respecting what- 
ever is uncommon, which sometimes prevail 
among our English physicians ; which are 
the natural result of much experience and 
many disappointments; and which, though 
individuals have often just reason to com- 
plain of their indiscriminate application, are 
not ultimately injurious to the progress of 
the medical art. They never finally pre- 
vent the adoption of just theory or of use- 
ful practice : they retard it no longer than is 
necessary for such a severe trial as pre- 
cludes all future doubt. Even in their ex- 
cess, they are wholesome correctives of the 
opposite excesses of credulity and dogma- 
tism ; they are safeguards against exaggera- 
tion and quackery ; they are tests of utility 
and truth. A philosophical physician, who 
is a real lover of his art. ought not, therefore, 
to desire the extinction of these dispositions, 
though he may suffer temporary injustice 
from their influence. 

Those objects of our inquiries which I 
have called li Moral" (employing that term 
in the sense in which it is contradistinguished 
from '•' Physical") will chiefly comprehend 
the past and present condition of the inhabi- 
tants of the vast country which surrounds 
us. 

To begin with their present condition : — 
I take the liberty of very earnestly recom- 
mending a kind of research, which has 
hitherto been either neglected or only car- 
ried on for the information of Government, 
— I mean the investigation of those facts 
which are the subjects of political arithmetic 
and statistics, and which are a part of the 
foundation of the science of - Political Econo- 
my. The numbers of the people; the num- 
ber of births, marriages, and deaths ; the pro- 
portion of children who are reared to matu- 
rity ; the distribution of the people according 
to their occupations and castes, and especi- 
ally according to the great division of agri- 
cultural and manufacturing; and the re- 
lative state of these circumstances at dif- 
ferent periods, which can only be ascertained 
by permanent tables, — are the basis of this 
important part of knowledge. No tables of 
political arithmetic have yet been made pub- 
lic from any tropical country. I need not 
expatiate on the importance of the informa- 
tion which such tables would be likely to 
afford. I shall mention only as an example 
of their value, that they must lead to a de- 
cisive solution of the problems with respect 
51 



to the influence of polygamy on population, 
and the supposed origin of that practice in 
the disproportioned number of the sexes. 
But in a country where every part of the 
system of manners and institutions differs 
from those of Europe, it is impossible to 
foresee the extent and variety of the new 
results which an accurate survey might pre- 
sent to us. 

These inquiries are naturally followed by 
those which regard the subsistence of the 
people; the origin and distribution of public 
wealth ; the wages of every kind of labour, 
from the rudest to the most refined; the 
price of commodities, and especially of pro- 
visions, which necessarily regulates that of 
all others; the modes of the tenure and 
occupation of land ; the profits of trade ; the 
usual and extraordinary rates of interest, 
which is the price paid for the hire of 
money ; the nature and extent of domestic 
commerce, everywhere the greatest and 
most profitable, though the most difficult to 
be ascertained ; those of foreign traffic, more 
easy to be determined by the accounts of 
exports and imports; the contributions by 
which the expenses of government, of chari- 
table, learned, and religious foundations are 
defrayed ; the laws and customs which regu- 
late all these great objects, and the fluctua- 
tion which has been observed in all or any 
of them at different times and under different 
circumstances. These are some of the points 
towards which I should very earnestly wish 
to direct the curiosity of our intelligent 
countrymen in India. 

These inquiries have the advantage of 
being easy and open to all men of good 
sense. They do not, like antiquarian and 
philological researches, require great previ- 
ous erudition and constant reference to ex- 
tensive libraries. They require nothing but 
a resolution to observe facts attentively, and 
to relate them accurately ; and whoever feels 
a disposition to ascend from facts to princi- 
ples will, in genera], find sufficient aid to 
his understanding in the great work of Dr. 
Smith, — the most permanent monument of 
philosophical genius which our nation has 
produced in the present age. 

They have the further advantage of being 
closely and intimately connected with the 
professional pursuits and public duties of 
every Englishman who fills a civil office in 
this country: they form the very science of 
administration. One of the first requisites 
to the right administration of a district is the 
knowledge of its population, industry, and 
wealth. A magistrate ought to know the 
condition of the country which he superin- 
tends; a collector ought to understand its 
revenue ; a commercial resident ought to be 
thoroughly acquainted with its commerce. 
We only desire that part of the knowledge 
which they ought to possess should be com- 
municated to the world.* 



[* " The English in India are too familiar with 
that country to feel much wonder in most parts 
2i2 



402 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



I will not pretend to affirm that no part of 
this knowledge ought to be confined to Go- 
of it, and are too transiently connected with it to 
take a national interest in its minute description. 
To these obstacles must be opposed both a sense 
of duty and a prospect of reputation. The srr- 
vant9 of the Company would qualify themselves 
for the performance of their public duties, by col- 
lecting the most minute accounts of the districts 
which they administer. The publication of such 
accounts must often distinguish the individuals. 
and always do credit to the meritorious body of 
which they are a part. Even the most d'ffident 
magistrate or collector might enlarge or correct 
the articles relating to his district and neighbour- 
hood, in the lately published Gazetteer of India; 
and, by the communication of such materials, the 
very laudable and valuable essay of Mr. Ham- 
ilton might, in successive editions* grow into a 
complete system of Indian topography. . . . Meri- 
torious publications by servants of the East India 
Company, have, in our opinion, peculiar claims 
to liberal commendation. The price which Great 
Britain pays to the inhabitants of India for her do- 
minion, is the security that their government shall 
be administered by a class of respectable men. 
In fact, they are governed by a greater proportion 
of sensible and honest men, than could fall to their 
lot under the government of their own or of any 
other nation. Without this superiority, and the 
securities which exist for its continuance, in the 
condition of the persons, in their now excellent 
education, in their general respect for the public 
opinion of a free country, in the protection af. 
forded, and the restraint imposed by the press and 
by Parliament, all regulations for the adminis- 
tration of India would be nugatory, and the 
wisest system of laws would be no more than 
waste paper. The means of executing the laws, 
are in the character of the administrators. To 
keep that character pure, they must be taught to 
respect themselves ; and they ought to feel, that 
distant as they are, they will be applauded and 
protected by their country, when they deserve 
commendation, or require defence. Their public 
is remote, and ought to make some compensation 
for distance by promptitude and zeal. The prin- 
cipal object for which the East India Company 
exists in the newly modified system [of 1813, — Ed.] 
is to provide a safe body of electors to Indian offi- 
cers. Both in the original appointments, and in 
subsequent preferment, it was thought that there 
was no medium between preserving their power, 
or transferring the patronage to the Crown. Upon 
the whole, it cannot be denied that they are toler- 
ably well adapted to perform these functions. 
They are sufficiently numerous and connected 
with the more respectable classes of the commu- 
nity, to exempt their patronage from the direct 
influence of the Crown, and to spread their choice 
so widely, as to afford a reasonable probability of 
sufficient personal merit. Much — perhaps enough 
— has been done by legal regulations, to guard 
preferment from great abuse. Perhaps, indeed, 
the spirit of activity and emulation may have been 
weakened by precautions against the operation 
of personal favour. But this is. no doubt, the safe 
error. The Company, and indeed any branch of 
the Indian administration in Europe, can do little 
directly for India : they are far too distant for 
much direct administration. The great duty 
which they have to perform, is to control their 
servants and to punish delinquency in deeds ; but 
■as the chief principle of their administration — to 
guard the piivileges of these servants, to maintain 
their dignity, to encourage their merits, to animate 
those principles of self-respect and honourable am- 
bition, which are the true securities of honest and 
effectual service to the public. In every govern- 
ment, the character of the subordinate officers is 



vernment. I am not so intoxicated by phi- 
losophical prejudice as to maintain that the 
safety of a state is to be endangered for the 
Gratification of scientific curiosity. Though 
I am far from thinking that this is the de- 
partment in which secrecy is most useful, 
yet I do not presume to exclude it. But let it 
be remembered, that whatever information 
is thus confined to a Government may, for 
all purposes of science, be supposed not to 
exist. As long as the secrecy is thought 
important, it is of course shut up from most 
of those who could turn it to best account; 
and when it ceases to be guarded with jea- 
lousy, it is as effectually secured from all 
useful examination by the mass of official 
lumber under which it is usually buried : for 
this reason, after a very short time, it is as 
much lost to the Government itself as it is 
to the public. A transient curiosity, or the 
necessity of illustrating some temporary mat- 
ter, may induce a public officer to dig foi 
knowledge under the heaps of rubbish that 
encumber his office ; but I have myself 
known intelligent public officers content 
themselves with the very inferior informa- 
tion contained in printed books, while their 
shelves groaned under the weight of MSS., 
which would be more instructive if they 
could be read. Further, it must be observed, 
that publication is always the best security 
to a Government that they are not deceived 
by the reports of their servants ; and where 
these servants act at a distance the import- 
ance of such a security for their veracity is 
very great. For the truth of a manuscript 
report they never can have a better warrant 
than the honesty of one servant who pre- 
pares it, and of another who examines it; 
but for the truth of all long-uncontested nar- 
rations of important facts in printed accounts, 
published in countries where they may be 
contradicted, we have the silent testimony 
of every man who might be prompted by 
interest, prejudice, or humour, to dispute 
them if they were not true. 

I have already said that all communica- 
tions merely made to Government are lost 
to science ; while, on the other hand, per- 
haps, the knowledge communicated to the 
public is that of which a Government may 
most easily avail itself, and on which it may 
most securely rely. This loss to science is 
very great ; for the principles of political 
economy have been investigated in Europe, 
and the application of them to such a coun- 
try as India must be one of the most curious 
tests which could be contrived of their truth 
and universal operation. Every thing here is 
new ; and if they are found here also to be 
the true principles of natural subsistence and 
wealth, it will be no longer possible to dis- 
pute that they are the general laws which 



of great moment : but the privileges, the charac- 
ter and the importance of the civil and military 
establishments, are, in the last result, the only con- 
ceivable security for the preservation and good 
government of India." — Edinburgh Etview, vol. 
xxv. p. 435. — Ed.] 



OPENING OF THE LITERARY SOCIETY OF BOMBAY. 



403 



every where govern this important part of 
the movements of the social machine. 

It has been late!}" observed, that a if the 
various states of Europe kept and published 
annually an. exact account of their popula- 
tion, noting carefully in a second column the 
exact age at which the children die, this 
second column would show the relative 
merit of the governments and the compara- 
tive happiness of their subjects. A simple 
arithmetical statement would then, perhaps, 
be more conclusive than all the arguments 
which could be produced." I agree with 
the ingenious writers who have suggested 
this idea, and I think it must appear per- 
fectly evident that the number of children 
reared to maturity must be among the tests 
of the happiness of a society, though the 
number of children born cannot be so con- 
sidered, and is often the companion and 
one of the causes of public misery. It may 
be affirmed, without the risk of exaggera- 
tion, that every accurate comparison of the 
state of different countries at the same time, 
or of the same country at different times. 
is an approach to that state of things in which 
the manifest palpable interest of every Go- 
vernment will be the prosperity of its sub- 
jects, which never has been, and which 
never will be, advanced by any other means 
than those of humanity and justice. The 
prevalence of justice would not indeed be 
universally insured by such a conviction ; 
for bad governments, as well as bad men, as 
often act against their own obvious interest 
as against that of others : but the chances 
of tyranny must be diminished when tyrants 
are compelled to see that it is folly. In the 
mean time, the ascertainment of every new 
fact, the discovery of every new principle, 
and even the diffusion of principles known 
before, add to that great body of slowly and 
reasonably formed public opinion, Which, 
however weak at first, must at last, with a 
gentle and scarcely sensible coercion, compel 
every Government to pursue its own real 
interest. This knowledge is a control on 
subordinate agents for Government, as well 
as a control on Government for their subjects : 
and it is one of those which has not the 
slightest tendency to produce tumult or con- 
vulsion. On the contrary, nothing more 
clearly evinces the necessity of that firm 
protecting power by which alone order can 
be secured. The security of the governed 
cannot exist without the security of the go- 
vernors. 

Lastly, of all kinds of knowledge, Political 
Economy has the greatest tendency to pro- 



mote quiet and safe improvement in the 
general condition of mankind ; because it 
shows that improvement is the interest of 
the government, and that stability is the in- 
terest of the people. The extraordinary and 
unfortunate events of our times have indeed 
damped the sanguine hopes of good men, 
and filled them with doubt and fear: but in 
all possible cases the counsels of this science 
are at least safe. They are adapted to all 
forms of government : they require only a 
wise and just administration. They require, 
as the first principle of all prosperity, that 
perfect security of persons and property 
which can only exist where the supreme 
authority is stable. 

On these principles, nothing can be a 
means of improvement which is not also a 
means of preservation. It is not only absurd, 
but contradictory, to speak of sacrificing the 
present generation for the sake of posterity. 
The moral order of the world is not so dis- 
posed. It is impossible to promote the in- 
terest of future generations by any measures 
injurious to the present; and he who labours 
industriously to promote the honour, the 
safety, and the prosperity of his own coun- 
try, by innocent and lawful means, may be 
assured that he is contributing, probably as 
much as the order of nature will permit a 
private individual, towards the welfare of all 
mankind. 

These hopes of improvement have sur- 
vived in my breast all the calamities of our 
European world, and are not extinguished 
by that general condition of national insecu- 
rity which is the most formidable enemy of 
improvement. Founded on such principles, 
they are at least perfectly innocent : ihey 
are such as, even if they were visionary, an 
admirer or cultivator of letters ought to be 
pardoned for cherishing. Without them, 
literature and philosophy can claim no more 
than the highest rank among the amuse- 
ments and ornaments of human life. With 
these hopes, they assume the dignity of being 
part of that discipline under which the race 
of man is destined to proceed to the highest 
degree of civilization, virtue, and happiness, 
of which our nature is capable. 

On a future occasion I may have the 
honour to lay before you my thoughts on the 
principal objects of inquiry in the geography, 
ancient and modern, the languages, the lite- 
rature, the necessary and elegant arts, the 
religion, the authentic history and the anti- 
quities of India ; and on the mode in which 
such inquiries appear to me most likely to 
be conducted with success. 



404 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



tHnbiriac ®alltcae. 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



AND ITS 



ENGLISH ADMIRERS, 

AGAINST THE ACCUSATIONS OF THE RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE, INCLUDING SOME 
STRICTURES ON THE LATE PRODUCTION OF MONS. DE CALONNE. 



INTRODUCTION 



The late opinions of Mr. Burke furnished 
more matter of astonishment to those who 
had distantly observed, than to those who 
had correctly examined, the system of his 
former political life. An abhorrence for ab- 
stract politics, a predilection for aristocracy, 
and a dread of innovation, have ever been 
among the most sacred articles of his public 
creed: and it was not likely that at his age 
he should abandon, to the invasion of auda- 
cious novelties, opinions which he had re- 
ceived so earl}-, and maintained so long, — 
which had been fortified by the applause of 
the great, and the assent of the wise, — which 
he had dictated to so many illustrious pupils, 
and supported against so many distinguished 
opponents. Men who early attain eminence, 
repose in their first creed, to the neglect of 
the progress of the human mind subsequent 
to its adoption ; and when, as in the present 
case, it has burst forth into action, they re- 
gard it as a transient madness, worthy only 
of pity or derision. They mistake it for a 
mountain torrent that will pass away with 
the storm that gave it birth : they know not 
that it is the stream of human opinion in 
omne volnbilis cevum, which the accession of 
every day will swell, and which is destined 
to sweep into the same oblivion the resist- 
ance of learned sophistry, and of powerful 
oppression. 

But there still remained ample matter of 
astonishment in the Philippic of Mr. Burke.* 
He might deplore the sanguinary excesses, — 
he might deride the visionary policy, that 
seemed to him to tarnish the lustre of the 
Revolution; but it was hard to suppose that 
he would exhaust against it every epithet of 
contumely and opprobrium that language 

* The speech on the Army Estimates, 9th Feb. 
1790— Ed. 



1 can furnish to indignation ; that the rage of 
his declamation would not for one moment 
be suspended, and that his heart would not 
betray one faint glow of triumph, at the 
splendid and glorious delivery of so great a 

! people. All was invective : the authors and 
admirers of the Revolution, — every man who 

! did not execrate it. even his own most en- 
lightened and accomplished friends, — were 
devoted to odium and ignominy. The speech 
did not stoop to argument ; the whole was 
dogmatical and authoritative : the cause 
seemed decided without discussion. — the 
anathema fulminated before trial. 

But the ground of the opinions of this 
famous speech, which, if we may believe a 
foreign journalist, will form an epoch in the 
history of the eccentricities of the human 
mind, was impatiently expected in a work 
soon after announced. The name of the 
author, the importance of the subject, and 
the singularity of his opinions, all contributed 
to inflame the public curiosity, which, though 
it languished in a subsequent delay, has been 
revived by the appearance, and will be re- 
warded by the perusal of the work.* 

It is certainly in every respect a perform- 
ance, of which to form a correct estimate 
would prove one of the most arduous efforts 
of critical skill 

" We scarcely can praise it, or blame it too much." f 
Argument, every where dexterous and spe- 
cious, sometimes grave and profound, clothed 
in the most rich and various imagery, and 
aided by the most pathetic and picturesque 
description, speaks the opulence and the 
powers of that mind, of which* age has 
neither dimmed the discernment, nor en- 

* The Reflections on the Revolution in France, 
published in 1790.— Ed. 
t Retaliation. — Ed. 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



405 



feebled the fancy — neither repressed the 
ardour, nor narrowed the range. Virulent 
encomiums on urbanity and inflammatory 
harangues against violence, homilies of moral 
and religious mysticism, better adapted to 
the amusement than to the conviction of an 
incredulous age, though they may rouse the 
languor of attention, can never be dignified 
by the approbation of the understanding. 

Of the senate and people of France, Mr. 
Burke's language is such as might have been 
expected towards a country which his fancy 
has peopled only with plots, assassinations, 
and massacres, and all the brood of dire 
chimeras which are the offspring of a prolific 
imagination, goaded by an ardent and de- 
luded sensibility. The glimpses of benevo- 
lence, which irradiate this gloom of invec- 
tive, arise only from generous illusion, — from 
misguided and misplaced compassion. His 
eloquence is not at leisure to deplore the fate 
of beggared artisans, and famished peasants, 
— the victims of suspended industry, and 
languishing commerce. The sensibility which 
seems scared by the homely miseries of the 
vulgar, is attracted only by the splendid sor- 
rows of loyalty, and agonises at the slen- 
derest pang that assails the heart of sottish- 
ness or prostitution, if they are placed by 
fortune on a throne.* To the English friends 
of French freedom, his language is contempt- 
uous, illiberal, and scurrilous. In one of the 
ebbings of his fervour, he is disposed not to 
dispute lc their good intentions :" but he 
abounds in intemperate sallies and ungene- 
rous insinuations, which wisdom ought to 
have checked, as ebullitions of passion. — 
which genius ought to have disdained, as 
weapons of controversy. 

Tjie arrangement of his work is as singular 
as the matter. Availing himself of all the 
privileges of epistolary effusion, in their 
utmost latitude and laxity, he interrupts, 
dismisses, and resumes argument at plea- 
sure. His subject is as extensive as political 
science: his allusions and excursions reach 
almost every region of human knowledge. 
It must be confessed that in this miscellane- 
ous and desultory warfare, the superiority 
of a man of genius over common men is in- 

* " The vulvar clamour which has been raised 
with such malignant art against the friends of free- 
dom, as the apostles of turbulence and sediiion, 
has not even spared ihe obscurity of my name. 
To strangers I can only vindicate myself by de- 
fying the authors of such clamours to discover one 
passage in this volume not in the highest degree 
favourable to peace and stable government : those 
to whom I am known would, I believe, be slow 
to impute any sentiments of violence to a temper 
which the partiality of my friends must confess to 
be indolent, and the hostility of enemies will not 
deny to be mild. I have been accused, by valuable 
friends, of treating with ungenerous levity the mis- 
fortunes of the Royal Family of France. They 
will not however suppose me capable of delibe- 
rately violating die sacredness of misery in a pa- 
lace or a cottage ; and I sincerely lament that I 
should have been betrayed into expressions which 
admitted that construction." — {Advertisement to 
the third edition.) — Ed. 



finite. He can cover the most ignominious 
retreat by a brilliant allusion ; he can parade 
his arguments with masterly generalship, 
where they are strong; he can escape from 
an untenable position into a splendid decla- 
mation ; he can sap the most impregnable 
conviction by pathos, and put to flight a host 
of syllogisms with a sneer ; absolved from 
the laws of vulgar method, he can advance 
a group of magnificent horrors to make a 
breach in our hearts, through which the most 
undisciplined rabble of arguments may enter 
in triumph. 

Analysis and method, like the discipline 
and armour of modern nations, correct in 
some measure the inequalities of controver- 
sial dexterity, and level on the intellectual 
field the giant and the dwarf. Let us then 
analyse the production of Mr. Burke, and, 
dismissing what is extraneous and ornament- 
al, we shall discover certain leading ques- 
tions, of which the decision is indispensable 
to the point at issue. The natural order of 
these topics will dictate the method of reply. 
Mr. Burke, availing himself of the indefinite 
and equivocal term 'Revolution,' has alto- 
gether reprobated that transaction . The first 
question, therefore, that arises, regards the 
general expediency and necessity of a Revo- 
lution in France. This is followed by the 
discussion of the composition and conduct 
of the National Assembly, of the popular ex- 
cesses which attended the Revolution, and 
of the new Constitution that is to result from 
it. The conduct of its English admirers 
forms the last topic, though it is with rhetori- 
cal inversion first treated by Mr. Burke ; as 
if the propriety of approbation should be de- 
termined before the discussion of the merit 
or demerit of what was approved. In pur- 
suance of this analysis, the following sec- 
tions will comprise the substance of our refu- 
tation. 

Sect. I. The General Expediency and Ne- 
cessity of a Revolution in France. 

Sect. II. The Composition and Character of 
the National Assembly considered. 

Sect. III. The Popular Excesses which at- 
tended, or followed the Revolution. 

Sect. IV. The new Constitution of France. 

Sect. V. The Conduct of its English Admi- 
rers justified. 

With this reply to Mr. Burke will be 
mingled some strictures oi# the late publica- 
tion of M. de Calonne.* That minister, who 
has for some time exhibited to the eyes of 
indignant Europe the spectacle of an exiled 
robber living in the most splendid impunity, 
has, with an effrontery that beggars invec- 
tive, assumed in his work the tone of afflicted 
patriotism, and delivers his polluted Philip- 
pics as the oracles of persecuted virtue. His 
work is more methodical than that of his 

* De l'Etat de la France. London, 1790.— Ed. 



406 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



coadjutor.* Of his financial calculations it 
may be remarked, that in a work professedly 
popular they afford the strongest presump- 
tion of fraud. Their extent and intricacy 
seem contrived to extort assent from public 
indolence; for men will rather believe than 
examine them. His inferences are so out- 
rageously incredible, that most men of sense 
will think it more safe to trust their own 
plain conclusions than to enter such a laby- 
rinth of financial sophistry. The only part 
of his production that here demands reply, 
is that which relates to general political 
questions. Remarks on what he has offered 
concerning them will naturally find a place 
under the corresponding sections of the re- 
ply to Mr. Burke. Its most important view 
is neither literary nor argumentative: it ap- 
peals to judgments more decisive than those 
of criticism, and aims at wielding weapons 
more formidable than those of logic. It is 
the manifesto of a Counter-Revolution, and 
its obvious object is to inflame every passion 
and interest, real or supposed, that has re- 
ceived any shock in the establishment of 
freedom. He probes the bleeding wounds 
of the princes, the nobility, the priesthood, 
and the great judicial aristocracy : he adjures 
one body by its dignity degraded, another 
by its inheritance plundered, and a third by 
its authority destroyed, to repair to the holy 
banner of his philanthropic crusade. Con- 
fident in the protection of all the monarchs 
of Europe, whom he alarms for the security 
of their thrones, and, having insured the 
moderation of a fanatical rabble, by giving 
out among them the savage war-whoop of 
atheism, he already fancies himself in full 
march to Paris, not to re-instate the deposed 
despotism (for he disclaims the purpose, and 
who would not trust such virtuous disavow- 
als \) but at the head of this army of priests, 
mercenaries, and fanatics, to dictate, as the 
tutelary genius of France, the establishment 
of a just and temperate freedom, obtained 
without commotion and without carnage, and 
equally hostile to the interested ambition of 
demagogues and the lawless authority of 
kings. Crusades were an effervescence of 
chivalry, and the modern St. Francis has a 
knight for the conduct of these crusaders, 
who will convince Mr. Burke, that the age 
of chivalry is not past, nor the glory of Europe 
gone for ever. The Compte d' Artois,t that 
scion worthy of Henry the Great, the rival 

* It cannot be denied that the production of M. 
de Calonne is ' eloquent, able,' and certainly very 
'instructive' in what regards his own character 
and designs. But it contains one instance of his- 
torical ignorance so egregious, that I cannot resist 
quoting it. In his long discussion of the preten- 
sions of the Assembly to the title of a ' National 
Convention,' he deduces the origin of that word 
from Scotland, where he informs us (p. 328), " On 
lui donna le nom de Convention Ecossoise ; le 
resultat de ses deliberations hit appclle 'Covenant,'' 
et ceux qui l'avoient souscrit ou qui y adheroient 
1 Covenanters ! ' " 

t ' Ce digne rejeton du grand Henri.' — Calonne. 
'Unnouveau modele de la Chevalerie Francoise.' 
• Ibid. pp. 413—111. 



of the Bayards and Sidneys, the new model 
of French knighthood, is to issue from Turin 
with ten thousand cavaliers, to deliver the 
peerless and immaculate Antoinetta of Aus- 
tria from the durance vile in which she has 
so long been immured in the Tuilleries. from 
the swords of the discourteous knights of 
Paris, and the spells of the sable wizards of 
democracy. 



SECTION I. 

The General Expediency and Necessity of a 
Revolution in France. 

It is asserted in many passages of Mr; 
Burke's work, though no where with that 
precision which the importance of the asser- 
tion demanded, that the French Revolution 
was not only in its parts reprehensible, but 
in the whole was absurd, inexpedient, and 
unjust ; yet he has nowhere exactly informed 
us what he understands by the term. The 
: French Revolution.' in its most popular 
sense, perhaps, would be understood in Eng- 
land to consist of those splendid events that 
formed the prominent portion of its exterior, 
— the Parisian revolt, the capture of the 
Bastile, and the submission of the King. 
But these memorable events, though they 
strengthened and accelerated, could not con- 
stitute a political revolution, which must in- 
clude a change of government. But the 
term, even when limited to that meaning, is 
equivocal and wide. It is capable of three 
senses. The King's recognition of the rights 
of the States-General to a share in the legis- 
lation, was a change in the actual govern- 
ment of France, where the whole legisla- 
tive and executive power had, without the 
shadow of an interruption, for nearly two 
centuries been enjoyed by the crown : in 
that sense the meeting of the States-General 
was the Revolution, and the 5th of May was 
its a3ia. The union of the three Orders in 
one assembly was a most important change 
in the forms and spirit of the legislature ; 
this too may be called the Revolution, and 
the 23d of June will be its asra. This body, 
thus united, are forming a new Constitution ;* 
this may be also called a Revolution, because 
it is of all the political changes the most im- 
portant, arid its epoch will be determined by 
the conclusion of the labours of the National 
Assembly. Thus equivocal is the import of 
Mr. Burke's expressions. To extricate them 
from this ambiguity, a rapid survey of these 
events will be necessary. It will prove, too, 
the fairest and most forcible confutation of 
his arguments. It will best demonstrate the 
necessity and justice of all the successive 
changes in the state of France, which formed 
what is called the 'Revolution.' It will dis- 
criminate legislative acts from popular ex- 
cesses, and distinguish transient confusion 

* The Vindiciae Galicae was published in April, 
1791.— Ed. 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



407 



from permanent establishment. It will evince 
the futility and fallacy of attributing to the 
conspiracy of individuals, or bodies, a Revo- 
lution which, whether it be beneficial or inju- 
rious, was produced only by general causes, 
and in which the most conspicuous individual 
prodticed little real effect. 

The Constitution of France resembled in 
the earlier stages of its progress the Gothic 
governments of Europe. The history of its 
decline and the causes of its extinction are 
abundantly known. Its infancy and youth 
were like these of the English government. 
The Champ de Mars, and the Wittenage- 
mot, — the tumultuous assemblies of rude 
conquerors, — were in both countries melted 
down into representative bodies. But the 
downfall of the feudal aristocracy happening 
in France before commerce had elevated 
any other class of citizens into importance, 
its power devolved on the crown. From the 
conclusion of the fifteenth century the powers 
of the States-General had almost dwindled 
into formalities. Their momentary re-ap- 
pearance under Henry III. and Louis XIII. 
served only to illustrate their insignificance: 
their total disuse speedily succeeded. 

The intrusion of any popular voice was not 
likely to be tolerated in the reign of Louis 
XIV. — a reign which has been so often cele- 
brated as the zenith of warlike and literary 
splendour, but which has always appeared 
to me to be the consummation of whatever 
is afflicting and degrading in the history of 
the human race. Talent seemed, in that 
reign, robbed of the conscious elevation, — 
of the erect and manly port, which is its 
noblest associate and its surest indication. 
The mild purity of Fenelon, — the lofty spirit 
of Bossuet, — the masculine mind of Boileau, 
the sublime fervour of Corneille,— were con- 
founded by the contagion of ignominious and 
indiscriminate servility. It seemed as if the 
' representative majesty' of the genius and 
intellect of man were prostrated before the 
ghrine of a sanguinary and dissolute tyrant, 
who practised the corruption of courts with- 
out their mildness, and incurred the guilt of 
wars without their glory. His highest praise 
is to have supported the stage trick of Royalty 
with effect : and it is surely difficult to con- 
ceive any character more odious and despica- 
ble, than that of a puny libertine, who, under 
the frown of a strumpet, or a monk, issues 
the mandate that is to murder virtuous citi- 
zens, — to desolate happy and peaceful ham- 
lets, — to wring agonising tears from widows 
and orphans. Heroism has a splendour that 
almost atones for its excesses : but what shall 
we think of him, who, from the luxurious 
and dastardly security in which he wallows 
at Versailles, issues with calm and cruel 
apathy his orders to butcher the Protestants 
of Languedoc, or to lay in ashes the villages 
of the Palatinate 1 On the recollection of 
such scenes, as a scholar, I blush for the 
prostitution of letters, — as a man, I blush for 
the patience of humanity. 

But the despotism of this reign was preg- 



nant with the great events which have sig- 
nalised our age : it fostered that literature 
■which was one day destined to destroy it. 
The profligate conquests of Louis have event- 
ually proved the acquisitions of humanity ; 
and his usurpations have served only to add 
a larger portion to the great body of freemen. 
The spirit of his policy was inherited by his 
successor : the rage of conquest, repressed 
for a while by the torpid despotism of Fleury, 
burst forth with renovated violence in the 
latter part of the reign of Louis XV. France, 
exhausted alike by the misfortunes of one 
war, and the victories of another, groaned 
under a weight of impost and debt, which it 
was equally difficult to remedy or to endure. 
But the profligate expedients were exhausted 
by which successive ministers had attempted 
to avert the great crisis, in which the credit 
and power of the government must perish. 

The wise and benevolent administration 
of M. Turcot,* though Ions; enough for his 



* " Louis XVI. called to his councils the two 
most virtuous men in his dominions, M. Turgot 
and M. de Lamoignon Mnlesherbes. Few things 
could have been more unexpected than that such 
a promotion should have been made ; and still 
fewer have more discredited the sagacity and hum- 
bled the wisdom of man than that so little good 
should ultimately have sprung from so glorious an 
occurrence. M. Turgot appears beyond most 
other men to have been guided in the exertion of 
his original genius and comprehensive intellect by 
impartial and indefatigable benevolence. He pre- 
ferred nothing to the discovery of truth but the 
interest ol mankind ; and he was ignorant of no- 
thing of which he did not forego the attainment, 
that he might gain time for the practice of his duty. 
Co-operating with the illustrious men who laid 
the foundation of the science of political economy, 
his writings were distinguished from theirs by the 
simplicity, the geometrical order, and precision of 
a mind without passion, intent only on the pro- 
gress of reason towards truth. The character of 
at. Turgot considered as a private philosopher, or 
as an inferior magistrate, seems to have approached 
more near the ideal model of a perfect sage, than 
that of any other man of the modern world. But 
he was destined rather to instruct than to reform 
mankind. Like Bacon (whom he so much re- 
sembled in the vast range of his intellect) he came 
into a court, and like Bacon, — though from far 
nobler causes, — he fell. The noble error ol' sup- 
posing men to be more disinterested and enlight- 
ened than they are, betrayed him. Though he 
had deeply studied human nature, he disdained 
that discretion and dexterity without which wis- 
dom must return to her cell, and leave the do- 
minion of the world to cunning. The instruments 
of his benevolence depended on others: but the 
sources of his own happiness were independent, 
and he left behind him in the minds of his friends 
that enthusiastic attachment and profound rever- 
ence with which, when superior attainments were 
more rare, the sages of antiquity inspired their 
disciples. The virtue of M. de Lamoignon was 
of a less perfect but of a softer and more natural 
kind. Descended from one of the most illustrious 
families of the French magistracy, he was early 
called to high offices. He employed his influence 
chiefly in lightening the fetters which impeded the 
free exercise of reason ; and he exerted his courage 
and his eloquence in defending the people against 
oppressive taxation. While he was a minister, he 
had prepared the means of abolishing arbitrary 
imprisonment. No part of science or art was 



408 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



own glory, was too short, and perhaps too 
early, for those salutary and grand reforms 
which his genius had conceived, and his vir- 
tue would have effected. The aspect of 
purity and talent spread a natural alarm 
among the minions of a court ; and they easily 
succeeded in the expulsion of such rare and 
obnoxious intruders. The magnificent am- 
bition of M. de Vergennes. the brilliant, pro- 
fuse, and rapacious career of M. de Calonne, 
the feeble and irresolute violence of M. de 
Brienne, — all contributed their share to swell 
this financial embarrassment. The deficit, 
or inferiority of the revenue to the expendi- 
ture, at length rose to the enormous sum of 
115 millions of livres, or about 4,750,000/. 
annually.* This was a disproportion be- 
tween income and expense with which no 
government, and no individual, could long 
continue to exist. 

In this exigency there was no expedient 
left, but to guarantee the ruined credit of 
bankrupt despotism by the sanction of the 
national voice. The States-General were a 
dangerous mode of collecting it : recourse 
was, therefore, had to the Assembly of the 
Notables : a mode well known in the History 
of France, in which the King summoned a 
number of individuals, selected, at his discre- 
tion, from the mass, to advise him in great 
emergencies. They were little better than 
a popular Privy Council. They were neither 
recognised nor protected by law : their pre- 
carious and subordinate existence hung on 
the nod of despotism. 

The Notables were accordingly called to- 
gether by M. de Calonne. who has now the in- 
consistent arrogance to boast of the schemes 
which he laid before them, as the model of 
the Assembly whom he traduces. He pro- 
posed, it is true, the equalisation of imposts 
and the abolition of the pecuniary exemp- 
tions of the Nobility and Clergy; and the 
difference between his system and that of 
the Assembly, is only in what makes the 
sole distinction in human actions — its end. 
He would have destroyed the privileged Or- 
ders, as obstacles to despotism : they have 
destroyed them, as derogations from free- 
dom. The object of his plans was to facili- 
tate fiscal oppression : the motive of theirs is 
to fortify general liberty. They have levelled 
all Frenchmen as men : he would have level- 
led them as slaves. The Assembly of the 



foreign to his elegant leisure. His virtue was 
without effort or system, and his benevolence was 
prone to diffuse itself in a sort of pleasantry and 
even drollery. In this respect he resembled Sir 
Thomas More ; and it is remarkable that this play- 
fulness — the natural companion of a simple and 
innocent mind — attended both these illustrious 
men to the scaffold on which they were judicially 
murdered." — M.S. Ed. 

* For this we have the authority of M. de Ca- 
lonne himself, p. 56. This was the account pre- 
sented to the Notables in April, 1787. He, in- 
deed, makes some deductions on account of 'part 
of this deficit being expirable.: but this is of no 
consequence to our purpose, which is to view the 
influence of the present urgency, — the political, 
not the financial, state of the question. 



Notables, however, soon gave a memorable 
proof, how dangerous are all public meetings 
of men, even without legal powers of con- 
trol, to the permanence of despotism. They 
had been assembled by M. de Calonne to 
admire the plausibility and splendour of his 
speculations, and to veil the extent and atro- 
city of his rapine : but the fallacy of the one 
and the profligacy of the other were detected 
with equal ease. Illustrious orators, who 
have since found a nobler sphere for their 
talents, in a more free and powerful Assem- 
bly, exposed the plunderer. Detested by 
the Nobles and Clergy, of whose privileges 
he had suggested the abolition ; undermined 
in the favour of the Queen, by his attack on 
one of her favourites (Breteuil) ; exposed to 
the fury of the people, and dreading the 
terrors of judicial prosecution, he speedily 
sought refuge in England, without the recol- 
lection of one virtue, or the applause of one 
party, to console his retreat. Thus did the 
Notables destroy their creator. Little ap- 
peared to be done to a superficial observer :. 
but to a discerning eye, all was done ; for 
the dethroned authority of Public Opinion 
was restored. 

The succeeding Ministers, uninstructed by 
the example of their predecessors, by the 
destruction of public credit, and by the fer- 
mentation of the popular mind, hazarded 
measures of a still more preposterous and 
perilous description. The usurpation of some 
share in the sovereignty by the Parliament 
of Paris had become popular and venerable, 
because its tendency was useful, and its 
exercise virtuous. That body had, as it is 
well known, claimed a right, which, in fact, 
amounted to a negative on all the acts of the 
King: — they contended, that the registration 
of his edicts by them was necessary to give 
them force. They would, in that case, have 
possessed the same share of legislation as- 
the King of England. It is unnecessary to 
descant on the historical fallacy, and political 
inexpediency, of doctrines, which would vest 
in a narrow aristocracy of lawyers, who had 
bought their places, such extensive powers. 
It cannot be denied that their resistance had 
often proved salutary, and was some feeble 
check on the capricious wantonness of des- 
potic exaction : but the temerity of the 
Minister now assigned them a more important 
part. They refused to register two edicts 
for the creation of imposts, averring that the 
power of imposing taxes was vested only in 
the national representatives, and claiming 
the immediate convocation of the States- 
General of the kingdom : the Minister ba- 
nished them to Troyes. But he soon found 
how much the French were changed from 
that abject and frivolous people, which had 
so often endured the exile of its magistrates: 
Paris exhibited the tumult and clamour of a 
London mob. The Cabinet, which could* 
neither advance nor recede with safety, had 
recourse to the expedient of a compulsory 
registration. The Duke of Orleans, and the 
magistrates who protested against this exe- 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



400 



crable mockery, were exiled or imprisoned. ] 
But all these hacknied expedients of despot- j 
ism were in vain. These struggles, which 
merit notice only as they illustrate the pro- 
gressive energy of Public Opinion, were fol- 
lowed by events still less equivocal. Lettrcs 
de Cachet were issued against MM. d'Es- 
premenil and Goeslard. They took refuge 
in the sanctuary of justice, and the Parlia- 
ment pronounced them under the safeguard 
of the law and the King. A deputation was 
sent to Versailles, to entreat his Majesty to 
listen to sage counsels; and Paris expected, 
with impatient solicitude, the result. When 
towards midnight, a body of two thousand 
troops marched to the palace where the Par- 
liament were seated, and their Commander, 
entering into the Court of Peers, demanded 
his victims, a loud and unanimous acclama- 
tion replied, — "We are all d'Espremenil and 
Goeslard'/' These magistrates surrendered 
themselves ; and the satellite of despotism 
led them off in triumph, amid the execra- 
tions of an aroused and indignant people. 
These spectacles were not without their 
effect : the spirit of resistance spread daily 
over France. The intermediate commission 
of the States of Bretagne, the States of Dau- 
phine, and many other public bodies, began 
to assume a new and menacing tone. The 
Cabinet was dissolved by its own feebleness, 
and M. Neckar was recalled. 

That Minister, probably upright, and not 
illiberal, but narrow, pusillanimous, and en- 
tangled by the habits of detail* in which he 
had been reared, possessed not that erect 
and intrepid spirit. — those enlarged and ori- 
ginal views, which adapt themselves to new 
combinations of circumstances, and sway 
in the great convulsions of human affairs. 
Accustomed to the tranquil accuracy of com- 
merce, or the elegant amusements of litera- 
ture, he was called on to 

" Ride in the whirlwind, and direct the storm. "t 

He seemed superior to his privacy while he 
was limited to it, and would have been ad- 
judged by history equal to his elevation had 
he never been elevated. £ The reputation of 
few men. it is true, has been exposed to so 
severe a test; and a generous observer will 
be disposed to scrutinize less rigidly the 
claims of a statesman, who has retired with 
the applause of no party, — who is detested 
by the aristocracy as the instrument of their 
ruin, and despised by the democratic leaders 
for pusillanimous and fluctuating policy. But 

* The late celebrated Dr. Adam Smith, always 
held this opinion of Neckar, whom he had known 
intimately when a banker in Paris. He predicted 
the fall of his fame when his talents should be 
brought to the test, and always emphatically said, 
" He is but a man of detail." At a time when 
the commercial abilities of Mr. Eden, the present 
Lord Auckland, were the theme of profuse eulogy, 
Dr. Smith characterized him in ihe same words. 

t Addison, The Campaign. — Ed. 

X Major privato visus, dum priyatus fuit, et om- 
nium consensu capax imperii, nisi imperasset. — 
Tacitus, Hist. lib. i. cap. 49. 
52 



had the character of M. Neckar possessed- 
more originality or decision, it could have 
had little influence on the fate of France. 
The minds of men had received an impulse ; 
and individual aid and individual opposition 
were equally vain. His views, no doubt, 
extended only to palliation; but he was in- 
volved in a stream of opinions and events, 
of which no force could resist the current, and 
no wisdom adequately predict the termina- 
tion. He is represented by M. de Calonne 
as the Lord Sunderland of Louis XVI. seduc- 
ing the King to destroy his own power : but 
he had neither genius nor boldness for such 
designs. 

To return to our rapid survey : — The au- 
tumn of 1788 was peculiarly distinguished by 
the enlightened and disinterested patriotism 
of the States of Dauphine. They furnished, 
in many respects, a model for the future 
senate of France. Like them they deliberated 
amidst the terrors of ministerial vengeance 
and military execution. They annihilated 
the absurd and destructive distinction of 
Orders ; the three estates were melted intO' 
a Provincial Assembly ; they declared, that 
the right of imposing taxes resided ultimately 
in the States-General of France ; and they 
voted a deputation to the King to solicit the 
convocation of that Assembly. Dauphine 
was emulously imitated by all the provinces 
that still retained the shadow of Provincial 
States. The States of Languedoc, of Velay, 
and Vivarois, the Tiers Etat of Provence, and 
all the Municipalities of Bretagne, adopted 
similar resolutions. In Provence and Bre- 
tagne. where the Nobles and Clergy, trem- 
bling for their privileges, and the Parliaments 
for their jurisdiction, attempted a feeble re- 
sistance, the fermentation was peculiarly 
strong. Some estimate of the fervour of 
public sentiment may be formed from the 
reception of the Count de Mirabeau in his 
native province, where the burgesses of Aix 
assigned him a body-guard, where the citizens 
of Marseilles crowned him in the theatre, 
and where, under all the terrors of despot- 
ism, he received as numerous and tumult- 
uous proofs of attachment as ever were 
bestowed on a favourite by the enthusiasm 
of the most free people. M. Caraman. the 
Governor of Provence, was even reduced to 
implore his interposition with the populace, 
to appease and prevent their excesses. The 
contest in Bretagne was more violent and 
sanguinary. She had preserved her inde- 
pendence more than any of those provinces 
which had been united to the crown of 
France. The Nobles and Clergy possessed 
almost the whole power of the States, and 
their obstinacy was so great, that their depu- 
ties did not take their seats in the National 
Assembly till an advanced period of its pro- 
ceedings. 

The'return of M. Neckar, and the recall 
of the exiled magistrates, restored a mo- 
mentary calm. The personal reputation of 
the minister for probity, reanimated the 
credit of France. But the finances were too 
2K 



410 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



irremediably embarrassed for palliatives' 
and the fascinating idea of the States-Gene- 
ral, presented to the public imagination by 
the unwary zeal of the Parliament, awaken- 
ed recollections of ancient freedom, and 
prospects of future splendour, which the 
virtue or popularity of no minister could 
banish. The convocation of that body was 
resolved on; but many difficulties respecting 
the mode of electing and constituting it re- 
mained, which a second Assembly of Nota- 
bles was summoned to decide. 

The Third Estate demanded representa- 
tives equal to those of the other two Orders 
jointly. They required that the number 
should be regulated by the population of the 
districts, and that the three Orders should 
vote in one Assembly. All the committees 
into which the Notables were divided, ex- 
cept that of which Monsieur was President, 
decided against the Third Estate in every 
one of these particulars. They were strenu- 
ously supported by the Parliament of Paris, 
who, too late sensible of the suicide into 
which they had been betrayed, laboured to 
render the Assembly impotent, after they 
w< re unable to prevent its meeting. But 
their efforts were in vain : M. Neckar, whe- 
ther actuated by respect for justice, or desire 
of popularity, or yielding to the irresistible 
torrent of public sentiment, advised the King 
to adopt the propositions of the Third Estate 
in the two first particulars, and to leave the 
last to be decided by the States-General 
themselves. 

Letters-Patent were accordingly issued on 
the 24th of January, 1789, for assembling 
the States-General, to which were annexed 
regulations for the detail of their elections. 
In the constituent assemblies of the several 
provinces, ballliages, and constabularies of 
the kingdom, the progress of the public mind 
became still more evident. The Clergy and 
Nobility ought not to be denied the praise 
of having emulously sacrificed their pecu- 
niary privileges. The instructions to the re- 
presentatives breathed every where a spirit 
of freedom as ardent, though not so liberal 
and enlightened, as that which has since 
presided in the deliberations of the National 
Assembly. Paris was eminently conspi- 
cuous. The union of talent, the rapid com- 
munication of thought, and the frequency 
of those numerous assemblies, where men 
learn their force, and compare their wrongs, 
ever make a. great capital the heart that cir- 
culates emotion and opinion to the extremi- 
ties of an empire. No sooner had the convo- 
cation of the States-General been announced, 
than the batteries of the press were opened. 
Pamphlet succeeded pamphlet, surpassing 
each other in boldness and elevation: and 
the advance of Paris to light and freedom 
was greater in three months than it had been 
in almost as many centuries. Doctrines 
were universally received in May, which in 
January would have been deemed treason- 
able, and which in March had been de- 



rided as the visions of a few delttded fa- 
natics.* 

It was amid this rapid diffusion of light, 
and increasing fervour of public sentiment, 
that the States-General assembled at Ver- 
sailles on the 5th of May, 1789, — a day which 
will probably be accounted by posterity one 
of the most memorable in the annals of the 
human race. Any detail of the parade and 
ceremonial of their assembly would be 
totally foreign to our purpose, which is not 
to narrate events, but to seize their spirit, 
and to mark their influence on the political 
progress from which the Revolution was to 
arise. The preliminary operation necessary 
to constitute the Assembly gave rise to the 
first great question, — the mode of authenti- 
cating the corn-missions of the deputies. It 
was contended by the Clergy and Nobles, 
that according to ancient usage, each Order 
should separately scrutinize and authenti- 
cate the commissions of its own deputies. It 
was argued by the Commons, that, on gene- 
ral principles, all Orders, having an equal 
interest in the purity of the national repre- 
sentative, had an equal right to take cogni- 
zance of the authenticity of the commissions 
of all the members who composed the body, 
and therefore to scrutinize them in common. 
To the authority of precedent it was an- 
swered, that it would establish too much; 
for in the ancient States, their examination 
of powers was subordinate to the revision 
of Royal Commissaries, — a subjection too 
degrading and injurious for the free and 
vigilant spirit of an enlightened age. 

This controversy involved another of more 
magnitude and importance. If the Orders 
united in this scrutiny, they were likely to 
continue in one Assembly; the separate 
voices of the two first Orders would be anni- 
hilated, and the importance of the Nobility 
and Clergy reduced to that of their indivi- 
dual suffrages. This great revolution was 
obviously meditated by the leaders of the 
Commons. They were seconded in the 
chamber of the Noblesse by a minority 
eminently distinguished for rank, character, 
and talent. The obscure and useful portion 
of the Clergy Avere, from their situation, ac- 
cessible to popular sentiment, and naturally 
coalesced with the Commons. Many A\ho 
favoured the division of the Legislature in 
the ordinary arrangements of government, 
were convinced that the grand and radical 
reforms, which the situation of France de- 
manded, could only be effected by its union 
as one Assembly. f So many prejudices were 

* The principles of freedom had long been un- 
derstood, perhaps better than in any country of the 
world, by the philosophers of France. It was as 
natural that they should have been more diligently 
cultivated in that kingdom than in England, as 
that the science of medicine should be less under- 
stood and valued among simple and vigorous, than 
among luxurious and enfeebled nations. But the 
progress which we have noticed was among the 
less instructed part of society. 

t " II n'est pas douteux que pour aujourd'hui, 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



411 



to be vanquished, — so many difficulties to 
be surmounted, such obstinate habits to be 
extirpated, and so formidable a power to be 
resisted, that there was an obvious necessity 
to concentrate the force of the reforming 
body. In a great revolution, every expedient 
ought to facilitate change : in an established 
government, every thing ought to render it 
difficult. Hence the division of a legislature, 
which in an established government, may 
give a beneficial stability toihe laws, must. 
in a moment of revolution, be proportionably 
injurious, by fortifying abuse and unnerving 
reform. In a revolution, the enemies of 
freedom are external, and all powers are 
therefore to be united : under an establish- 
ment her enemies are internal, and power 
is therefore to be divided. But besides this 
general consideration, the state of France 
furnished others of more local and tempo- 
rary cogency. The States-General, acting 
by separate Orders, were a body from which 
no substantial reform could be hoped. The 
two first Orders were interested in the per- 
petuity of every abuse that was to be re- 
formed : their possession of two ecpial and 
independent voices must have rendered the 
exertions of the Commons impotent and nu- 
gatory. And a collusion between the As- 
sembly and the Crown would probably have 
limited its illusive reforms to some sorry 
palliatives, — the price of financial disembar- 
rassment. The state of a nation lulled into 
complacent servitude by such petty conces- 
sions, is far more hopeless than that of those 
who groan under the most galling despotism ; 
and the condition of Fiance would have been 
more irremediable than ever. 

Such reasonings produced an universal 
•conviction, that the question, whether the 
States-General were to vote individually, or 
in Orders, was a question, whether they were 
or were not to produce any important benefit. 
Guided by these views, and animated by 
public support, the Commons adhered in- 
flexibily to their principle of incorporation. 
They adopted a provisory organization, but 
studiously declined whatever might seem to 
suppose legal existence, or to arrogate con- 
stitutional powers. The Nobles, less politic 
or timid, declared themselves a legally con- 
stituted Order, and proceeded to discuss the 

que pourcette premiere tenue une Chambre Unique 
n'ait ete preferable et peut-6tre necessaire; il y 
avoit tarn de difficultes a surmonter, Cant de pre- 
jugee a vaincre, lam de sacrifices a faire, de si 
vieilles habitudes a deraciner, une puissance si 
forte a contenir, en un mot, tant a detruire et 
■presque tout a crier.'''' — " Ce nouvel ordre de 
choses que vous avez fait eclorre, tout cela vous 
en etes bien surs n'a jamais pu naitre que de la 
reunion de toutes les personnes, de tous les senti- 
ments, et de tous les cceurs." — Discours de M. 
Lally-Tollendal a l'Assemblee Nationale, 31 
Aoiit, 1789, dans ses Pieces Justificatifs, pp. 105, 
106. This passage is in more than one respect 
remarkable, it fully evinces the conviction of 
the author, that changes were necessary great 
enough to deserve the name of a Revolution, and, 
considering the respect of Mr. Burke for his au- 
thority, ought to have weight with him. 



great objects of their convocation. The 
Clergy affected to preserve a mediatorial cha- 
racter, and to conciliate the discordant claims 
of the two hostile Orders. The Commons, 
faithful to their system, remained in a wise 
and masterly inactivity, which tacitly re- 
proached the arrogant assumption of the 
Nobles, while it left no pretext to calumniate 
their own conduct, gave time for the increase 
of the popular fervour, and distressed the 
Court by the delay of financial aid. Several 
conciliatory plans were proposed by the Mi- 
nister, and rejected by the haughtiness of 
the Nobility and the policy of the Commons. 

Thus passed the period between the 5th 
of May and the 12th of June, when the po- 
pular leaders, animated by public support, and 
conscious of the maturity of their schemes, 
assumed a more resolute tone. The Third 
Estate then commenced the scrutiny of com- 
missions, summoned the Nobles and Clergy 
to repair to the Hall of the States-General, 
and resolved that the absence of the depu- 
ties of some districts and classes of citizens 
could not preclude them, who formed the 
representatives of ninety-six hundredths of 
the nation, from constituting themselves a 
National Assembly. 

These decisive measures betrayed the de- 
signs of the Court, and fully illustrate that 
bounty and liberality for which Louis XVI. 
has been so idly celebrated. That feeble 
Prince, whose public character varied with 
every fluctuation in his Cabinet. — the instru- 
ment alike of the ambition of Vergennes, 
the prodigality of Calonne, and the ostenta- 
tious popularity of Neckar, — had hitherto 
yielded to the embarrassment of the finances, 
and the clamour of the people. The cabal ' 
that retained its ascendant over his mind, 
permitted concessions which they hoped to 
make vain, and flattered themselves with 
frustrating, by the contest of struggling Or- 
ders, all idea of substantial reform. But no 
sooner did the Assembly betray any symptom 
of activity and vigour, than their alarms be- 
came conspicuous in the Royal conduct. The 
Compte d'Artois. and the other Princes of the 
Blood, published the boldest manifestoes 
against the Assembly, the credit of M. 
Neckar at Court declined every day; the 
Royalists in the chamber of the Noblesse 
spoke of nothing less than an impeachment 
of the Commons for high-treason, and an 
immediate dissolution of the States; and a 
vast military force and a tremendous park 
of artillery were collected from all parts of 
the kingdom towards Versailles and Paris. 
Under these menacing and inauspicious cir- 
cumstances, the meeting of the States-Gene- 
ral was prohibited by the King's order till a 
Royal Session, which was destined for the 
twenty-second but not held till the twenty- 
third of June, had taken place. On repair- 
ing to their Hall on the twentieth, the Com- 
mons found it invested with soldiers, and 
themselves excluded by the point of the 
bayonet. They were summoned by their 
President to a Tennis-Court^ where they were 



412 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



reduced to hold their assembly, and which 
they rendered famous as the scene of their 
unanimous and memorable oath, — never to 
separate till they had achieved the regenera- 
tion of France. 

The Royal Session thus announced, cor- 
responded with the new tone of the Court. 
Its exterior was marked by the gloomy and 
ferocious haughtiness of despotism. The 
Royal Puppet was now evidently moved by 
different persons from those who had prompt- 
ed its Speech at the opening of the States. 
He probably now spoke both with the same 
spirit and the same heart, and felt as little 
firmness under the cloak of arrogance, as he 
had been conscious of sensibility amidst his 
professions of affection ; he was probably as 
feeble in the one as he had been cold in the 
other: but his language is some criterion of 
the system of his prompters. This speech was 
distinguished by insulting condescension and 
ostentatious menace. He spoke not as the 
Chief of a free nation to its sovereign Legisla- 
ture, but as a Sultan to his Divan. He annulled 
and prescribed deliberations at pleasure. He 
affected to represent his will as the rule of 
their conduct, and his bounty as the source 
of their freedom. Nor was the matter of 
his harangue less injurious than its manner 
was offensive. Instead of containing any 
concession important to public liberty, it in- 
dicated a relapse into a more lofty despotism 
than had before marked his pretensions. 
Tithes, feudal and seignorial rights, he con- 
secrated as the most inviolable property ; and 
of Lcttres de Cachet themselves, by recom- 
mending the regulation, he obviously con- 
demned the abolition. The distinction of 
Orders he considered as essential to the Con- 
stitution of the kingdom, and their present 
union as only legitimate by his permission. 
He concluded with commanding them to 
separate, and to assemble on the next day r 
in the Halls of their respective Orders. 

The Commons, however, inflexibly ad- 
hering to their principles, and conceiving 
themselves constituted as a National Assem- 
bly, treated these threats and injunctions with 
equal neglect. They remained assembled 
in the Hall, which the other Orders had 
quitted in obedience to the Royal command; 
and when the Marquis de Breze, the King's 
Master of the Ceremonies, reminded them 
of his Majesty's orders, he was answered by 
M. Bailly, with Spartan energy, — "The Na- 
tion assembled has no orders to receive." 
They proceeded to pass resolutions declara- 
tory of adherence to their former decrees, 
and of the personal inviolability of the mem- 
bers. The Royal Session, which the Aristo- 
cratic party had expected with such triumph 
and confidence, proved the severest blow to 
their cause. Forty-nine members of the No- 
bility, at the head of whom was M. de Cler- 
mont-Tonnerre, repaired on the 26th of June 
to the Assembly.* The popular enthusiasm 

* It deserves remark, that in this number were 
Noblemen who have ever been considered as of 



was inflamed to such a degree, that alarms 
were either felt or affected, for the safety of 
the King, if the-union of Orders was delayed 
The union was accordingly resolved on; and 
the Duke of Luxembourg, President of the 
Nobility, was authorised by his Majesty to 
announce to his Order the request and even 
command of the King, to unite themselves 
with the others. He remonstrated with the 
King on the fatal consequences of this step. 
"The Nobility." he remarked, "were not 
fighting their own battles, but those of the 
Crown. The support of the monarchy was 
inseparably connected with* the division of 
the States-General : divided, that body was; 
subject to the Crown; united, its authority 
was sovereign, and its force irresistible."*" 
The King was not, however, shaken by these 
considerations, and on the following day, no- 
tified his pleasure in an official letter to the 
Presidents of the Nobility and the Clergy. A 
gloomy and reluctant obedience was yielded 
to this mandate, and the union of the Na- 
tional Representatives at length promised 
some hope to France. 

But the general system of the Government 
formed a suspicious and tremendous con- 
trast with this applauded concession. New 
hordes of foreign mercenaries were sum- 
moned to the blockade of Paris and Versail- 
les, from the remotest provinces ; an im- 
mense train of artillery was disposed in all 
the avenues of these cities; and seventy 
thousand men already invested the Capital, 
when the last blow was hazarded against 
the public hopes, by the ignominious banish- 
ment of M. Neckar. Events followed, the 
most unexampled and memorable in the 
annals of mankind, which history will record 
and immortalize, but, on which, the object 
of the political reasoner is only' to speculate. 
France was on the brink of civil war. The 
Provinces were ready to march immense- 
bodies to the rescue of their representatives. 
The courtiers and their minions, princes 
and princesses, male and female favourites,, 
crowded to the camps with which they had 
invested Versailles, and stimulated the fe- 
rocious cruelty of their mercenaries, by ca- 
resses, by largesses, and by promises. Mean 
time the people of Paris revolted ; the French 
soldiery felt that they were citizens ; and the 
fabric of Despotism "fell to the ground. 

These soldiers, whom posterity will cele- 
brate for patriotic heroism, are stigmatized 
by Mr. Burke as "base hireling deserters," 
who sold their King for an increase of pay.t 

the moderate party. Of these may be mentioned 
MM. Lally, Virieu, and Clermont-Tonnerre, 
none of whom certainly can be accused of demo- 
cratic enthusiasm. 

* These remarks of M. de Luxembourg are 
equivalent to a thousand defences of the Revolu- 
tionists against Mr. Burke. They unanswerably 
prove that the division of Orders was supported 
only as necessary to palsy the efforts of the Legis- 
lature against the Despotism. 

t Mr. Burke is sanctioned in this opinion by an 
authority not the most respectable, that of his late 
countryman Count Dalton, Commander of the 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



413 



This position he every where asserts or in- 
sinuates: but nothing seems more false. 
Had the defection been confined to Paris, 
there might have been some speciousness 
in the accusation. The exchequer of a fac- 
tion might have been equal to the corrup- 
tion of the guards : the activity of intrigue 
might have seduced the troops cantoned in 
the neighbourhood of the capital. But what 
policy, or fortune, could pervade by their 
agents, or donatives, an army of one hundred 
and fifty thousand men, dispersed over so 
great a monarchy as France. The spirit of 
resistance to uncivic commands broke forth 
a.t once in every part of the empire. The 
garrisons of the cities of Rennes, Bourdeaux, 
Lyons, and Grenoble, refused, almost at the 
same moment, to resist the virtuous insur- 
rection of their fellow-citizens. No largesses 
could have seduced, — no intrigues could 
fiave reached so vast and divided a body. 
Nothing but sympathy with the national 
spirit could have produced their noble dis- 
obedience. The remark of Mr. Hume is 
here most applicable, '•' that what depends 
■on a few may be often attributed to chance 
(secret circumstances)- but that the actions 
of great bodies must be ever ascribed to 
general causes." It was the apprehension 
of Montesquieu, that the spirit of increasing- 
armies would terminate in converting Europe 
into an immense camp, in changing our arti- 
sans and cultivators into military savages, 
and reviving the age of Attila and Genghis. 
Events are our preceptors, and France has 
taught us that this evil contains in itself its 
own remedy and limit. A domestic army 
cannot be increased without increasing the 
number of its ties with the people, and of 
the channels by which popular sentiment 
may enter. Every man who is added to the 
army is a new link that unites it to the na- 
tion. If all citizens were compelled to be- 
come soldiers, all soldiers must of necessity 
adopt the feelings of citizens ; and despots 
cannot increase their army without admit- 
ting into it a greater number of men inte- 
rested in destroying them. A small army 
may have sentiments different from the great 
body of the people, and no interest in com- 
mon with them, but a numerous soldiery 
cannot. This is the barrier which Nature 
has opposed to the increase of armies. They 
cannot be numerous enough to enslave the 
people, without becoming the people itself. 
The effects of this truth have been hitherto 
conspicuous only in the military defection 
of France, because the enlightened sense of 
general interest has been so much more dif- 
fused in that nation than in any other des- 
potic monarchy of Europe : but they must 
be felt by all. An elaborate discipline may 
for a while in Germany debase and brutalize 
soldiers too much to receive any impressions 

Austrian troops in the Netherlands. In Septem- 
ber, 1789, he addressed the Regiment de Ligne, 
at Brussels, in these terms : — " J'espere que vous 
n'imiterez jamais ces laches Francois qui ont 
abandonne leur Souverain ! " 



from their fellow men : artificial and local 
institutions are, however, too feeble to resist 
the energy of natural causes. The consti- 
tution of man survives the transient fashions 
of despotism ; and the history of the next 
century will probably evince on how frail and 
tottering a basis the military tyrannies of 
Europe stand. 

The pretended seduction of the troops by 
the promise of increased pay, is in every 
view contradicted by facts. This increase 
of pay did not originate in the Assembly ; it 
was not even any part of their policy : it was 
prescribed to them by the instructions of 
their constituents, before the meeting of the 
States.* It could not therefore be the pro- 
ject of any cabal of demagogues to seduce 
the army : it was the decisive and unani- 
mous voice of the nation ; and if there was 
any conspiracy, it must have been that of 
the people. What had demagogues to offer ? 
The soldiery knew that the States must, in 
obedience to their instructions, increase their 
pay. This increase could, therefore, have 
been no temptation to them ; for of it they 
felt themselves already secure, as the na- 
tional voice had prescribed it. It was in 
fact a necessary part of the system which 
was to raise the army to a body of respect- 
able citizens, from a gang of mendicant ruf- 
fians. An increase of pay must infallibly 
operate to limit the increase of armies in the 
North. This influence has been already felt 
in the Netherlands, which fortune seems to 
have restored to Leopold, that they might 
furnish a school of revolt to German soldiers. 
The Austrian troops have there murmured 
at their comparative indigence, and have 
supported their plea for increase of pay by 
the example of France. The same example 
must operate on the other armies of Europe : 
and the solicitations of armed petitioners 
must be heard. The indigent despots of 
Germany and the North will feel a limit to 
their military rage, in the scantiness of their 
exchequer. They will be compelled to re- 
duce the number, and increase the pay of 
their armies: and a new barrier will be op- 
posed to the progress of that depopulation 
and barbarism, which philosophers have 
dreaded from the rapid increase of military- 
force. These remarks on the spirit which 
actuated the French army in their unexam- 
pled, misconceived, and calumniated con- 
duct, are peculiarly important, as they serve 
to illustrate a principle, which cannot too 
frequently be presented to view, — that in 
the French Revolution all is to be attributed 
to general causes influencing the whole body 
of the people, and almost nothing to the 
schemes and the ascendant of individuals. 

But to return to our rapid sketch : — it was 
at the moment of the Parisian revolt, and of 
the defection of the army, that the whole 
power of France devolved on the National 
Assembly. It is at that moment, therefore, 
that the discussion commences, whether that 



Calonne, p. 390 
2k2 



414 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



body ought to have re-established and re- 
formed the government which events had 
subverted, or to have proceeded to the esta- 
blishment of a new constitution, on the gene- 
ral principles of reason and freedom. The 
arm of the ancient Government had been 
palsied, and its powei reduced to a mere 
formality, by events over which the As- 
sembly possessed no control. It was theirs 
to decide, not whether the monarchy was 
to be subverted, for that had been already 
effected, but whether, from its ruins, frag- 
ments were to be collected for the recon- 
struction of the political edifice. The)- had 
been assembled as an ordinary Legisla- 
ture under existing laws : they were trans- 
formed by these events into a National Con- 
vention, and vested with powers to organize 
a government. It is in vain that their adver- 
saries contest this assertion, by appealing to 
the deficiency of forms j* it is in vain to de- 
mand the legal instrument that changed their 
constitution, and extended their powers. 
Accurate forms in the conveyance of power 
are prescribed by the wisdom of law, in the 
regular administration of states: but great 
revolutions are too immense for technical 
formality. All the sanction that can be 
hoped for in such events, is the voice of the 
people, however informally and irregularly 
expressed. This cannot be pretended to 
have been wanting in France. Every other 
species of authority was annihilated by popu- 
lar acts, but that of the States-General. On 
them, therefore, devolved the duty of exer- 
cising their unlimited trust,! according to 
their best views of general interest. Their 
enemies have, even in their invectives, con- 

*"This circumstance is thus shortly stated by 
Mr. Burke, (p. 2-12): — I can never consider this 
Assembly as anything else than a voluntary asso- 
ciation of men, who have availed themselves of 
circumstances to seize upon the power of the State. 
They do not hold the authority they exercise under 
any constitutional law of the State. They have 
departed from the instructions of the people that 
sent them." The same argument is treated by M. 
de Calonne, in an expanded memorial of forty- 
four pages, (314 — 358), against the pretensions of 
the Assembly to be a Convention, with much 
unavailing ingenuity and labour. 

t A distinction made by Mr. Burke between the 
abstract and moral competency of a Legislature 
(p. 27), has been much extolled by his admirers. 
To me it seems only a novel and objectionable 
mode of distinguishing between a right and the ex- 
pediency of using it. But the mode of illustrating 
the distinction is far more pernicious than a mere 
novelty of phrase. This moral competence is sub- 
ject, says our author, to " faith, justice, and fixed 
fundamental policy :" thus illustrated, the distinc- 
tion appears liable to a double objection. It is false 
that the abstract competence of a Legislature ex- 
tends to the violation of faith and justice : it is false 
that its moral competence does not extend to the 
most fundamental policy. Thus to confound fun- 
damental policy with faith and justice, for the sake 
ot stigmatizing innovators, is to stab the vitals of 
morality. There is only one maxim of policy 
truly fundamental — the good of the governed; 
and the stability of that maxim, rightly understood, 
demonstrates the mutability of all policy that is 
subordinate to it. 



fessed the subsequent adherence of the people, 
for they have inveighed against it as the in- 
fatuation of a dire fanaticism. The authority 
of the Assembly was then first conferred on 
it by public confidence; and its acts have 
been since ratified by public approbation. 
Nothing can betray a disposition to indulge 
in puny and technical sophistry more strongly, 
than to observe with M. de Calonne, '■ that 
this ratification, to be valid, ought to have 
been made by France, not in her hew or- 
ganization of municipalities, but in her ancient 
division of bailliages and provinces." The 
same individuals act in both forms ; the ap- 
probation of the men legitimatizes the govern- 
ment : it is of no importance, whether they 
are assembled in bailliages or in municipali- 
ties. 

If this latitude of informality, this subjec- 
tion of laws to their principle, and of govern- 
ment to its source, are not permitted in 
revolutions, how are we to justify the assumed 
authority of the English Convention of 1688? 
L - They did not hold the authority the}' exer- 
cised under any constitutional law of the 
State." They were not even legally elected, 
as, it must be confessed, was the case with 
the French Assembly. An evident, though 
irregular, ratification by the people, alone 
legitimatized their acts. Yet they possessed,, 
by the confession of Mr. Burke, an authority 
only limited by prudence and virtue. Had 
the people of England given instructions to 
the members of that Convention, its ultimate 
measures would probably have departed as 
much from those instructions as the French 
Assembly have deviated from those of their 
constituents ', and the public acquiescence in 
the deviation would, in all likelihood, have 
been the same. It will be confessed by any 
man who has considered the public temper 
of England at the landing of William, that 
the majority of those instructions would not 
have proceeded to the deposition of James. 
The first aspect of these great changes per- 
plexes and intimidates men too much for just 
views and bold resolutions : it is by the pro- 
gress of events that their hopes are embold- 
ened, and their views enlarged. This influ- 
ence was felt in France. The people, in an 
advanced period of the Revolution, virtually 
recalled the instructions by which the feeble- 
ness of their political infancy had limited the 
power of their representatives ;. for they sanc- 
tioned acts by which those instructions were 
contradicted. The formality of instructions 
was indeed wanting in England : but the 
change of public sentiment, from the opening 
of the Convention to its ultimate decision, 
was as remarkable as the contrast which has 
been so ostentatiously displayed by M. de 
Calonne. between the decrees of the National 
Assembly and the first instructions of their 
constituents. 

We now resume the consideration of this 
exercise of authority by the Assembly, and 
proceed to inquire, whether they ought to 
have reformed, or destroyed their govern- 
ment ? The general question of innovation 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



415 



is an exhausted common-place, to which the 
genius of Mr. Burke has been able to add 
nothing' but splendour of eloquence and feli- 
city of illustration. It has long been so 
notoriously of this nature, that it is placed 
by Lord Bacon among the sportive contests 
which are to exercise .rhetorical skill. No 
man will support the extreme oa either side: 
perpetual change and immutable establish- 
ment are equally indefensible. To descend 
therefore from these barren generalities to a 
nearer view of the question, let us state it 
more precisely : — Was the civil order in 
France corrigible, or was it necessary to de- 
stroy it ? Not to mention the extirpation of 
the feudal system, and the abrogation of the 
civil and criminal code, we have first to con- 
sider the destruction of the three great cor- 
porations, of the Nobility, the Church, and 
the Parliaments. These three Aristocracies 
were the pillars which in fact formed the 
government of France. The question then 
of forming or destroying these bodies was 
fundamental. 

There is one general principle applicable 
to them all adopted by the French legislators, 
— that the existence of Orders is repugnant 
to the principles of the social union. An 
Order is a legal rank, a body of men com- 
bined and endowed with privileges by law. 
There are two kinds of inequality : the one 
personal, that of talent and virtue, the source 
of whatever is excellent and admirable in 
society ; the other, that of fortune, which 
must exist, because property alone can 
stimulate to labour, and labour, if it were 
not necessary to the existence, would be in- 
dispensable to the happiness of man. But 
though it be necessary, yet in its excess it is 
the great malady of civil society. The ac- 
cumulation of that power which is conferred 
by wealth in the hands of the few, is the 
perpetual source of oppression and neglect to 
the mass of mankind. The power of the 
wealthy is farther concentrated by their ten- 
dency to combination, from which, number, 
dispersion, indigence, and ignorance equally 
preclude the poor. The wealthy are formed 
into bodies by their professions, their differ- 
ent degrees of opulence (called : - ranks"), their 
knowledge, and their small number. They 
necessarily in all countries administer govern- 
ment, for they alone have skill and leisure 
for its functions. Thus circumstanced, no- 
thing can be more evident than their inevita- 
ble preponderance in the political scale. The 
preference of partial to general interests is, 
however, the greatest of all public evils. It 
should therefore have been the object of all 
laws to repress this malady ; but it has been 
their perpetual tendency to aggravate it. 
Not content with the inevitable inequality 
tif fortune, they have superadded to it hono- 
rary and political distinctions. Not content 
with the inevitable tendency of the wealthy 
to combine, they have embodied them in 
classes. They have fortified those conspira- 
cies against the general interest, which they 
ought to have resisted, though they could 



not disarm. Laws, it is said, cannot equalize 
men ; — No : but ought they for that reason 
to aggravate the inequality which they can- 
not cure I Laws cannot inspire unmixed 
patriotism : but ought they for that reason to- 
foment that corporation spirit which is its- 
most fatal enemy'! "All professional com- 
binations,"' said Mr. Burke, in one of his late 
speeches in Parliament, '-are dangerous in a 
free state. 1 ' Arguing on the same principle, 
the National Assembly has proceeded fur- 
ther. They have conceived that the laws 
ought to create no inequality of combination, 
to recognise all only in their capacity of citi- 
zens, and to offer no assistance to the natural 
preponderance of partial over general interest. 

But, besides the general source of hostility 
to Orders, the particular circumstances of 
France presented other objections, which it 
is necessary to consider more in detail. 

It is in the first place to be remarked, that 
all the bodies and institutions of the king- 
dom participated in the spirit of the ancient 
government, and in that view were incapable 
of alliance with a free constitution. They 
were tainted by the despotism of which they 
had been either members or instruments. 
Absolute monarchies, like every other con- 
sistent and permanent government, assimi- 
late every thing with which they are con- 
nected to their own genius. The Nobility, 
the Priesthood, the Judicial Aristocracy, were 
unfit to be members of a free government, 
because their corporate character had been 
formed under arbitrary establishments. To 
have preserved these great corporations, 
would be to have retained the seeds of re- 
viving despotism in the bosom of freedom. 
This remark may merit the attention of Mr. 
Burke, as illustrating an important difference 
between the French and English Revolu- 
tions. The Clergy, the Peerage, and Judi- 
cature of England had imbibed in some de- 
gree the sentiments inspired by a government 
in which freedom had been eclipsed, but not 
extinguished. They were therefore qualified 
to partake of a more stable and improved 
liberty. But the case of France was differ- 
ent. These bodies had there imbibed every 
sentiment, and adopted every habit under 
arbitrary power. Their preservation in Eng- 
land, and their destruction in France, may 
in this view be justified on similar grounds. 
It is absurd to regard the Orders as remnants 
of that free constitution which France, in 
common with the other Gothic nations of 
Europe, once enjoyed. Nothing remained 
of these ancient Orders but the name. The 
Nobility were no longer those haughty and 
powerful Barons, who enslaved the people, 
and dictated to the King. The Ecclesias- 
tics were no longer that Priesthood before 
whom, in a benighted and superstitious age. 
all civil power was impotent and mute. 
They had both dwindled into dependents 
on the Crown. Still less do the opulent and 
enlightened Commons of France resemble 
its servile and beggared populace in the six 
teenth centuiy. Two hundred years of xxnr 



416 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



interrupted exercise had legitimatized abso- 
lute authority as much as prescription can 
consecrate usurpation. The ancient French 
Constitution was therefore no farther a mo- 
del than that of any foreign nation which 
•was to be judged of alone by its utility, and 
possessed in no respect the authority of esta- 
blishment. It had been succeeded by an- 
other government \ and if France was to re- 
cur to a period antecedent to her servitude 
for legislative models, she might as well 
ascend to the Eera of Clovis or Charlemagne, 
as be regulated by the precedents of Henry 
III. or Mary of Medicis. All these forms of 
government existed only historically. 

These observations include all the Orders. 
Let us consider each of them successively. 
The devotion of the Nobility of France to 
the Monarch was inspired equally by their 
sentiments, their interests, and their habits. 
" The feudal and chivalrous spirit of fealty," 
so long the prevailing passion of Europe, was 
still nourished in their bosoms by the mili- 
tary sentiments from which it first arose. 
The majority of them had still no profession 
but war, — no hope but in Royal, favour. The 
youthful and indigent filled the camps; the 
more opulent and mature partook the splen- 
dour and bounty of the Court : but they were 
equally dependents on the Crown. To the 
plenitude of the Royal power were attached 
those immense and magnificent privileges, 
which divided France into distinct nations; 
which exhibited a Nobility monopolizing the 
rewards and offices of the State, and a peo- 
ple degraded to political helotism.* Men 
do not cordially resign such privileges, nor 
quickly dismiss the sentiments which they 
have inspired. The ostentatious sacrifice of 
pecuniary exemptions in a moment of gene- 
ral fermentation is a wretched criterion of 
their genuine feelings. They affected to be- 
stow as a gift, what they would have been 
speedily compelled to abandon as an usurpa- 
tion ; and they hoped by the sacrifice of a 
part to purchase security for the rest. They 
have been most justly stated to be a band of 
political Janissaries,t — far more valuable to 
a Sultan than mercenaries, because attached 
to him by unchangeable interest and indeli- 
ble sentiment. Whether any reform could 
have extracted from this body an element 
which might have entered into the new Con- 
stitution is a question which we shall consi- 
der when that political system comes under 
our review. Their existence, as a member 
of the Legislature, is a question distinct from 
their preservation as a separate Order, or 
great corporation, in the State. A senate of 
Nobles might have been established, though 
the Order of the Nobility had been destroyed ; 
and England would then have been exactly 
copied. But 'it is of the Order that we now 
speak; for we are now considering the de- 

* I say political in contradistinction to civil, for 
in the latter sense the assertion would have been 
untrue. 

I' See Mr. Rous' excellent Thoughts on Go- 
yernment. 



struction of the old, not the formation of the 
new government. The suppression of the 
Nobility has been in England most absurdly 
confounded with the prohibition of titles. 
The union of the Orders in one Assembly 
was the first step towards the destruction of 
a legislative Nobility: the abolition of their 
feudal rights, in the memorable session of 
the 4th of August, 1789, may be regarded as 
the second. They retained after these mea- 
sures no distinction but what was purely 
nominal ; and it remained to be determined 
what place they were to occupy in the new 
Constitution. That question was decided by 
the decree of the 22d of December, in the 
same year, which enacted, that the Electoral 
Assemblies were to be composed without 
any regard to rank ; and that citizens of all 
Orders were to vote in them indiscriminately. 
The distinction of Orders was thus destroyed : 
the Nobility were to form no part of the new 
Constitution, and were stripped of all that 
they had enjoyed under the old government, 
but their titles. 

Hitherto all had passed unnoticed, but no 
sooner did the Assembly, faithful to their 
principles, proceed to extirpate the external 
signs of the ranks, which they no longer 
tolerated, than all Europe resounded with 
clamours against their Utopian and levelling 
madness. The " incredible''"* decree of the 
19th of June, 1790, for the suppression of 
titles, is the object of all these invectives ; yet 
without that measure the Assembly would 
certainly have been guilty of the grossest in- 
consistency and absurdity. An untitled No- 
bility forming a member of the State, had 
been exemplified in some commonwealths 
of antiquity; — such were the Patricians in 
Rome: but a titled Nobility, without legal 
privileges, or political existence, would have 
been a monster new in the annals of legisla- 
tive absurdity. The power was possessed 
without.,:the bauble by the Roman aristo- 
cracy : the bauble would have been reve- 
renced, while the power was trampled on, 
if titles had been spared in France. A titled 
Nobility is the most undisputed progeny of 
feudal barbarism. Titles had in all nations 
denoted offices : it was reserved for Gothic 
Europe to attach them to ranks. Yet this 
conduct of our remote ancestors admits ex- 
planation ; for with them offices were here- 
ditary, and hence the titles denoting them 
became hereditary too. But we, who have 
rejected hereditary office, retain an usage to 
which it gave rise, and which it alone could 
justify. So egregiously is this recent origin 
of a titled Nobility misconceived, that it has 
been even pretended to be necessary to the 
order and existence of society ; — a narrow 
and arrogant mistake, which would limit all 
political remark to the Gothic states of Eu- 
rope, or establish general principles on events 
that occupy so short a period of history, and 
manners that have been adopted by so slen- 
der a portion of the human race. A titled 

* So called by M. de Calonne. 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



417 



Nobility was equally unknown to the splen- 
did monarchies of Asia, and to the manly 
simplicity of the ancient commonwealths.* 
It arose from the peculiar circumstances of 
modern Europe ; and yet its necessity is now 
erected on the basis of universal experience, 
as if these other renowned and polished 
states were effaced from the records of his- 
tory, and banished from the society of na- 
tions. "Nobility is the Corinthian capital 
of polished states:" — the august fabric of 
society is deformed and encumbered by 
such Gothic ornaments. The massy Doric 
that sustains it is Labour; and the splendid 
variety of arts and talents that solace and 
embellish life, form the decorations of its 
Corinthian and Ionic capitals. 

Other motives besides the extirpation of 
feudality, disposed the French Legislature 
to the suppression of titles. To give sta- 
bility to a popular governmenf, a democratic 
character must be formed, and democratic 
sentiments inspired. The sentiment of 
equality which titular distinctions have, 
perhaps, more than any other cause, extin- 
guished in Europe, and without which 
democratic forms are impotent and short- 
lived, was to be revived ; and a free govern- 
ment was to be established, by carrying the 
spirit of equality and freedom into the feel- 
ings, the manners, and the most familiar 
intercourse of men. The badges of ine- 
quality, which were perpetually inspiring 
sentiments adverse to the spirit of the go- 
vernment, were therefore destroyed, as dis- 
tinctions which only served to unfit the 
Nobility for obedience, and the people for 
freedom, — to keep alive the discontent of 
the one, and to perpetuate the servility of 
the other, — to deprive the one of the mode- 
ration that sinks them into citizens, and to 
rob the other of the spirit that exalts them 
into free men. A single example can alone 
dispel inveterate prejudices. Thus thought 
our ancestors at the Revolution, when they 
deviated from the succession, to destroy the 
prejudice of its sanctity. Thus also did the 
legislators of France feel, when, by the abo- 
lition of titles, they gave a mortal blow to 
the slavish prejudices which unfitted their 
country for freedom. It was a practical as- 
sertion of that equality which had been 
consecrated in the Declaration of Rights, 
but which no abstract assertion could have 
conveyed into the spirits and the hearts of 
men. It proceeded on the principle that 
the security of a revolution of government 
can only arise from a revolution of character. 



* Aristocratic bodies did indeed exist in the an- 
cient world, but titles were unknown. Though 
they possessed political privileges, yet as these 
did not affect the manners, they had not the same 
inevitable tendency to taint the public character 
as titular distinctions. These bodies too being in 
general open to property, or office, they are in no 
respect to be compared to the Nobles of Europe. 
They might affect the forms of a free government 
as much, but they did not in the same proportion 
injure the spirit of freedom. 
53 



To these reasonings it has been opposed, 
that hereditary distinctions are the moral 
treasure of a state, by which it excites and 
rewards public virtue and public service, and 
which, without national injury or burden, 
operates with resistless force on generous 
minds. To this I answer, that of personal 
distinctions this description is most true; 
but that this moral treasury of honour is in 
fact impoverished by the improvident profu- 
sion that has made them hereditary. The 
possession of honours by that multitude, 
who have inherited but not acquired them, 
engrosses and depreciates these incentives 
and rewards of virtue. Were they purely 
personal, their value would be doubly en- 
hanced, as the possessors would be fewer 
while the distinction was more honourable. 
Personal distinctions then every wise state 
will cherish as its surest and noblest re- 
source ; but of hereditary title, — at least in 
the circumstances of France,* — the abolition 
seems to have been just and politic. 

The fate of the Church, the second great 
corporation that sustained the French despo- 
tism, has peculiarly provoked the indigna- 
tion of Mr. Burke. The dissolution of the 
Church as a body, the resumption of its 
territorial revenues, and the new organiza- 
tion of the priesthood, appear to him to be 
dictated by the union of robbery and irre- 
ligion, .to glut the rapacity of stockjobbers, 
and to gratify the hostility of atheists. All 
the outrages and proscriptions of ancient or 
modern tyrants vanish, in his opinion, in 
comparison with this confiscation of the pro- 
perty of the Gallican Church. Principles 
had, it is true, been on this subject explored, 
and reasons had been urged by men of ge- 
nius, which vulgar men deemed irresistible. 
But with these reasons Mr. Burke will not 
deign to combat. "You do not imagine, 
Sir," says he to his correspondent, " that I 
am going to compliment this miserable de- 
scription of persons with any long discus- 
sion]"! What immediately follows this 
contemptuous passage is so outrageously of- 
fensive to candour and urbanity, that an 

* I have been grossly misunderstood by those 
who have supposed this qualificaiion an assumed 
or affected reserve. I believe the principle only 
as qualified by the circumstances of different na- 
tions. 

t The Abbe Maury, who is not less remark- 
able for the fury of eloquent declamation, than 
for the inept parade of historical erudition, at- 
tempted in the debate on this subject to trace the 
opinion higher. Base lawyers, according to him, 
had insinuated it to the Roman Emperors, and 
against it was pointed the maxim of the civil 
law, " Omnia tenes Caesar imperio. sed non 
dominio." Louis XIV. and Louis XV. had, if 
we may believe him, both been assailed by this 
Machiavelian doctrine, and both had repulsed it 
with magnanimous indignation. The learned 
Abbe committed only one mistake. The despots 
of Rome and France had indeed been poisoned 
with the idea that they were the immediate pro- 
prietors of iheir subjects' estates. That opinion 
is execrable and flagitious; but it is not, as wo 
shall see, the doctrine of the French legislator? 



418 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



honourable adversary will disdain to avail 
himself of it. The passage itself, however, 
demands a pause. It alludes to an opinion. 
of which I trust Mr. Burke did not know the 
origin. That the Church lands were national 
property was not first asserted among the 
Jacobins, or in the Palais Royal. The au- 
thor of that opinion, — the master of that 
wretched description of persons, whom Mr. 
Burke disdains to encounter, was one whom 
he might have combated with glory, — with 
confidence of triumph in victory, and with- 
out fear or shame in defeat The author of 
that opinion was Turgot! a name now too 
high to be exalted by eulogy, or depressed 
by invective. That benevolent and philo- 
sophic statesman delivered it, in the article 
"Foundation" of the Encyclopedic, as the 
calm and disinterested opinion of a scholar, 
at a moment when he could have no object 
in palliating rapacity, or prompting irreligion. 
It was no doctrine contrived for the occasion 
by the agents of tyranny : it was a principle 
discovered in pure and harmless specula- 
tion, by one of the best and wisest of men. 
I adduce the authority of Turgot, not to op- 
pose the arguments (if there had been any), 
but to counteract the insinuations of Mr. 
Burke. The authority of his assertions 
forms a prejudice, which is thus to be re- 
moved before we can hope for a fair audi- 
ence at the bar of Reason. If he insinuates 
the flagitiousness of these opinions by the 
supposed vileness of their origin, it cannot 
be unfit to pave the way for their reception $. 
by assigning to them a more illustrious 
pedigree. 

But dismissing the genealogy of doctrines, 
let us examine their intrinsic value, and 
listen to no voice but that of truth. "Are 
the lands occupied by the Church the pro- 
perty of its members'?" Various considera- 
tions present themselves, which may eluci- 
date the subject. 

It has not hitherto been supposed that any 
class of public servants are proprietors. — 
They are salaried* by the State for the per- 
formance of certain duties. Judges are paid 
for the distribution of justice; kings for the 
execution of the laws; soldiers, where there 
is a mercenary army, for public defence ; 
and priests, where there is an established 
religion, for public instruction. The mode 
of their payment is indifferent to the ques- 
tion. It is generally in rude ages by land, 
and in cultivated periods by money. But a 
territorial pension is no more property than 
a pecuniary one. The right of the State to 
regulate the salaries of those servants whom 
it pays in money has not been disputed : 
and if it has chosen to provide the revenue 
of a certain portion of land for the salary of 
another class of servants, wherefore is its 
right more disputable, to resume that land, 
and to establish a new mode of payment j 



* " lis sont ou salaries, on meridians, ou vo- 
leurs," — was the expression of M. Mirabeau re- 
specting the priesthood. 



in the early history of Europe, before fiefs 
became hereditary, great landed estates? 
were bestowed by the sovereign, on condi- 
tion of military service. By a similar te- 
nure did the Church hold its lands. No 
man can prove, that because the State has 
intrusted its ecclesiastical servants with a 
portion of land, as the source and security 
of their pensions, they are in any respect 
more the proprietors of it, than the other 
servants of the State are of that portion of 
the revenue from which they are paid. 

The lands of the Church possess not the 
most simple and indispensable requisites of 
property. They are not even pretended to 
be held for the benefit of those who enjoy 
them. This is the obvious criterion between 
private property and a pension for public 
service. The destination of the first is avow- 
edly the comfort and happiness of the indi- 
vidual who enjoys it : as he is conceived to 
be the sole judge of this happiness, he pos- 
sesses the most unlimited rights of enjoy- 
ment, of alienation, and even of abuse. But 
the lands of the Church, destined for the 
support of public servants, exhibited none 
of these characters of property. They were 
inalienable, because it would have been not 
less absurd for the priesthood to have ex- 
ercised such authority over these lands, than 
it would be for seamen to claim the property 
of a fleet which they manned, or soldiers that 
of a fortress they garrisoned. 

It is confessed that no individual priest 
was a proprietor, and that the utmost claim 
of any one was limited to a possession for 
life of his stipend. If all the priests, taken 
individually, were not proprietors, the priest- 
hood, as a body, cannot claim any such right. 
For what is a body, but an aggregate of indi- 
viduals 1 and what new right can be con- 
veyed by a mere change of name 1 Nothing 
can so forcibly illustrate this argument as 
the case of other corporations. They are 
voluntary associations of men for their own 
benefit. Every member of them is an abso- 
lute sharer in their property : it is therefore 
alienated and inherited. Corporate property 
is here as sacred as individual, because in 
the ultimate analysis it is the same. But 
the priesthood is a corporation, endowed by 
the country, and destined for the benefit of 
others: hence the members have no sepa- 
rate, nor the body any collective, right of 
property. They are only intrusted with the 
administration of the lands from which their 
salaries are paid.* 

It is from this last circumstance that the 
legal semblance of property arises. In char- 
ters, bonds, and all other proceedings of law, 
these salaries are treated with the same for- 
malities as real property. " They are iden- 
tified," says Mr. Burke, "with the mass of 

* This admits a familiar illustration. If a land- 
holder chooses to pay his steward for the collec- 
tion of his rents, by permitting him to possess a 
farm gratis, is he conceived to have resigned his 
property in the farm? The case is precisely 
similar. 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



419 



private property;" and it must be confessed, : 
that if we are to limit our view to form, this ! 
language is correct. But the repugnance of | 
these formalities to legal truth proceeds from 
a very obvious cause. If estates are vested ; 
in the clergy, to them most unquestionably ! 
ought to be intrusted the protection of these ■ 
estates in all contests at law ; and actions j 
for that purpose can only be maintained 
with facility, simplicity, and effect, by the j 
fiction of their being proprietors. Nor is this < 
the only <ft.se in which the spirit and the | 
forms of law are at variance respecting pro- 
perty. Scotland, where lands still are held 
by feudal tenures, will afford us a remarka- 
ble example. There, if we extend our views 
no further than legal forms, the " superior" is 
to be regarded as the proprietor, while the 
real proprietor appears to be only a tenant for 
life. In this case, the vassal is formally 
stript of the property which he in fact en- 
joys : in the other, the Church is formally 
invested with a property, to which in reality 
it had no claim. The argument of Prescrip- 
tion will appear to be altogether untenable: 
for prescription implies a certain period 
during which the rights of property have 
been exercised ; but in the case before us 
they never were exercised, because they 
never could be supposed to exist. It must 
be proved that these possessions were of the 
nature of property, before it can follow that 
they are protected by prescription ; and to 
plead the latter is to take for granted the 
question in dispute.* 

When the British Islands, the Dutch Re- 
public, and the German and Scandinavian 
States, reformed their ecclesiastical esta- 
blishments, the howl of sacrilege was the 
only armour by which the Church attempted 
to protect its pretended property : the age 

* There are persons who may not relish the 
mode of reasoning here adopted. They contend 
that property, being the creature of civil society, 
may be resumed by that public will which created 
it ; and on this principle they justify the National 
Assembly of France. But such a justification is 
adverse to the principles of that Assembly, for they 
have consecrated it as one of the first maxims of 
their Declaration of Rights, " that the State can- 
not violate property, except in cases of urgent 
necessity, and on condition of previous indemnifi- 
cation." This defence too will not justify their 
selection of Church property, in preference of all 
others, for resumption. It certainly ought in this 
view to have fallen equally on all citizens. The 
principle is besides false in the extreme to which 
it is assumed. Property is indeed in some sense 
created by an act of the public will: but it is by 
one of those fundamental acts which constitute 
society. Theory proves it to be essential to the 
social state. Experience proves that it has, in 
some degree, existed in every age and nation of 
the world. But those public acts which form and 
endow corporations are subsequent and subordi- 
nate ; they are only ordinary expedients of legisla- 
tion. The properly of individuals is established 
on a general principle, which seems coeval with 
civil society itself : but corporate bodies are instru- 
ments fabricaied by the legislator for a specific 
purpose, which ought to be preserved while they 
are beneficial, amended when they are impaired, 
and rejected when they become useless or injurious. 



was too tumultuous and unlettered for dis- 
cussions of abstract jurisprudence. This 
howl seems, however, to have fallen into 
early contempt. The Treaty of Westphalia 
secularised many of the most opulent bene- 
fices of Germany, under the mediation and 
guarantee of the first Catholic powers of 
Europe. In our own island, on the abolition 
of episcopacy in Scotland at the Revolution, 
the revenues of the Church peaceably de- 
volved on the sovereign, and he devoted a 
portion of them to the support of the new 
establishment. When, at a still later period, 
the Jesuits were suppressed in most Catholic 
monarchies, the wealth of that formidable 
and opulent body was everywhere seized by 
the sovereign. In all these memorable ex- 
amples, no traces are to be discovered of 
the pretended properly of the Church. The 
salaries of a class of public servants were 
resumed by the State, -when it ceased to 
deem their service, or the mode of it, useful. 
That claim, now so forcibly urged by M. de 
Calonne, was probably little respected by 
him, when he lent his agency to the destruc- 
tion of the Jesuits with such peculiar activity 
and rancour. The sacredness of their pro- 
perty could not have strongly impressed one 
who was instrumental in degrading the mem- 
bers of that renowned and accomplished 
society, the glory of Catholic Europe, from 
their superb endowments to the rank of 
scanty and beggarly pensioners. The reli- 
gious horror which the priesthood had at- 
tached to spoliation of Church property has 
long been dispelled ; and it was reserved for 
Mr. Burke to renew that cry of sacrilege, 
which, in the darkness of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, had resounded in vain. No man can 
be expected to oppose arguments to epithets. 
When a definition of sacrilege is given, con- 
sistent with good logic and plain English, it 
will be time enough to discuss it. Till that 
definition (with the Greek Calends) comes, 
I should as soon dispute about the meaning- 
of sacrilege as about that of heresy or witch- 
craft. 

The whole subject is indeed so clear that 
little diversity of opinion could have arisen, 
if the question of the inviolability of Church 
property had not been confounded with the- 
claims of the present incumbents. The dis- 
tinction, though neither stated by Mr. Burke- 
nor M. de Calonne, is extremely simple. 
The State is the proprietor of the Church 
revenues; but its faith, it may be said, is 
pledged to those who have entered into the 
Church, for the continuance of the incomes, 
for which they have abandoned all other 
pursuits. The right of the State to arrange 
at its pleasure the revenues of any future 
priests may be confessed ; while a doubt 
may be entertained, whether it is competent 
to change the fortune of those to whom it 
has solemnly promised a certain income for 
life. But these distinct subjects have been 
confounded, that sympathy with sufferine; 
individuals might influence opinion on a 
general question, — that feeling for the de- 



420 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



gradation of its hierarchy might supply the 
place of argument to establish the property 
of the Church. In considering this subject 
distinctly, it cannot be denied, that the mild- 
est, the most equitable, and the most usual 
expedient of civilized states in periods of 
emergency, is the reduction of the salaries 
of their servants, and the superfluous places. 
This and no more has been done regarding 
the Church of France. Civil, naval, and 
military servants of the State are subject to 
such retrenchments in a moment of diffi- 
culty. Neither the reform of a civil office, 
nor the reduction of a regiment, can be 
effected without wounding individuals.* But 
all men who enter into the public service 
must do so with the implied condition of sub- 
jecting their emoluments, and even their 
official existence, to the exigencies of the 
State. The great grievance of such de- 
rangements is the shock they give to family 
sentiments. This was precluded in the in- 
stance under discussion by the compulsory 
celibacy of the Romish Church; and when 
the debts of the clergy are incorporated with 
those of the State, and their subsistence 
insured by moderate incomes, though Sensi- 
bility may, in the least retrenchment, find 
somewhat to lament, Justice will, in the 
whole of these arrangements, discover little 
to condemn. To the individual members of 
the Church of France, whose hopes and en- 
joyments have been abridged by this resump- 
tion, no virtuous mind will-refuse the tribute 
of its sympathy and its regrets. Every man 
of humanity must wish, that public exigen- 
cies had permitted the French Legislature to 
spare the income of the present incumbents, 
and more especially of those whom they still 
continue in the discharge of active functions. 
But these sentiments imply no sorrow at the 
downfall of a great corporation, — the impla- 
cable enemy of freedom,— at the conversion 
of an immense public property to national 
use, — or at the reduction of a servile and 
imperious priesthood to humble utility. The 
attainment of these great objects console us 
for the portion of evil that was, perhaps, 
inseparable from it, and will be justly ap- 
plauded by a posterity too remote to be 
moved by comparatively minute afflictions. 

The enlightened observer of an age thus 
distant will contemplate with peculiar asto- 
nishment the rise, progress, decay and down- 
fall of spiritual power in Christian Europe. t 
It will attract his attention as an appearance 
which stands alone in history. Its connection 
in all stages of its progress with the civil 
power will peculiarly occupy his mind. He 
will remark the unpresuming humility by 
which it gradually gained the favour, and 
divided the power, of the magistrate, — the 

* This is precisely the case of " damnum ab- 
sque injuria." 

t Did we not dread the ridicule of political pre- 
diction, it would not seem difficult to assign its 
period. Church power (unless some Revolution, 
auspicious to priestcraft, should replunge Europe 
into ignorance) will certainly not survive the nine- 
teenth century. 



haughty and despotic tone in which it after- 
wards gave law to sovereigns and their sub- 
jects, — the zeal with which, in the first 
desperate moments of decline, it armed the 
people against the magistrate, and aimed at 
re-establishing spiritual despotism on the 
ruins of civil order; and he will point out 
the asylum which it at last found from the 
hostilities of Reason in the prerogatives of 
that temporal despotism, of which it had so 
long been the implacable foe. The first and 
last of these periods will prov^ that the 
priesthood are servilely devoted when they 
are weak : the second and third, that they 
are dangerously ambitious when strong. In 
a state of feebleness, they are dangerous to 
liberty : possessed of power, they are dan- 
gerous to civil government itself. But the 
last period of their progress will be that 
which will appear to have been peculiarly 
connected with the state of France. 

There can be no protection for the opulence 
and even existence* of an European priest- 
hood in an enlightened period, but the throne. 
It forms the only bulwark against the inroads 
of reason : for the superstition which once 
formed its power is gone. Around the throne 
therefore they rally ; and to the monarch 
they transfer the devotion which formerly 
attached them to the Church; while the 
fierceness of priestlyt zeal has been suc- 
ceeded by the more peaceful sentiments of 
a courtly and polished servility. Such is, in 
a greater or less degree, the present condi- 
tion of the Church in every nation of Europe. 
Yet it is for the dissolution of such a body 
that France has been reproached. It might 
as well be maintained, that in her conquests 
over despotism, she ought to have spared the 
strongest fortresses and most faithful troops 
of her adversary : — for such in truth were 
the corporations of the Nobility and the 
Church. The National Assembly have only 
insured permanence to their establishments, 
by dismantling the fortresses, and disbanding 
the troops of their vanquished foe. 

In the few remarks that are here made on 
the Nobility and Clergy of France, we con- 
fine ourselves strictly to their political and 
collective character : Mr. Burke, on the con- 
trary, has grounded his eloquent apology 
purely on their individual and moral charac- 
ter. The latter, however, is totally irrele- 
vant ; for we are not discussing what place 
they ought to occupy in society as indivi- 
duals, but as a body. We are not consider- 
ing the demerit of citizens whom it is fit to 
punish, but the spirit of a body which it is 
politic to dissolve. 

The Judicial Aristocracy formed by the 
Parliaments, seems still less susceptible of 
union with a free government. Their spirit 
and claims were equally incompatible with 
liberty. They had imbibed a spirit con- 
genial to the authority under which they had 
acted, and suitable to the arbitrary genius 
of the laws which they had dispensed ; while 

* I always understand their corporate existence, 
t Odium Theologicum. 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



421 



they retained those ambiguous and indefinite 
claims to a share in the legislation, which the 
fluctuations of power in the kingdom had in 
some degree countenanced. The spirit of a 
corporation was from the smallness of their 
numbers more concentrated and vigorous in 
them than in the Nobles and Clergy ; and 
whatever aristocratic zeal is laid to the 
charge of the Nobility, was imputable with 
tenfold force to the ennobled magistrates, 
who regarded their recent honours with an 
enthusiasm of vanity, inspired by that bigoted 
veneration for rank which is the perpetual 
character of upstarts. A free people could 
not form its tribunals of men who pretended 
to any control on the legislature. Courts of 
justice, in which seats were legally purchas- 
ed, had too long been endured : judges who 
regarded the right of dispensing justice as a 
marketable commodity, could neither be fit 
organs of equitable laws, nor suitable magis- 
trates for a free state. It is vain to urge with 
Mr. Burke the past services of these judicial 
bodies. It is not to be denied that Montes- 
quieu is correct, when he states, that under 
bad governments one abuse often limits an- 
other. The usurped authority of the Parlia- 
ments formed, it is true, some bulwark 
against the caprice of the Court. But when 
the abuse is destroyed, why preserve the 
remedial evil ? Superstition certainly alle- 
viates the despotism of Turkey: but if a 
rational government could be erected in that 
empire, it might with confidence disclaim 
the aid of the Koran, and despise the remon- 
strances of the Mufti. To such establish- 
ments, let us pay the tribute of gratitude for 
past benefit ; but when their utility no longer 
exists, let them be canonized by death, that 
their admirers may be indulged in all the 
plenitude of posthumous veneration. 

The three Aristocracies — Military, Sacer- 
dotal, and Judicial — may be considered as 
having formed the French Government. — 
They have appeared, so far as we have con- 
sidered them, incorrigible. All attempts to 
improve them would have been little better 
than (to use the words of Mr. Burke) "mean 
reparations on mighty ruins." They were 
not perverted by the accidental depravity of 
their members ; they were not infected by 
any transient passion, which new circum- 
stances would extirpate : the fault was in 
the essence of the institutions themselves, 
which were irreconcilable with a free gov- 
ernment. 

But, it is objected, these institutions might 
have been gradually reformed:* the spirit 
of freedom would have silently entered ; 
the progressive wisdom of an enlightened 
nation would have remedied, in process of 
time, their defects, without convulsion. To 
this argument I confidently answer, that these 
institutions would have destroyed Liberty, 
before Liberty had corrected their spirit. 
Power vegetates with more vigour after 
these gentle primings. A slender reform 

* Burke, pp. 248—252. 



amuses and lulls the people: the popular 
enthusiasm subsides; and the moment of 
effectual reform is irretrievably lost. No 
important political improvement was ever 
obtained in a period of tranquillity. The 
corrupt interest of the governors is so strong, 
and the cry of the people so feeble, that it 
were vain to expect it. If the effervescence 
of the popular mind is suffered to pass away 
without effect, it would be absurd to expect 
from languor what enthusiasm has not ob- 
tained. If radical reform is not, at such a 
moment, procured, all partial changes are 
evaded and defeated in the tranquillity 
which succeeds.* The gradual reform that 
arises from the presiding principle exhibited 
in the specious theory of Mr. Burke, is be- 
lied by the experience of all ages. What- 
ever excellence, whatever freedom is dis- 
coverable in governments, has been infused 
into them by the shock of a revolution ; and 
their subsequent progress has been only the 
accumulation of abuse. It is hence that the 
most enlightened politicians have recognised 
the necessity of frequently recalling their 
first principles ; — a truth equally suggested 
to the penetrating intellect of Machiavel, by 
his experience of the Florentine democracy, 
and by his research into the history of an- 
cient commonwealths. Whatever is good 
ought to be pursued at the moment it is at- 
tainable. The public voice, irresistible in a 
period of convulsion, is contemned with im- 
punity, when spoken during the lethargy 
into which nations are lulled by the tranquil 
course of their ordinary affairs. The ardour 
of reform languishes in unsupported tedious- 
ness : it perishes in an impotent struggle 
with adversaries, who receive new strength 
with the progress of the day. No hope of 
great political improvement — let us repeat it 
— is to be entertained from tranquillity;! 
for its natural operation is to strengthen all 
those who are interested in perpetuating 
abuse. The National Assembly seized the 
moment of eradicating the corruptions and 
abuses which afflicted their country. Their 
reform was total, that it might be commen- 
surate with the evil : and no part of it was 
delayed, because to spare an abuse at such 
a period was to consecrate it ; and as the 
enthusiasm which carries nations to such 
enterprises is short-lived, so the opportunity 
of reform, if once neglected, might be irre- 
vocably fled. 



* " Ignore-t-on que c'est en attaquant, en ren- 
versant tons les abus a la fois, qu'on peut esperer 
de s'en voir delivre sans retour ; que les reformes 
lentes et partielles out toujours fini par ne rien re- 
former ; enfin, que l'abus que l'on conserve de- 
vilht l'appui et bientot le restaurateur de tous 
ceux qu'on croioit avoir detruits?" — Adresse 
aux Francois, par l'Eveque d'Autun, 11 Fevrier, 
1790. 

t The only apparent exception to this principle 
is the case where sovereigns make important con- 
cessions to appease discontent, and avert convul- 
sion. This, however, rightly understood, is no 
exception ; for it arises evidently from the same 
causes, acting at a period less advanced in the 
progress of popular interposition. 
2 L 



422 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



But let us ascend to more general princi- 
ples, and hazard bolder opinions. Let us 
grant that the state of France was not so 
desperately incorrigible. Let us suppose 
that changes far more gentle, — innovations 
far less extensive, — would have remedied 
the grosser evils of her government, and 
placed it almost on a level with free and 
celebrated constitutions. These concessions, 
though too large for truth, will not convict 
the Assembly. By what principle of reason, 
or of justice } were they precluded from as- 
piring to give France a government less im- 
perfect than accident had form* d in other 
states ? Who will be hardy enough to as- 
sert, that a better constitution is not attain- 
able than any which has hitherto appeared 1 
Is the limit of human wisdom to be estimat- 
ed in the science of politics alone, by the 
extent of its .present attainments'? Is the 
most sublime and difficult of all arts, — the 
improvement of the social order, — the allevia- 
tion of the miseries of the civil condition of 
man, — to be alone stationary, amid the rapid 
progress of every other — liberal and vulgar 
— to perfection ? Where would be the atro- 
cious guilt of a grand experiment, to ascer- 
tain the portion of freedom and happiness, 
that can be created by political institutions? 
That guilt (if it be guilt) is imputable to 
the National Assembly. They are accused 
of having rejected the guidance of experi- 
ence, — of having abandoned themselves to 
the illusion of theory, — and of having sacri- 
ficed great and attainable good to the magni- 
ficent chimeras of ideal excellence. If this 
accusation be just, — if they have indeed 
abandoned experience, the basis of human 
knowledge, as well as the guide of human 
action, — their conduct deserves no longer 
any serious argument : but if (as Mr. Burke 
more than once insinuates) their contempt 
of it is avowed and ostentatious, it was 
surely unworthy of him to have expended 
so much genius against so preposterous an 
insanity. But the explanation of terms will 
diminish our wonder. Experience may, 
both in the arts and in the conduct of human 
life, be regarded in a double view, either as 
finishing models, or principles. An artist 
who frames his machine in exact imitation 
of his predecessor, is in the first sense said 
to be guided by experience. In this sense 
all improvements of human life, have been 
deviations from experience. The first vision- 
ary innovator was the savage who built a 
cabin, or covered himself with a rug. If 
this be experience, man is degraded to the 
unimprovable level of the instinctive ani- 
mals. But in the second acceptation, an 
artist is said to be guided by experience. 
when the inspection of a machine discovers 
to him principles, which teach him to im- 
prove it ; or when the comparison of many, 
both with respect to their excellences and 
defects, enables him to frame one different 
from any he had examined, and still more 
perfect. In this latter sense, the National 
Assembly have perpetualfy availed them- 



selves of experience. History is an im- 
mense collection of experiments on the na- 
ture and effect of the various parts of va- 
rious governments. Some institutions are 
experimentally ascertained to be beneficial ; 
some to be most indubitably destructive ; a 
third class, which produces partial good, ob- 
viously possesses the capacity of improve- 
ment. What, on such a survey, was the 
dictate of enlightened experience'? Not 
surely to follow any model in which these 
institutions lay indiscriminately mingled; but. 
like the mechanic, to compare and generalize, 
and. guided equally by experience, to imi- 
tate and reject. The process is in both cases 
the same : the rights and the nature of man 
are to the legislator what the general pro- 
perties of matter are to the mechanic, — the 
first guide, — because they are founded on the 
widest experience. In the second class are 
to be ranked observations on the excellences 
and defects of all governments which have 
already existed, that the construction of a 
more perfect machine may result. But ex- 
perience is the basis of all : — not the puny 
and trammelled experience of a statesman by 
trade, who trembles at any change in the 
tricks which he has been taught, or the routine 
in which he has been accustomed to move; 
but an experience liberal and enlightened, 
which hears the testimony of ages and na- 
tions, and collects from it the general princi- 
ples which regulate the mechanism of so- 
ciety. 

Legislators are under no obligation to re- 
tain a constitution, because it has been found 
" tolerably to answer the common purposes 
of government." It is absurd to expect, but 
it is not absurd to pursue perfection. It is 
absurd to acquiesce in evils, of which the 
remedy is obvious, because they are less 
grievous than those which are endured by 
others. To suppose that social order is not 
capable of improvement from the progress 
of the human understanding, is to betray the 
inconsistent absurdity of an arrogant confi- 
dence in our attainments, and an abject dis- 
trust of our powers. If, indeed, the sum of 
evil produced by political institutions, even 
in the least imperfect governments, were 
small, there might be some pretence for this 
dread of innovation — this horror at any re- 
medy, — which has raised such a clamour 
over Europe. But, on the contrary, in an 
estimate of the sources of human misery, 
after granting that one portion is to be attri- 
buted to disease, and another to private vices, 
it might perhaps be found that a third equal 
part arose from the oppressions and corrup- 
tions of government, disguised under various 
forms. All the governments that now exist 
in the world (except that of the United States 
of America) have been fortuitously formed : 
they are not the work of art. They have 
been altered, impaired, improved and de- 
stroyed by accidental circumstances, beyond 
the foresight or control of wisdom. Their 
parts thrown up against present emergencies 
formed no systematic whole. It was cer- 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



423 



tainly not to have been presumed, that these 
fortuitous products should have surpassed 
the works of intellect, and precluded all 
nearer approaches to perfection . Their origin 
without doubt furnishes a strong presump- 
tion of an opposite nature. It mi-zht teach 
us to expect in them many discordant prin- 
ciples, many jarring forms, much unmixed 
evil, and much imperfect good, — many in- 
stitutions which had long survived their mo- 
live, and many of which reason had never 
been the author, nor utility the object. Ex- 
perience, even in the best of them, accords 
with such expectations. 

A government of art. the work of legisla- 
tive intellect, reared on the immutable basis 
of natural right and general happiness, which 
should combine the excellences, and exclude 
the defects of the various constitutions which 
chance has scattered over the world, instead 
of being precluded by the perfection of any 
of those forms, was loudly demanded by the 
injustice and absurdity of them all. It was 
time that men should learn to tolerate nothing 
ancient that reason does not respect, and to 
shrink from no novelty to which reason may 
conduct. It was time that the human powers, 
so long occupied by subordinate objects, and 
inferior arts, should mark the commence- 
ment of a new sera in history, by giving birth 
to the art of improving government, and in- 
creasing the civil happiness of man. It was 
time, as it has been wisely and eloquently 
said, that legislators, instead of that narrow 
and dastardly coasting which never ventures 
to lose sight of usage and precedent, should, 
guided by the polarity of reason, hazard a 
bolder navigation, and discover, in unex- 
plored regions, the treasure of public felicity. 

The task of the French legislators was, 
however, less hazardous. The philosophers 
of Europe had for a century discussed all 
objects of public ceconomy. The conviction 
of a great majority of enlightened men had, 
after many controversies, become on most 
questions of general politics, uniform. A 
degree of certainty, perhaps nearly equal to 
that which such topics will admit, had been 
attained. The National Assembly were there- 
fore not called on to make discoveries : it was 
sufficient if they were not uninfluenced by 
the opinions, nor exempt from the spirit of 
their age. They were fortunate enough to 
live in a period when it was only necessary 
to affix the stamp of laws to what had been 
prepared by the research of philosophy. They 
will here, however, be attacked by a futile 
common-place. The most specious theory, 
it will be said, is often impracticable ; and 
any attempt to transfer speculative doctrines 
into the practice of states is chimerical and 
frantic. If by ' : theory" be understood vague 
conjecture, the objection is not worth discus- 
sion : but if by theory be meant inference 
from the moral nature and political state of 
man, then I assert, that whatever such theory 
pronounces to be true, must be practicable ; 
and that whatever on the subject is imprac- 
ticable, must be false. To resume the illus- 



tration from the mechanical arts : — geometry, 
it may be justly said, bears nearly the same 
relation to mechanics thac abstract reasoning 
does to politics.* The moral forces which 
are employed in politics are the passions and 
interests of men, of which it is the province 
of metaphysics to teach the nature and 
calculate the strength, as mathematics do 
those of the mechanical powers. Now sup- 
pose it had been mathematically proved, that 
by a certain alteration in the structure of a 
machine, its effect would be increased four- 
fold, w r ould an instructed mechanic hesitate 
about the change 1 Would he be deterred, 
because he was the first to discover it? 
Would he thus sacrifice his own advantage 
to the blindness of his predecessors, and the 
obstinacy of his contemporaries'? Let us 
suppose a whole nation, of which the arti- 
sans thus rejected theoretical improvement : 
mechanics might there, as a science, be most 
profoundly understood, while as an art, it ex- 
hibited nothing but rudeness and barbarism. 
The principles of Newton and Archimedes 
might be taught in the schools, while the 
architecture of the people might not have 
reached beyond the cabins of New Holland, 
or the ship-building of the Esquimaux. In 
a state of political science somewhat similar 
has Europe continued for a great part of the 
eighteenth century. t 

All the great questions of general politics 
had, as we have remarked, been nearly de- 
cided, and almost all the decisions had been 
hostile to established institutions ; yet these 
institutions still flourished in all their vigour. 
The same man who cultivated liberal science 
in his cabinet was compelled to administer a 
barbarous jurisprudence on the bench. The 
same Montesquieu, who at Paris reasoned as 
a philosopher of the eighteenth, was com- 
pelled to decide at Bourdeaux as a magistrate 
of the fourteenth century. The apostles of 
toleration and the ministers of the Inquisi- 
tion were cotemporaries. The torture con- 
tinued to be practised in the age of Becca- 
ria: the Bastile devoured its victims in the 
country of Tnrgot. The criminal code, even 
where it was the mildest, was oppressive and 
savage. The laws respectingreligiousopinion, 
even where there was a pretended toleration, 



* I confess my obligation for this parallel to a 
learned friend, who though so justly admired in 
the republic of letters for his excellent writings, 
is still more so by his friends for the rich, original, 
and masculine turn of thought that animates his 
conversation. But the Conunuator of the History 
of Philip III. little needs my praise. 

t Mechanics, because no passion or interest is 
concerned in the perpetuity of abuse, always yield 
to scientific improvement : politics, for the con- 
trary reason, always resist it. It was the remark 
of Hobbes, " that if any interest or passion were 
concerned in disputing the theorems of geometry, 
different opinions would be maintained regarding 
them." It has actually happened (as if to justify 
the remark of that great man) that under the ad- 
ministration of Turgot a financial reform, ground- 
ed on a mathematical demonstration, has been 
derided as visionary nonsense ! So much for the 
sage preference of practice to theory. 



424 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



outraged the most evident deductions of 
reason. The true principles of commercial 
policy, though they had been reduced to de- 
monstration, influenced the councils of no 
states. Such was the fantastic spectacle pre- 
sented by the European nations, who, philo- 
sophers in theory, and barbarians in practice, 
exhibited to the observing eye two opposite 
and inconsistent aspects of manners and opi- 
nions. But such a state of things carried in 
itself the seeds of its own destruction. Men 
will not long dwell in hovels, with the model 
of a palace before their eyes. 

Such was indeed in some measure the 
position of the ancient world. But the art 
of printing had not then provided a channel 
by which the opinions of the learned pass 
insensibly into the popular mind. A bulwark 
then existed between the body of mankind 
and the reflecting few. They were distinct 
nations, inhabiting the same country; and 
the opinions of the one (I speak comparatively 
with modern times) had little influence on 
those of the other. But that bulwark is now 
levelled with the ground. The convictions 
of philosophy insinuate themselves by a 
slow, but certain progress, into popular sen- 
timent. It is vain for the arrogance of learn- 
ing to condemn the people to ignorance 
by reprobating superficial knowledge. The 
people cannot be profound; but the truths 
which regulate the moral and political rela- 
tions of man, are at no great distance from 
the surface. The great works in which dis- 
coveries are contained cannot be read by the 
people ; but their substance passes through 
a variety of minute and circuitous channels 
to the shop and the hamlet. The conversion 
of these works of unproductive splendour 
into latent use and unobserved activity, re- 
sembles the process of nature in the external 
world. The expanse of a noble lake, — the 
course of a majestic river, imposes on the 
imagination by every impression of dignity 
and sublimity: but it is the moisture that 
insensibly arises from them wdiich. gradu- 
ally mingling with the soil, nourishes all the 
luxuriancy of vegetation, and adorns the 
surface of the earth. 

It may then be remarked, that though li- 
beral opinions so long existed with defective 
establishments, it was not natural that this 
state of things should be permanent. The 
philosophers of antiquity did not. like Archi- 
medes. Avant a spot on which to fix their 
engines ; but they wanted an engine where- 
with to move the moral world. The press 
is that engine, and has subjected the power- 
ful to the wise. The discussion of great 
truths has prepared a body of laws for the 
National Assembly : the diffusion of political 
knowledge has almost prepared a people to 
receive them ; and good men are at length 
permitted to indulge the hope, that the mise- 
ries of the human race are about to be alle- 
viated. That hope may be illusive, for the 
grounds of its enemies are strong, — the folly 
and villany of men : yet they who entertain 
it will feei no shame in defeat, and no envy 



of the triumphant prediction of their adver- 
saries; — "Mehercule malim cum Platone 
errare." Whatever be the ultimate fate of 
the French Revolutionists, the friends of 
freedom must ever consider them as the 
authors of the greatest attempt that has hi- 
therto been made in the cause of man. They 
never can cease to rejoice, that in the long 
catalogue of calamities and crimes which 
blacken human annals, the year 1789 pre- 
sents one spot on which the eye of humanity 
may with complacence dwell. 



SECTION II. 

Of the composition and character of the Na- 
tional Assembly. 

Events are rarely separated by the histo- 
rian from the character of those who are 
conspicuous in conducting them. From this 
alone they often receive the tinge which de- 
termines their moral colour. What is admired 
as noble pride in Sully, would be execrated 
as intolerable arrogance in Richelieu. But 
the degree of this influence varies with the 
importance of the events. In the ordinary 
affairs of state it is great, because in fact 
they are only of importance to posterity, as 
they illustrate the characters of those who 
have acted distinguished parts on the theatre 
of the world. But in events which them- 
selves are of immense magnitude, the cha- 
racter of those who conduct them becomes 
of far less relative importance. No igno- 
miny is at the present day reflected on the 
Revolution of 1688 from the ingratitude of 
Churchill, or the treachery of Sunderland. 
The purity of Somers, and the profligacy of 
Spencer, are equally lost in the splendour of 
that great transaction, — in the sense of its 
benefits, and the admiration of its justice. 
No moral impression remains on our mind, 
but that whatever voice speaks truth, what- 
ever hand establishes freedom, delivers the 
oracles and dispenses the gifts of God. 

If this be true of the deposition of James 
II. it is far more so of the French Revolution. 
Among many circumstances which distin- 
guished that event, as unexampled in history, 
it was none of the least extraordinary, that 
it might truly be said to have been a Revo- 
lution tvithout leaders. It was the effect of 
general causes operating on the people. It 
was the revolt of a nation enlightened from 
a common source. Hence it has derived its 
peculiar character; and hence the merits of 
the most conspicuous individuals have had 
little influence on its progress. The charac- 
ter of the National Assembly is of secondary 
importance indeed : but as Mr. Burke has 
expended so much invective against that 
body, a few strictures on his account of it . 
will not be improper. I 

The representation of the Third Estate 
was, as he justly states, composed of law- 
yers, physicians, merchants, men of letters, 
tradesmen and farmers. The choice was, 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



425 



indeed, limited by necessity ; for except men 
of these ranks and professions, the people 
had no objects of election, the army and 
the Church being engrossed by the Nobility. 
"No vestige of the landed interest of the 
country appeared in this representation," for 
an obvious reason ; — because the Nobility of 
France, like the Gentry of England, formed 
almost exclusively the landed interest of the 
kingdom. These professions then could only 
furnish representatives for the Tiers Etat. 
They form the majority of that middle rank 
among whom almost all the sense and virtue 
of society reside. Their pretended incapa- 
city for political affairs is an arrogant fiction 
of statesmen which the history of revolutions 
has ever belied. These emergencies have 
never failed to create politicians. The subtle 
counsellors of Philip II. were baffled by the 
Burgomasters of Amsterdam and Leyden. 
The oppression of England summoned into 
existence a race of statesmen in her colonies. 
The lawyers of Boston, and the planters of 
Virginia, were transformed into ministers 
and negotiators, who proved themselves in- 
ferior neither in wisdom as legislators, nor in 
dexterity as politicians. These facts evince 
that the powers of mankind have been un- 
justly depreciated, — the difficulty of political 
affairs artfully magnified ; and that there 
exists a quantity of talent latent among men, 
which ever rises to the level of the great oc- 
casions that call it forth. 

But the predominance of the profession of 
the law, — that professsion which teaches 
men " to augur misgovernment at a distance, 
and snuff the approach of tyranny in every 
tainted breeze,"* — was the fatal source from 
which, if we may believe Mr. Burke, have 
arisen the calamities of France. The ma- 
jority of the Third Estate was indeed com- 
posed of lawyers. Their talents of public 
speaking, and their professional habits of 
examining questions analogous to those of 
politics, rendered them the most probable 
objects of popular choice, especially in a 
despotic country, where political speculation 
was no natural amusement for the leisure of 
opulence. But it does not appear that the 
majority of them consisted of the unlearned, 
mechanical, members of the profession.! 
From the list of the States-General, it would 
seem that the majority were provincial advo- 
cates, — a name of very different import from 
'• country attorneys.''' 1 and whose importance is 
not to be estimated by purely English ideas. 

All forensic talent and eminence is here 
concentrated in the capital : but in France, the 
institution of circuits did not exist; the pro- 
vinces were imperfectly united ; their laws 
various; their judicatures distinct, and almost 
independent. Twelve or thirteen Parliaments 
formed as many circles of advocates, who 
nearly emulated in learning and eloquence 
the Parisian Bar. This dispersion of talent 

* Mr. Burke's Speech on American Affairs, 
1775. 

t See an accurate list of them in the Supple- 
ment to the Journal de Paris, 31st of May, 1789. 
54 



was in some respect also the necessary effect 
of the immensity of the kingdom. No liberal 
man will in England bestow on the Irish and 
Scottish Bar the epithet "provincial " with a 
view of disparagement. The Parliaments 
of many provinces in France, presented as 
wide a field for talent as the Supreme Courts 
of Ireland and Scotland. The Parliament of 
Rennes, for example, dispensed justice to a 
province which contained two million three 
hundred thousand inhabitants* — a popula- 
tion equal to that of some respectable king- 
doms of Europe. The cities of Bordeaux, 
Lyons, and Marseilles, surpass in wealth and 
population Copenhagen, Stockholm, Peters- 
burg, and Berlin. Such were the theatres 
on which the provincial advocates of France 
pursued professional fame. A general Con- 
vention of the British empire would yield, 
perhaps, as distinguished a place to Curran 
and Erskine, and the other eminent and ac- 
complished barristers of Dublin and Edin- 
burgh as to those of the capital : and on the 
same principles have the Thourets and Cha- 
peliers of Rouen, and Rennes, acquired as 
great an ascendant in the National Assem- 
bly as the Targets and Camus' s of the Pari- 
sian Bar. 

The proof that this " faculty influence," as 
Mr. Burke chooses to phrase it, was not in- 
juriously predominant, is to be found in the 
decrees of the Assembly respecting the judi- 
cial order. It must on his system have been 
their object to have established what he calls 
" a litigious constitution." The contrary has 
so notoriously been the case, — all their de- 
crees have so obviously tended to lessen the 
importance of lawyers, by facilitating arbi- 
trations, by the adoption of juries, by dimin- 
ishing the expense and tediousness of suits, 
by the destruction of an intricate and barba- 
rous jurisprudence, and by the simplicity in- 
troduced into all judicial proceedings, that 
their system has been accused of a direct 
tendency to extinguish the profession of the 
law. It is a system which may be con- 
demned as leading to visionary excess, but 
which cannot be pretended to bear very 
strong marks of the supposed ascendant of 
"chicane." 

To the lawyers, besides the parochial 
clergy, whom Mr. Burke contemptuously 
styles "Country Curates,"! were added, those 
Noblemen whom he so severely stigmatizes 
as deserters from their Order. Yet the depu- 
tation of the Nobility who first joined the 
Commons, and to whom therefore that title 
best belongs, was not composed of men 
whom desperate fortunes and profligate am- 
bition prepared for civil confusion. In that 
number were found the heads of the most 
ancient and opulent families in France, — 
the Rochefoucaults, the Richelieus. the Mont- 
morencies, the Noailles. Among them was 

* See a Report of the Population of France to 
the National Assembly, by M. Biron de la Tour, 
Engineer and Geographer to the King, 1790. 

t It is hardly necessary to remark that curS 
means rector. 

2l2 



426 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



M. Lally, who has received such liberal 
praise from Mr. Burke. It will be difficult 
to discover in one individual of that body any 
interest adverse to the preservation of order, 
and the security of rank and wealth. 

Having thus followed Mr. Burke in a very 
short sketch of the classes of men who com- 
pose the Assembly, let us proceed to con- 
sider his representation of the spirit and 
general rules which have guided it, and 
which, according to him, have presided over 
all the events of the Revolution. " A cabal 
of philosophic atheists had conspired the abo- 
lition of Christianity. A monied interest, 
who had grown into opulence from the ca- 
lamities of France, contemned by the No- 
bility for their origin, and obnoxious to the 
people by their exactions, sought the alliance 
of these philosophers; by whose influence 
on public opinion they were to avenge them- 
selves on the Nobility, and conciliate the 
people. The atheists were to be gratified 
with the extirpation of religion, and the 
stock-jobbers with the spoils of the Nobles 
and the Church. The prominent features of 
the Revolution bear evidence of this league 
of impiety and rapine. The degraded es- 
tablishment of the Church is preparatory to 
the abolition of Christianity; and all the 
financial operations are designed to fill the 
coffers of the monied capitalists of Paris." 
Such is the theory of Mr. Burke respecting 
the spirit and character of the French Revo- 
lution. To separate the portion of truth that 
gives plausibility to his statement from the 
falsehood that invests it with all its horrors, 
will however neither be a tedious nor a diffi- 
cult task. 

The commercial or monied interest has 
in all nations of Europe (taken as a body) 
been less prejudiced, more liberal, and more 
intelligent than the landed gentry. Their 
views are enlarged by a wider intercourse 
with mankind ; and hence the important in- 
fluence of commerce in liberalizing the mo- 
dern world. We cannot wonder then that 
this enlightened class ever prove the most 
ardent in the cause of freedom, and the most 
zealous for political reform. It is not won- 
derful that philosophy should find in them 
more docile pupils, and liberty more active 
friends, than in a haughty and prejudiced 
aristocracy. The Revolution in 1688 pro- 
duced the same division in England. The 
monied interest long formed the strength of 
Whiggism, while a majority of the landed 
gentlemen long continued zealous Tories. It 
is not unworthy of remark, that the pam- 
phleteers of Toryism accused the Whigs of 
the same hostility to religion of which Mr. 
Burke now supposes the existence in France. 
They predicted the destruction of the Church, 
and even the downfall of Christianity itself 
from the influx of heretics, infidels, and athe- 
ists, which the new Government of England 
protected. Their pamphlets have perished 
with the topic which gave them birth ; but 
the talents and fame of Swift have preserved 
his, which furnish abundant proof of this co- 



incidence in clamour between the enemies of 
the English, and the detractors of the French 
Revolution. 

That the philosophers, the other party in 
this unwonted alliance between affluence 
and literature, in this new union of authors 
and bankers, did prepare the Revolution by 
their writings, it is the glory of its admirers 
to avow.* What the speculative opinions 
of these philosophers were on remote and 
mysterious questions is here of no import- 
ance. It is not as atheists, or theists, but as 
political reasoners, that they are to be con- 
sidered in a political revolution. All their 
writings, on the subjects of metaphysics and 
theology, are foreign to the question. If 
Rousseau has had any influence in promoting 
the Revolution, it is not by his Letters from 
the Mountains, but by his Social Contract. 
If Voltaire contributed to spread liberality 
in France, it was not by his Philosophical 
Dictionary, but by his Defences of Toleration. 
The obloquy of their atheism (if it existed^ 
is personal : it does not belong to the Revolu- 
tion ; for that event could neither have been 
promoted nor retarded by abstract discus- 
sions of theology. The supposition of their 
conspiracy for the abolition of Christianity, is 
one of the most extravagant chimeras that 
ever entered the human imagination. Let 
us prant their infidelity in the fullest extent : 
still their philosophy must have taught them 
that the passions, whether rational or irra- 
tional, from which religion arises, could be 
eradicated by no human power from the 
heart of man ; while their incredulity must 
have made them indifferent as to what par- 
ticular mode of religion might prevail. These 
philosophers were not the apostles of any 
new revelation that was to supplant the faith 
of Christ : they knew that the heart can on 
this subject bear no void, and they had no 
interest in substituting the Vedam, or the 
Koran for the Gospel. They could have no 
reasonable motives to promote any revolu- 
tion in the popular faith : their purpose was 
accomplished when the priesthood was dis- 
armed. Whatever might be the freedom of 
their private speculations, it was not against 
r< ligion, but against the Church, that their 
political hostility was directed. 

But, says Mr. Burke, the degraded pen- 
sionary establishment, and the elective con- 

* Mr. Burke's remark on the English Free- 
thinkers is unworthy of him. It more resembles 
the rant by which priests inflame the languid bi- 
gotry of their fanatical adherents, than the calm, 
ingenuous, and manly criticism of a philosopher 
and a scholar. Had he made extensive inquiries 
among his learned friends, he must have found 
many who have read and admired Collins' incom- 
parable tract on Liberty and Necessity. Had he 
looked abroad into the world, he would have found 
many who still read the philosophical works of 
1'olingbroke, not as philosophy, but as eloquent 
and splendid declamation. What he means by 
"their successors," I will not conjecture: I will 
not suppose that, with Dr. Hurd. he regards David 
Hume as " a puny dialectician from the north !" — 
yet it is hard to understand him in any other 
sense. 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



427 



"stitntion of the new clergy of France is suf- 
ficient evidence of the design. The clergy 
are to be made contemptible, that the popu- 
lar reverence for religion may be destroyed; 
and the way thus paved for its abolition. It 
is amusing to examine the different aspects 
which the same object presents to various 
minds. Mr. Hume vindicates the policy of 
an opulent establishment, as a bribe which 
purchases the useful inactivity of the priest- 
hood. They have no longer, he supposes, 
any temptation to court a dangerous domi- 
nion over the minds of the people, because 
they are independent of it. Had that philo- 
sopher been now alive, he must on the same 
principle have remarked, that an elective 
clergy and a scantily endowed Church, had 
a far greater tendency to produce fanaticism 
than irreligion. If the priests depend on the 
people, they can only maintain their influ- 
ence by cultivating those passions in the 
popular mind, which gave them an ascend- 
ant over it : to inflame these passioiTs is their 
obvious ambition. Priests would be in a 
nation of sceptics contemptible, — in a nation 
of fanatics omnipotent. It has not therefore 
been more uniformly the habit of a clergy 
that depends on a court, to practise servility, 
than it would evidently be the interest of a 
clergy that depends on the people to culti- 
vate religious enthusiasm. Scanty endow- 
ments too would still more dispose them to 
seek a consolation for the absence of worldly 
enjoyments, in the exercise of a flattering 
authority over the minds of men. Such 
would have been the view of a philosopher 
who was indifferent to Christianity, on the 
new constitution of the Gallican Church. 
He never would have dreamt of rendering 
Religion unpopular by devoting her ministers 
to activity, — contemptible by compelling 
them to purity, — or unamiable by divesting 
her of invidious splendour. He would have 
seen in these changes the seeds of enthu- 
siasm and not of laxity. But he would have 
been consoled by the reflection, that the dis- 
solution of the Church as a corporation had 
broken the strength of the priesthood : that 
religious liberty without limit would disarm 
the animosity of sects; and that the diffu- 
sion of knowledge would restrain the extra- 
vagances of fanaticism. 

I am here only considering the establish- 
ment of the Gallican Church as an evidence 
of the supposed plan for abolishing Christi- 
anity : I am not discussing its intrinsic merits. 
I therefore personate a philosophic infidel, 
who, it would appear, must have discerned 
the tendency of this plan to be directlythe 
reverse of that conceived by Mr. Burke.* 



* The theory of Mr. Burke on the subject of re- 
ligious establishments, I am utterly at a loss to 
comprehend. He will not adopt the impious rea- 
soning of Mr. Hume, nor does he suppose with 
Warburton any " alliance between Church and 
State ;" for he seems to conceive them to be origi- 
nally the same. When he or his admirers trans- 
late his statements (pp. 145, 146,) into a series of 
propositions expressed in precise and unadorned 
■ English, they may become the proper objects of 



It is in truth rather a fanatical than an irre- 
ligious spirit which dictates the organization 
of the Church of France. A Jansenist party 
had been formed in the old Parliaments 
through their long hostilities to the Jesuits 
and the See of Rome ; members of which 
party have in the National Assembly, by the 
support of the inferior Clergy, acquired the 
ascendant in ecclesiastical affairs. Of this 
number ys M. Camus. The new constitu- 
tion of the Church accords exactly with their 
dogmas.* The clergy are, according to their 
principles, to notify to the Bishop of Rome 
their union iu doctrine, but to recognise no 
subordination in discipline. The spirit of a 
dormant sect thus revived in a new shape at 
so critical a period, — the unintelligible sub- 
tleties of the Bishop of Ypres thus influ- 
encing the institutions of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, might present an ample field of reflec- 
tion to an enlightened observer of human 
affairs : but it is sufficient for our purpose to 
observe the fact, and to remark the error of 
attributing to the hostile designs of atheism 
what in so great a degree has arisen from 
the ardour of religious zeal. 

The establishment of the Church has not 
furnished any evidence of that to which Mr. 
Burke has attributed so much of the system 
of the National Assembly. Let us examine 
whether a short review of their financial 
operations will supply the defect.! 

To the gloomy statement of French finance 
offered by M. de Calonne, let us oppose the 
report of M. de la Rochefoucault, from the 
Committee of Finance, on the 9th of Decem- 
ber, 1790, which from premises that appear 
indisputable, infers a considerable surplus 
revenue in the present year. The purity of 
that distinguished person has hitherto been 
arraigned by no party. That understanding 
must be of a singular construction which 
could hesitate between the statements of the 
Due de la Rochefoucault and M. de Calonne. 
But without using this argumentum ad vere- 
cundiam, we remark, that there are radical 
faults, which vitiate the whole calculations 
of the latter, and the consequent reasonings 
of Mr. Burke. They are taken from a year 
of languishing and disturbed industry, and 
absurdly applied to the future revenue of 



argument and discussion. In their present state 
they irresistibly remind one of the observations 
of Lord Bacon : — " Pugnax enim philosophise 
genus et sophisticum illaqueat intellectuam ; at 
illud alterum phantasticum, ct tumidum, et quasi 
poeticum, magis blanditur intellectui. Inest enim 
homini quasdam intellectiis ambitio nop minor 
quam voluntatis, praeserlim in ingeniis altis et ele- 
vatis." — Novum Organum, sect. xlv. 

* See the Speech of M. Sieyes on Religious 
Liberty, where he reproaches the Ecclesiastical 
Committee with abusing the Revolution for the 
purpose of reviving the seminary of Port Royal. 
See also M. Condorcet, Sur l'Instruction Publique. 

tit may be remarked, that on the subject of 
finance I have declined all details. They were not 
necessary to my purpose, which was to consider 
the Assembly's arrangements of revenue, more 
with a view to their supposed political profligacy, 
than to their financial talents. 



428 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



peaceful and flourishing periods; — from a 
year in which much of the old revenue of 
the state had been destroyed, and during 
which the Assembly had scarcely com- 
menced its new scheme of taxation. It is 
an error to assert that it was the Assembly 
that destroyed the former oppressive taxes, 
which formed so important a source of reve- 
nue : these taxes perished in the expiring 
struggle of the ancient government. No 
authority remaining in France could have 
maintained them. Calculations cannot fail 
of being most grossly illusive, which are 
formed from a period when many taxes had 
failed before they could be replaced by new 
impost, and when productive industry itself, 
the source of all revenue, was struck with a 
momentary palsy.* Mr. Burke discussed 
the financial merit of the Assembly before 
it had begun its system of taxation. It is 
still premature to examine its general scheme 
of revenue, or to establish general maxims 
on the survey of a period which may be 
considered as an interregnum of finance. 

The only financial operation which maybe 
regarded as complete is their emission of 
assignats — the paper representative of the 
national property ; which, while it facilitated 
the sale of that property, should supply the 
absence of specie in ordinary circulation. On 
this, as well as most other topics, the predic- 
tions of their enemies have been completely 
falsified. They predicted that no purchasers 
would be found hardy enough to trust their 
property on the tenure of a new and insecure 
establishment: but the national property has 
in all parts been bought with the greatest 
avidity. They predicted that the estimate 
of its value would prove exaggerated : but it 
has sold uniformly for double and treble that 
estimate. They predicted that the deprecia- 
tion of the assignats would in effect heighten 
the price of the necessaries of life, and fall with 
the most cruel severity on the most indigent 
class of mankind : the event has however 
been, that the assignats, supported in their 
credit by the rapid sale of the property which 
they represented, have kept almost at par ; 
that the price of the necessaries of life has 
lowered ; and that the sufferings of the indi- 
gent have been considerably alleviated. 
Many millions of assignats. already com- 
mitted to the flames, form the most unan- 
swerable reply to the objections urged against 
them .f Many purchasers, not availing them- 
selves of that indulgence for gradual payment, 
which in so immense a sale was unavoidable, 
have paid the whole price in advance. This 
has been peculiarly the case in the northern 

* Mr. Burke exults in the deficiency confessed 
by M. Vernet to amount in August, 1790, to eight 
millions sterling. He follows it with an invective 
against the National Assembly, which one simple 
reflection would have repressed. The suppression 
of the gabelle alone accounted for almost half of 
that deficiency ! Its produce was estimated at 
sixty millions of livres, or about two millions and 
a half sterling. 

t At this moment nearly one-third. 



provinces, where opulent farmers have been 
the chief purchasers; — a happy circumstance, 
if it only tended to multiply that most useful 
and respectable class of men, who are at 
once proprietors and cultivators of the ground. 
The evils of this emission in the circum- 
stances of France were transient; — the 
beneficial effects permanent. Two great 
objects were to be obtained by it; — one of 
policy, and another of finance. The first 
was to attach a great body of proprietors to 
the Revolution, on the stability of which 
must depend the security of their fortunes. 
This is what Mr. Burke terms, making them 
accomplices in confiscation; though it was- 
precisely the policy adopted by the English 
Revolutionists, when they favoured the 
growth of a national debt, to interest a body 
of creditors in the permanence of their new 
establishment. To render the attainment 
of the other great object, — the liquidation of 
the public debt, — improbable, M. de Calonne 
has been reduced to so gross a misrepresenta- 
tion, as to state the probable value of the 
national property at only two milliards, 
(about eighty-three millions sterling,) though 
the best calculations have rated it at more 
than double that sum. There is every proba- 
bility that this immense national estate will 
spedily disburden France of the greatest part 
of her national debt, remove the load of im- 
post under which her industry has groaned, 
and open to her that career of prosperity for 
which she was so evidently destined by the 
bounty of Nature. With these great benefits, 
with the acquittal of the public debt, and the 
stability of freedom, this operation has, it 
must be confessed, produced some evils. It 
cannot be denied to have promoted, in some 
degree, a spirit of gambling ; and it may give 
an undue ascendant in the municipal bodies- 
to the agents of the paper circulation. But 
these evils are fugitive : the moment that 
witnesses the extinction of the assignats, by 
the complete sale of the national lands, must 
terminate them ; and that period, our past 
experience renders probable is not very re- 
mote. There was one general view, which 
to persons conversant with political economy, 
would, from the commencement of the ope- 
ration have appeared decisive. Either the 
assignats were to retain their value, or they 
were not : if they retained their value, none 
of the apprehended evils could arise : if 
they were discredited, every fall in their 
value was a new motive to their holders to 
exchange them for national lands. No man 
would retain depreciated paper who could 
acquire solid property. If a great portion of 
them should be thus employed, the value of 
those left in circulation must immediately 
rise, both because their number was dimin- 
ished, and their security become more obvi- 
ous. The failure, as a medium of circulation, 
must have improved them as an instrument 
of sale ; and their success as an instrument 
of sale must in return have restored their 
utility as a medium of circulation. This 
action and re-action was inevitable, though 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



429 



the slight depreciation of the assignats had 
not made its effects very conspicuous in 
France. 

So determined is the opposition of Mr. 
Burke to those measures of the Assembly 
which regard the finances of the Church, 
that even monastic institutions have in him 
found an advocate. Let us discuss the argu- 
ments which he urges for the preservation 
of these monuments of human madness. In 
support of an opinion so singular, he produces 
one moral and one commercial reason :* — "In 
monastic institutions was found a great 
power for the mechanism of politic benevo- 
lence ; to destroy any power growing wild 
from the rank productive force of the human 
mind, is almost tantamount, in the moral 
world, to the destruction of the apparently 
active properties of bodies in the material." 
In one word, the spirit and the institutions 
of monachism were an instrument in the 
hand of the legislator, which he ought to 
have converted to some public use. I con- 
fess myself so far to share the blindness of 
the National Assembly, that I cannot form 
the most remote conjecture concerning the 
various uses which " have suggested them- 
selves to a contriving mind." But without 
expatiating on them, let us attempt to con- 
struct an answer to his argument on a broader 
basis. The moral powers by which a legis- 
lator moves the mind of man are his pas- 
sions; and if the insane fanaticism which 
first peopled the deserts of Upper Egypt 
with anchorites, still existed in Europe, he 
must attempt the direction of a spirit which 
humanity forbids him to persecute, and wis- 
dom to neglect. But monastic institutions 
have for ages survived the spirit which gave 
them birth ; and it is not necessary for any 
legislature to destroy "that power growing- 
wild out of the rank productive force of the 
human mind," from which monachism arose. 
Being, like all other furious and unnatural 
passions, in its nature transient, it languished 
in the discredit of miracles and the absence 
of persecution, and was gradually melted in 
the sunshine of tranquillity and opulence so 
long enjoyed by the Church. The soul which 
actuated monachism had fled : the skeleton 
only remained to deform society. The dens 
of fanaticism, where they did not become 
the recesses of sensuality, w y ere converted 
into the styes of indolence and apathy. The 
moral power, therefore, no longer existed : 
for the spirit by which the legislator could 
alone have moved these bodies was no more. 
Nor had any new spirit succeeded which 
might be an instrument in the hands of legis- 
lative skill. These short-lived phrenzies 
leave behind them an inert product, in the 
same manner as, when the fury and splen- 
dour of volcanic eruption is past for ages, 
there still remains a mass of lava to encumber 
the soil, and deform the aspect of the earth. t 



* Burke, pp. 232— 241. 

t It is urged by Mr. Burke, as a species of inci- 
dental defence of monachism, that there are many 
modes of industry, from which benevolence would 



The sale of the monastic estates is also 
questioned by Mr. Burke on commercial 
principles. The sum of his reasoning may 
be thus expressed : — The surplus product of 
tin' earth forms the income of the landed 
proprietor: that surplus the expenditure of 
some one must disperse ; and of what import 
is it to society, whether it be circulated by 
the expense of one landholder, or of a society 
of monks? A very simple statement fur- 
nishes an unanswerable reply to this defence. 
The wealth of society is its stock of pro- 
ductive labour. There must, it is true, be 
unproductive consumers, but, the fewer their 
number, the greater (all things else being 
the same) must be the opulence of a state. 
The possession of an estate by a society of 
monks establishes, let us suppose forty, un- 
productive consumers : the possession of the 
same estate by a single landholder only ne- 
cessarily produces one. It is therefore evi- 
dent that there is forty times the quantity of 
labour subtracted from the public stock, in 
the first case, than there is in the second. 
If it be objected that the domestics of a land- 
holder are unproductive, let it be remarked 
that a monastery has its servants J and that 
those of a lay proprietor are not profession- 
ally and perpetually unproductive, as many 
of them become farmers and artisans, and 
that, above all, many of them are married. 
Nothing then can appear, on plain commer- 
cial views, more evident than [he distinction 
between lay and monkish landholders. It is 
surely unnecessary to appeal to the motives 
which have every where produced statutes 
of mortmain, the neglect in which the land 
of ecclesiastical corporations is suffered to 
remain, and the infinite utility which arises 
from changes of property in land. The face 
of those countries where the transfers have 
been most rapid, will sufficiently prove their 
benefit. Purchasers seldom adventure with- 
out fortune ; and the novelty of their acqui- 
sition inspires them with the ardour of im- 
provement. 

No doubt can be entertained that the 
estates possessed by the Church will in- 
crease immensely in their value. It is vain 

rather rescue *tien than from monastic quiet. This 
must be allowed, in one view, to be true. But, 
though the laws must permit the natural progress 
which produces this species of labour, does it fol- 
low, that they ought to create monastic seclusion ? 
Is the existence of one source of misery a reason 
for opening another? Because noxious drudgery 
must be tolerated, are we to sanction compulsory 
inutility ? Instances of similar bad reasoning from 
what society must suffer to what she ought to enact, 
occur in other parts of Mr. Burke's production. 
We in England, he says, do not think ten thou- 
sand pounds a year worse in the hands of a bishop 
than in those of a baronet or a 'squire. Excessive 
inequality is in both cases an enormous evil. The 
laws must permit property to grow as the course 
of things effect it : but ought they to add a new 
factitious evil to this natural and irremediable one ? 
They cannot avoid inequality in the income of pro- 
perty, because they must permit property to dis- 
tribute itself : but they can remedy excessive ine- 
qualities in the income of office, because the income 
and the office are their creatures. 



430 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



to say that they will be transferred to Stock- 
jobbers. Situations, not names, are to be 
considered in human affairs. He that has 
once tasted the indolence and authority of a 
landholder, will with difficulty return to the 
comparative servility and drudgery of a 
monied capitalist. But should the usurious 
habits of the immediate purchaser be in- 
veterate, his son w T ill imbibe other senti- 
ments from his birth. The heir of the stock- 
jobbing Alpheus may acquire as perfectly 
the habits of an active improver of his patri- 
monial estate, as the children of Cincinnatus 
or Cato. 

To aid the feebleness of these arguments, 
Mr. Burke has brought forward a panegyri- 
cal enumeration of the objects on which 
monastic revenue is expended. On this 
masterpiece of fascinating and magnificent 
eloquence it is impossible to be too lavish 
of praise. It would have been quoted by 
Quintilian as a splended model of rhetorical 
common-place. But criticism is not our 
object; and all that the display of such 
powers of oratory can on such a subject 
suggest, is embodied in a sentiment which 
might perhaps have served as a character 
istic motto to Mr. Burke's production : 
Addidit invalidm robur Facundia causa. 



SECTION III. 

Popular excesses which attended the Revolu- 
tion. 

That no great revolutions can be accom- 
plished without excesses and miseries at 
which humanity revolts, is a truth which 
cannot be denied. This unfortunately is 
true in a peculiar manner of ihose Revolu- 
tions, which, like that of France, are strictly 
popular. Where the people are led by a 
faction, its leaders find no difficulty in the 
re-establishment of that order, which must 
be the object of their wishes, because it is 
the sole security of their power. But when 
a general movement of the popular mind 
levels a despotism with the ground, it is far 
less easy to restrain excess. There is more 
resentment to satiate and less authority to 
control. The passion which produced an 
effect so tremendous, is too violent to sub- 
side in a moment into serenity and submis- 
sion. 

The attempt to punish the spirit that ac- 
tuates a people, if it were just, would be 
vain, and if it were possible, would be cruel. 
No remedies are therefore left but the pro- 
gress of instruction, — the force of persuasion, 
— the mild authority of opinion : and these 
though infallible are of slow operation. In 
the interval which elapses before a calm 
succeeds the boisterous moments of a revo- 
lution, it is vain to expect that a people 
inured to barbarism by their oppressors, and 
which has ages of oppression to avenge, will 
be punctiliously generous in their triumph. 



nicely discriminative in their vengeance, or 
cautiously mild in their mode of retaliation. 
u They will break their chains on the heads 
of their oppressors."* 

Such was the state of France ; and such 
were the obvious causes of scenes which 
the friends of freedom deplore as tarnishing 
her triumphs. They feel these evils as men 
of humanity : but they will not bestow this 
name on that womanish sensibility, towards 
which, even in the still intercourse of pri- 
vate life, love is not unmingled with indul- 
gence. The only humanity which, in the 
great affairs of men, claims their respect, is 
that manly and expanded sentiment, which 
fixes its steady eye on the means of general 
happiness. The sensibility which shrinks 
at present evil, without extending its view 
to future good, is not a virtue; for it is not a 
quality beneficial to mankind. It would ar- 
rest the arm of a surgeon in amputating a 
gangrened limb, or the hand of a judge in 
signing the sentence of a parricide. I do not 
say (God forbid ! ) that a crime may be com- 
mitted for the attainment even of a good end : 
such a doctrine would shake morals to their 
centre. The man who would erect freedom 
on the ruins of morals neither understands 
nor loves either. But the case of the French 
Revolutionists is totally different. Has any 
moralist ever pretended, that we are to de- 
cline the pursuit of a good which our duty 
prescribes to us, because we foresee that 
some partial and incidental evil would arise 
from it"? But the number of the French 
leaders against whom such charges have 
been insinuated is so small, that supposing 
(what I do not believe) its truth, it only 
proves that some corrupt and ambitious men 
will mix with all great bodies. The ques- 
fion with respect to the rest, is reducible to 
this : — Whether they were to abstain from 
establishing a free government, because they 
foresaw that it could not be effected without 
confusion and temporary distress, or to be 
consoled for such calamities by the view of 
that happiness to which their labours were 
to give ultimate permanence and diffusion 1 
A Minister is not conceived to be guiJty of 
systematic immorality, because he balances 
the evils of the most just war with the ad- 
vantages of that national security which is 
produced by the reputation of spirit and 
power : — neither ought the patriot, who ba- 
lancing the evils of transient anarchy against 
the inestimable good of established liberty, 
finds the last preponderate in the scale. 

Such, in fact, has ever been the reasoning 
of the leaders in those insurrections which 
have preserved the remnant of freedom that 
still exists among mankind. Holland, Eng- 
land, and America, must have reasoned thus; 
and the different portions of liberty which 
they enjoy, have been purchased by the en- 
durance of far greater calamities than have 
been suffered by France. It is unnecessary 



* The eloquent expression of Mr. Curran in the 
Irish House of Commons. 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



431 



to appeal to the wars which for almost a 
century afflicted the Low Countries: but it 
may not be so to remind England of the price 
she paid for the establishment of the prin- 
ciples of the Revolution. The disputed suc- 
cession which arose from that event, pro- 
duced a destructive civil war in Ireland, two 
rebellions in Scotland, ami the consequent 
slaughter and banishment of thousands of 
citizens, with the widest confiscation of their 
properties ; — not to mention the continental 
connections and the foreign wars into which 
it plunged us, and the necessity thus imposed 
upon us of maintaining a standing army, and 
accumulating an enormous public debt.* 

The freedom of America was purchased 
by calamities still more inevitable. The 
authors of it must have foreseen them ; for 
they were not contingent or remote, but 
ready in a moment to burst on their heads. 
Their case is most similar to that of France, 
and best answers one of Mr. Burke ; s most 
triumphant arguments. They enjoyed some 
liberty, which their oppressors did not attack ; 
and the object for which they resisted, was 
conceded in the progress of the war : but 
like France, after the concessions of her 
King, they refused to acquiesce in an imper- 
fect liberty, when a more perfect one was 
within their reach. They pursued what Mr. 
Burke, — whatever were then his sentiments, 
— on his present system, must reprobate as 
a speculative and ideal good. They sought 
their beloved independence through new 
calamities, and the prolonged horrors of civil 
war. Their resistance, from that moment, 
" was against concession ; and their blows 
were aimed at a hand holding forth immu- 
nity and favours." Events have indeed jus- 
tified that noble resistance : America has 
emerged from her struggle into tranquillity 
and freedom, — into affluence and credit ; and 
the authors of her Constitution have con- 
structed a great permanent experimental 
answer to the sophisms and declamations of 
the detractors of liberty. 

But what proportion did the price she paid 
for so great blessing bear to the transient 
misfortunes which have afflicted France ? 
The extravagance of the comparison shocks 
every unprejudiced mind. No series of 
events in history have probably been more 
widely, malignantly, and systematically ex- 
aggerated than the French commotions. An 
enraged, numerous, and opulent body of ex- 
iles, dispersed over Europe, have possessed 
themselves of every venal press, and filled 
the public ear with a perpetual buz of the 
crimes and horrors that were acting in France. 
Instead of entering on a minute scrutiny, 
of which the importance would neither ex- 
piate the tediousness, nor reward the toil, let 
us content ourselves with opposing one gene- 



* Yet this was only the combat of reason and 
freedom against one prejudice, — that of heredi- 
tary right; whereas the French Revolution is, 
as has been sublimely said by the Bishop of Au- 
tun, " Le premier combat qui se soit jamais livre 
entre tous les Principes et toutes les Erreurs ! " 



ral fact to this host of falsehoods: — no com- 
mercial house of importance has failed in 
France since the Revolution! How is this to 
be reconciled with the tales that have been 
circulated ? As well might the transfers of 
the Royal Exchange be quietly executed in 
the ferocious anarchy of Gondar, and the 
peaceful opulence of Lombard-street flourish 
amidst hordes of Galla and Agows.* Com- 
merce, which shrinks from the breath of civil 
confusion, has resisted this tempest: and a 
mighty Revolution has been accomplished 
with less commercial derangement than 
could arise from the bankruptcy of a second- 
rate house in London or Amsterdam. The 
manufacturers of Lyons, the merchants of 
Bourdeaux and Marseilles, are silent amidst 
the lamentations of the Abbe Maury, M. 
de Calonne, and Mr. Burke. Happy is that 
people whose commerce flourishes in ledg- 
ers, while it is bewailed in orations; and 
remains untouched in calculation, while it 
expires in the pictures of eloquence. This 
unquestionable fact is, on such a subject, 
worth a thousand arguments, and to any 
mind qualified to judge, must expose in their 
true light those execrable fabrications, which 
have sounded such a "senseless yell" 
through Europe. 

But let us admit for a moment their truth, 
and take as a specimen of the evils of the 
Revolution, the number of lives which have 
been lost in its progress. That no possibility 
of cavil may remain, let us surpass in an ex- 
aggerated estimate the utmost audacity of 
falsehood : let us make a statement, from 
which the most frontless hireling of M. de 
Calonne would shrink. Let us for a moment 
suppose, that in the course of the Revolution 
twenty thousand lives have been lost. On 
the comparison of even this loss with parallel 
events in history, is there anything in it from 
which a manly and enlightened humanity 
will recoin Compare it with the expendi- 
ture of blood by which in ordinary wars so 
many pernicious and ignoble objects are 
fought. Compare it with the blood spilt by 
England in the attempt to subjugate Ameri- 
ca : and if such be the guilt of the Revolu- 
tionists of France, for having, at the hazard 
of this evil, sought the establishment of free- 
dom, what new name of obloquy shall be 
applied to the Minister of England, who 
with the certainty of a destruction so much 
greater, attempted the establishment of ty- 
ranny ] 

The illusion which prevents the effects of 
these comparisons, is not peculiar to Mr. 
Burke. The massacres of war, and the mur- 
ders committed by the sword of justice, are 
disguised by the solemnities which invest 
them : but the wild justice of the people has 
a naked and undisguised horror. Its slight- 
est motion awakens all our indignation ; 
while murder and rapine, if arrayed in the 
gorgeous disguise of acts of state, may with 
impunity stalk abroad. We forget that the 

* Abyssinian tribes.— Ed. 



432 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



evils of anarchy must be short-lived, while 
those of despotism are fatally permanent. 

Another illusion has, particularly in Eng- 
land, favoured the exaggeration of the exiles; 
— we judge of France by our own situation, 
instead of comparing her conduct with that 
of other nations in similar circumstances. 
With us " the times may be moderate, and 
therefere ought to be peaceable :"* but in 
France the times were not moderate, and 
could not be peaceable. Let us correct these 
illusions of moral optics which make near 
objects so disproportionately large. Let us 
place the scene of the French Revolution in 
a remote age, or in a distant nation, and then 
let us calmly ask our own minds, whether 
the most reasonable subject of wonder be 
not its unexampled mildness, and the small 
number of individuals crushed in the fall of 
so vast a pile. 

Such are the general reflections suggested 
by the disorders of the French Revolution. 
Of these, the first in point of time, as well 
as of importance, was the Parisian insurrec- 
tion and the capture of the Bastile. The 
mode in which that memorable event is 
treated by Mr. Burke, is worthy of notice. 
It occupies no conspicuous place in his work; 
it is only obscurely and contemptuously 
hinted at as one of those examples of suc- 
cessful revolt, which have fostered a muti- 
nous spirit in the soldiery. il They have not 
forgot the taking of the King's castles in 
Paris and Marseilles. That they murdered 
with impunity in both places the governors, 
has not escaped their minds. "t Such is the 
courtly circumlocution by which Mr. Burke 
designates the Bastile — '•'■ the King's castle at 
Paris /" such is the ignominious language in 
which he speaks of the summary justice 
executed on the titled ruffian who was its 
governor; and such is the apparent art with 
which he has thrown into the back-ground 
invective and asperity, that, had they been 
prominent, would have provoked the indig- 
nation of mankind ! " Je sais," says Mou- 
nier, in the language of that frigid and scanty 
approbation that is extorted from an enemy, 
^'qu'il est des circonstances qui legitiment 
l'insurrection, et je mets dans ce nombre 
celles qui ont cause le siege de la Bastile. "t 

But the admiration of Europe and of 
posterity, is not to be estimated by the 
penurious applause of M. Mounier, nor re- 
pressed by the insidious hostility of Mr. 
Burke. It will correspond to the splendour 
of an insurrection, as much ennobled by hero- 
ism as it was justified by necessity, in 
which the citizens of Paris, — the unwarlike 
inhabitants of a voluptuous capital, — listen- 
ing to no voice but that of the danger which 
menaced their representatives, their fami- 
lies, and their country, and animated, instead 
of awed, by the host of disciplined merce- 
naries which invested them on every side. 
attacked with a gallantry and success equally 



* Junius. 

X Expose, &c. p. 24. 



t Burke, p. 307. 



incredible, a fortress formidable from its 
strength, and tremendous from its destina- 
tion, and changed the destiny of France. 
To palliate or excuse such a revolt, would 
be abject treachery to its principles. It was 
a case in which revolt was the dictate of 
virtue, and the path of duty; and in which 
submission would have been the most das- 
tardly baseness, and the foulest crime. It 
was an action not to be excused, but ap- 
plauded, — not to be pardoned, but admired. 
1 shall not therefore descend to vindicate 
acts of heroism, which history will teach the 
remotest posterity to revere, and of which 
the recital is destined to kindle in unborn 
millions the holy enthusiasm of freedom. 

Commotions of another description follow- 
ed, partly arising from the general causes 
before stated, and partly from others of more 
limited and local operation. The peasantry 
of the provinces, buried for so many ages in 
the darkness of servitude, saw but indis- 
tinctly and confusedly, in the first dawn of 
liberty, the boundaries of their duties and 
their rights. It was no wonder that they 
should little understand that freedom which 
so long had been remote from their views. 
The name conveyed to their ear a right to 
reject all restraint, to gratify every resent- 
ment, and to attack all property. Ruffians, 
mingling with the deluded peasants, in hopes 
of booty, inflamed their ignorance and pre- 
judices, by forged authorities from the King 
and the Assembly for their licentiousness. 
Many country houses were burnt ; and some 
obnoxious persons were assassinated : but 
one may without excessive scepticism doubt, 
whether they had been the mildest masters 
whose chateaux had undergone that fate ; 
and the peasants had to avenge those silent 
grinding oppressions which formed almost 
the only intercourse of the rich with the in- 
digent, and which, though less flagrant than 
those of Government, were perhaps produc- 
tive of more intolerable and diffused misery. 

But whatever was the demerit of these 
excesses, they can by no process of reason- 
ing be made imputable to the National As- 
sembly, or the leaders of the Revolution. In 
what manner were the)' to repress them ? 
If they exerted against them their own au- 
thority with rigour, they must have provoked 
a civil war : if they invigorated the police and 
tribunals of the deposed government, — be- 
sides incurring the hazard of the same ca- 
lamity, — they put arms into the hands of 
their enemies. Placed in this dilemma, 
they were compelled to expect a slow reme- 
dy from the returning serenity of the public 
mind, and from the progress of the new go- 
vernment towards consistence and vigour.* 

* If this statement be candid and exact, what 
shall we think of the language of Mr. Burke, when 
he speaks of the Assembly as "authorising trea- 
sons, robberies, rapes, assassinations, slaughters, 
and burnings, throughout all their harassed land." 
(p. 58.) In another place (p. 200.) he connects the 
legislative extinction of the Order of Nobles with 
the popular excesses committed against individual 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



433 



That the conduct of the populace of Paris 
towards them should not have been the most 
decorous .and circumspect. — that it should 
have been frequently irregular and tumultu- 
ous, was, in the nature of things inevitable. 
But the horrible picture which Mr. Burke has 
drawn of that - stern necessity" under which 
this ;: captive" Assembly votes, is neither 
justified by this concession, nor by the state 
of facts. It is the overcharged colouring of 
a fervid imagination. Those to whom he 
alludes as driven away by assassins, — M. M. 
Lally and Mounier, — might, surely, have 
remained with perfect safety in an Assembly 
in which such furious invectives are daily 
bellowed forth with impunity against the 
popular leaders. No man will deny, that 
that member of the minority enjoyed liberty 
of speech in its utmost plenitude, who called 
M. Mirabeau u le plus vil de tous les assassins.' 7 
il The terrors of the lamp-post and bayonet" 
have hitherto been visionary. Popular fury 
has hitherto spared the most furious declaim- 
ers of Aristocracy ; and the only " decree," so 
far as I can discern, which has even been 
pretended to have been materially influenced 
by the populace, is that respecting the pre- 
rogatives of war and peace. That tumult 
has frequently derogated from the dignity 
which ought to distinguish the deliberations 
of a legislative assembly, is not to be denied. 
But that their debates have been tumultu- 
ous, is of little importance, if their decisions 
have been independent. Even in this ques- 
tion of war and peace, " the highest bidder 
at the auction of popularity"* did not suc- 
ceed. The scheme of M. Mirabeau, with 
few amendments, prevailed, while the more 
" splendidly popular" propositions, which 
vested in the legislature alone the preroga- 
tive of war and peace, were rejected. 

We are now conducted by the course of 
these strictures to the excesses committed at 
Versailles on the 5th and 6th of October, 
1789. After the most careful perusal of the 
voluminous evidence before the Chatel.'t. of 
the controversial pamphlets of M. M. d'Or- 
leans and Mounier, and of the official report 
of M. Chabroud to the Assembly, the details 
of the affair seem to me so much involved 
in obscurity and contradiction, that they 
afford little on which a candid mind can with 
confidence pronounce. They afford, indeed, 
to frivolous and puerile adversaries the means 
of convicting Mr. Burke of some minute 
errors. M. Miomandre, the sentinel at the 
Queen's gate, it is true, survives ; but it is 
no less true, that he was left for dead by his 
assassins. On the comparison of evidence 
it seems probable, that the Queen's chamber 
was not broken into, — -that the asylum of 
beauty and Majesty was not profaned.' "f 



^Noblemen, to load the Assembly with the accu- 
mulated obloquy ; — a mode of proceeding; more 
remarkable for controversial dexterity than tor 
candour. 

* Burke, p. 353. 

t The expression of M. Chabroud. Five wit- 
nesses assert that the ruffians did not break into 
55 



But these slight corrections palliate little the 
atrocity, and alter not in the least the gene- 
ral complexion, of these flagitious scenes. 

The most important question which the 
subject presents is. whether the Parisian 
populace were the instruments of conspira- 
tors, or whether their fatal march lo Ver- 
sailles was a spontaneous movement, pro- 
duced by real or chimerical apprehensions 
of plots against their freedom. I confess 
that I incline to the latter opinion. Natural 
causes seem to me adequate to account tor 
the movement. A scarcity of provision is 
not denied to have existed in Paris. The 
dinner of the body-guards might surely have 
provoked the people of a more tranquil city. 
The maledictions poured forth against the 
National Assembly, the insults offered to 
the patriotic cockade, the obnoxious ardour 
of loyalty displayed on that occasion, might 
have awakened even the jealousy of a people 
whose ardour had been sated by the long- 
enjoyment, and whose alarms had been 
quieted by the secure possession, of liberty. 
The escape of "the King would be the in- 
fallible signal of civil war: the exposed 
situation of the Royal residence was there- 
fore a source of perpetual alarm. These 
causes, operating on that credulous jealousy 
which is the malady of the public mind in 
times of civil confusion, seeing hostility and 
conspiracy on every side, would seem suffi- 
cient ones. The apprehensions of the people 
in such a period torture the most innocent 
and frivolous accidents into proofs of sangui- 
nary plots : — witness the war of conspiracies 
carried on by the contending factions in the 
reign of Charles the Second. The partici- 
pation of Queen Mary in Babington's plot 
against Elizabeth, is still the subject of con- 
troversy. We, at the present day, dispute 
about the nature of the connection which 
subsisted between Charles^he First and the 
Catholic insurgents of Ireland. It has occu- 
pied the labour of a century to separate 
truth from falsehood in the Rye-house Plot, 
— the views of the leaders from the schemes 
of the inferior conspirators, — and to discover 
that Russell and Sydney had, indeed, con- 
spired a revolt, but that the underlings 
alone had plotted the assassination of the 
King. 

It may indeed be said, that ambitious 
leaders availed themselves of the inflamed 
state of public feeling, — that by false ru- 
mours, and exaggerated truths, they stimu- 
lated the revenge, and increased the fears 
of the populace, — that their emissaries, mix- 
ing with the mob, and concealed by its con- 
fusion, were to execute their flagitious pur- 
poses, and fanatics, as usual, were the dupes 
of hypocrites. Such are the accusations 
which have been made against M. M. d'Or- 

the Queen's chamber. Two give the account fol- 
lowed by Mr. Burke, and to give this preponde- 
rance its due force, let it be recollected, that the 
whole proceedings before the Chatelet were ex 
parte. See Procedure Criminelle fait au Chatelet 
de Paris, &c, 1790. 

2M 



434 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



leans and Mirabeau. The defence of profli- 
gate ambition is not imposed on the admirers 
of the French Revolution ; and to become 
the advocate of individuals were to forget 
the dignity of a discussion that regards the 
rights and interests of an emancipated na- 
tion. Of their guilt, however. I will be bold 
to say no evidence was collected, by the 
malignant activity of an avowedly hostile 
tribunal, which, for a moment, would have 
suspended their acquittal by an English 
jury. It will be no mean testimony to the 
innocence of M. Mirabeau, that an oppo- 
nent, not the mildest in his enmity, nor the 
most candid in his judgment, confessed, that 
he saw no serious ground of accusation 
against him.* 

The project is attributed to them, of in- 
timidating the King into a flight, that there 
might be a pretext for elevating the Duke 
of Orleans to the office of Regent. But the 
King could have had no rational hopes of 
escaping jt for he must have traversed two 
hundred miles of a country guarded by a 
people in arms, before he could reach the 
nearest frontier of the kingdom. The object 
was too absurd to be pursued by conspira- 
tors, to whom talent and sagacity have not 
been denied by their enemies. That the 
popular leaders in France did, indeed, desire 
to fix the Royal residence at Paris, it is im- 
possible to doubt : the name, the person, and 
the authority of the King, would have been 
most formidable weapons in the hands of 
their adversaries. The peace of their coun- 
try, — the stability of their freedom, called 
on them to use every measure that could 
prevent their enemies from getting posses- 
sion of that "Royal Figure." The name of 
the King would have sanctioned foreign 
powers in supporting the aristocracy. Their 
interposition, which now would be hostility 
against the King and kingdom, would then 
have been only regarded as aid against re- 
bellion. Against all these dreadful conse- 
quences there seemed only one remedy, — 
the residence of the King at Paris. Whether 
that residence is to be called a "captivity." 
or any other harsh name, I will not hesitate 
to affirm, that the Parliament of England 
would have merited the gratitude of their 
country, and of posterity, by a similar pre- 
vention of the escape of Charles I. from 
London. Fortunate would it have been for 
England if the person of James II. had been 
retained while his authority was limited. 
She would then have been circumstanced as 
France is now. The march to Versailles 
seems to have been the spontaneous move- 
ment of an alarmed populace. Their views, 
and the suggestions of their leaders, were 
probably bounded by procuring the King to 
change his residence to Paris ; but the colli- 
sion of armed multitudes terminated in un- 
foreseen excesses and execrable crimes. 



* Disconrs de M. l'Abbe Maury dans l'As- 
semblee Nationale, 1 Octobre, 1790. 

t The circumstances of his late attempt [the 
flight to Varennes — Ed.] sanction this reasoning. 



In the eye of Mr. Burke, however, these 
crimes and excesses assume an aspect far 
more important than can be communicated 
to them by their own insulated gudt. They 
form, in his opinion, the crisis of a revolu- 
tion. — a far more important one than any 
mere change of government. — in which the 
sentiments and opinions that have formed 
the manners of the European nations are to 
perish. "The age of chivalry is gone, and 
the glory of Europe extinguished for ever." 
He follows this exclamation by an eloquent 
eulogium on chivalry, and by gloomy pre- 
dictions of the future state of Europe, when 
the nation that has been so long accustomed 
to give her the tone in arts and manners is 
thus debased and corrupted. A caviller 
might remark that ages, much more near 
the meridian fervour of chivalry than ours, 
have witnessed a treatment of queens as 
little gallant and generous as that of the 
Parisian mob. He might remind Mr. Burke, 
that in the age and country of Sir Philip 
Sidney, a Queen of France, whom no blind- 
ness to accomplishment, — no malignity of 
detraction, can reduce to the level of Marie 
Antoinette, was, by "a nation of men of 
honour and cavaliers," permitted to languish 
in captivity and expire on a scaffold ; and he 
might add, that the manners of a country 
are more surely indicated by the systematic 
cruelty of a sovereign than by the licentious 
frenzy of a mob. He might remark, that 
the mild system of modern manners which 
survived the massacres with which fanati- 
cism had for a century desolated, and almost 
barbarised Europe, might, perhaps, resist the 
shock of one day's excesses committed by a 
delirious populace. He might thus, perhaps, 
oppose specious and popular topics to the 
declamation of Mr. Burke. 

But the subject itself is, to an enlarged 
thinker, fertile in reflections of a different 
nature. That system of manners which 
arose among the Gothic nations of Europe, 
and of which chivalry was more properly 
the effusion than the source, is without doubt 
one of the most peculiar and interesting ap- 
pearances in human affairs. The moral 
causes which formed its character have not, 
perhaps, been hitherto investigated with the 
happiest success: but, — to confine ourselves 
to the subject before us, — chivalry was cer- 
tainly one of the most prominent of its fea- 
tures and most remarkable of its effects. 
Candour must confess, that this singular in- 
stitution was not admirable only as the cor- 
rector of the ferocious ages in which it flour- 
ished; but that in contributing to polish and 
soften manners it paved the way for the dif- 
fusion of knowledge and the extension of 
commerce, which afterwards, in some mea- 
sure, supplanted it. Society is inevitably 
progressive. Commerce has overthrown the 
" feudal and chivalrous system" under whose 
shade it first grew ; while learning has sub- 
verted the superstition whose opulent en- 
dowments had first fostered it. Peculiar 
circumstances connected with the manners 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



435 



of chivalry favoured this admission of com- 
merce and this growth of knowledge ; while 
the sentiments peculiar to it. already enfee- 
bled in the progress from ferocity and turbu- 
lence, were almost obliterated by tranquillity 
and refinement. Commerce and diffused 
knowledge have, in fact, so completely as- 
sumed the ascendant in polished nations, that 
it will be difficult to discover any relics of 
Gothic manners, but in a fantastic exterior, 
which has survived the generous illusions 
through which these manners once seemed 
splendid and seductive. Their direct influ- 
ence has long ceased in Europe ; but their 
indirect, influence, through the medium of 
those causes which would not perhaps have 
existed but for the mildness which chivalry 
created in the midst of a barbarous age, still 
operates with increasing vigour. The man- 
ners of the middle age were, in the most 
singular sense, compulsory : enterprising be- 
nevolence was produced by general fierce- 
ness; — gallant courtesy by ferocious rude- 
ness; and artificial gentleness resisted the 
torrent of natural barbarism. But a less in- 
congruous system has succeeded, in which 
commerce, which unites men's interests, and 
knowledge, which excludes those prejudices 
that tend to embroil them, present a broader 
basis for the stability of civilized and benefi- 
cent manners. 

Mr. Burke, indeed, forbodes the most fatal 
consequences to literature from events, which 
he supposes to have given a mortal blow to 
the spirit of chivalry. I have ever been pro- 
tected from such apprehensions by my belief 
in a very simple truth, — " that diffused know- 
ledge immortalizes itself. 7 ' A literature 
which is confined to a few, may be destroyed 
by the massacre of scholars and the confla- 
gration of libraries : but the diffused know- 
ledge of the present day could only be anni- 
hilated by the extirpation of the civilized 
part of mankind. 

Far from being hostile to letters, the French 
Revolution has contributed to serve their 
cause in a manner hitherto unexampled. 
The political and literary progress of nations 
has hitherto been simultaneous ; the period 
of their eminence in arts has also been the 
era of their historical fame ; and no example 
occurs in which their great political splendour 
has been subsequent to the Augustan age of 
a people. But in France, which is destined 
to refute every abject and arrogant doctrine 
that would limit the human powers, the 
ardour of a youthful literature has been in- 
fused into a nation tending to decline; and 
new arts are called forth when all seemed to 
have passed their zenith. She enjoyed one 
Augustan age, fostered by the favour of des- 
potism : she seems about to witness another, 
created by the energy of freedom. 

In the opinion of Mr. Burke, however, she 
is advancing by rapid strides to ignorance 
and barbarism.* '•' Already," he informs us, 
•there appears a poverty of conception, a 

* Burke, p. 118. 



coarseness and vulgarity in all the proceed- 
ings of the Assembly, and of all their in- 
structors. Their liberty is not liberal. Their 
science is presumptuous ignorance. Their 
humanity is savage and brutal." To ani- 
madvert on this modest and courteous pic- 
ture belongs not to the present subject : and 
impressions cannot be disputed, more espe- 
cially when their grounds are not assigned. 
All that is left to us to do, is to declare op- 
posite impressions with a confidence autho- 
rised by his example. The proceedings of 
the National Assembly of France appear to 
me to contain models of more splendid elo- 
quence, and examples of more profound po- 
litical research, than have been exhibited by 
any public body in modern times. I cannot 
therefore augur, from these proceedings, the 
downfall of philosophy, or the extinction of 
eloquence. 

Thus various are the aspects which the 
French Revolution, not only in its influence 
on literature, but in its general tenor and 
spirit, presents to minds occupied by various 
opinions. To the eye of Mr. Burke, it ex- 
hibits nothing but a scene of horror : in his 
mind it inspires no emotion but abhorrence 
of its leaders, commiseration for their victims, 
and alarms at the influence of an event which 
menaces the subversion of the policy, the 
arts, and the manners of the civilized world. 
Minds who view it through another medium 
are filled by it with every sentiment of admi- 
ration and triumph, — of admiration due to 
splendid exertions of virtue, and of triumph 
inspired by widening prospects of happiness. 

Nor ought it to be denied by the candour 
of philosophy, that events so great are never 
so unmixed as not to present a double aspect 
to the acuteness and exaggeration of con- 
tending parties. The same ardour of pas- 
sion which produces patriotic and legislative 
heroism becomes the source of ferocious re- 
taliation, of visionary novelties, and of pre- 
cipitate change. The attempt were hopeless 
to increase the fertility, without favouring the 
rank luxuriance of the soil. He that on such 
occasions expects unmixed good, ought to 
recollect, that the economy of nature has in- 
variably determined the equal influence of 
high passions in giving birth to virtues and 
to crimes. The soil of Attica was observed 
to produce at once the most delicious fruits 
and the most virulent poisons. It was thus 
with the human mind : and to the frequency 
of convulsions in the ancient commonwealths, 
they owe those examples of sanguinary tu- 
mult and virtuous heroism, which distinguish 
their history from the monotonous tranquillity 
of modern states. The passions of a nation 
cannot be kindled to the degree which renders 
it capable of great achievements, without in- 
volving the commission of violence and crime. 
The reforming ardour of a senate cannot be 
inflamed sufficiently to combat and overcome 
abuses, without hazarding the evils which 
arise from legislative temerity. Such are the 
immutable laws, which are more properly to 
be regarded as libels on our nature than as 



436 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



charges against the French Revolution. The 
impartial voice of History ought, doubtless, to 
record the blemishes as well as the glories of 
that great event : and to contrast the delinea- 
tion of it which might have been given by the 
specious and temperate Toryism of Mr. Hume, 
with that which we have received from the 
repulsive and fanatical invectives of Mr. 
Burke, might still be amusing and instructive. 
Both these great men would be averse to the 
Revolution; but it would not be difficult to dis- 
tinguish between the undisguised fury of an 
eloquent advocate, and the well-dissembled 
partiality of a philosophical judge. The pas- 
sion of the latter would only feel the ex- 
which have dishonoured the Revolu- 
tion : but the philosophy of the former would 
instruct him, that our sentiments, raised by 
such events so much above their ordinary 
level, become the source of guilt and heroism 
unknown before, — of sublime virtues and 
splendid crimes. 



SECTION IV. 
Neiv Constitution of France* 

A dissertation approaching to complete- 
ness on the new Constitution of France, 
would, in fact, be a vast system of political 
science. It would include a development 
of the principles that regulate every portion 
of government. So immense an attempt is 
little suited to our present limits. But some 
remarks on the prominent features of the 
French system are exacted by the nature of 
our vindication. They will consist chiefly 
of a defence of their grand theoretic princi- 
ple, and their most important practical insti- 
tution. 

The principle which has actuated the le- 
gislators of France has been, " that the ob- 
ject of all legitimate government is the as- 
sertion and protection of the natural rights 
of man." They cannot indeed be absolved 
from some deviations! from it ; — few. indeed, 
compared with those of any other body of 
whom history has preserved any record ; but 
too many for their own glory, and for the 
happiness of the human race. This princi- 
ple, however, is the basis of their edifice, 
and if it be false, the structure must fall to 
the ground. Against this principle, there- 
fore, Mr. Burke has, with great judgment, 
directed his attack. Appeals to natural right 
are, according to him, inconsistent and pre- 
posterous. A complete abdication and sur- 
render of all natural right is made by man 



* I cannot help exhorting those who desire to 
have accurate notions on the subject of this sec- 
tion, to peruse and study the delineation of the 
French constitution which with a correctness so 
admirable has been given by Mr. Christie. — (Let- 
ters on the Revolution in France, London, 1791. 
Ed.) 

tl particularly allude to their colonial policy; 
but I think it candid to say, that I see in their full 
force the difficulties of that embarrassing business. 



in entering into society: and the only rights 
which he retains are created by the compact 
which holds together the society of which 
he is member. This doctrine he thus ex- 
plicitly asserts: — "The moment," says he, 
'■' you abate any thing from the full rights of 
men each to govern himself, and suffer any 
artirieial positive limitation on those rights, 
from that moment the whole organization of 
society becomes a consideration of conve- 
nience."'' ' : How can any man claim under 
the conventions of civil society rights which 
do not so much as suppose its existence, — 
which are absolutely repugnant to it'?"* To 
examine this doctrine, therefore, is of funda- 
mental importance. To .this effect it is not 
necessary to enter into any elaborate re- 
search into the metaphysical principles of 
politics and ethics. A full discussion of the 
subject would indeed demand such an in- 
vestigation :f — the origin of natural rights 
must have been illustrated, and even their 
existence proved against some theorists. 
But such an inquiry would have been incon- 
sistent with the nature of a publication, the 
object of which is to enforce conviction on 
the people. We are besides absolved from 
the necessity of it in a controversy with Mr. 
Burke, who himself recognises, in the most 
ample form, the existence of those natural 
rights. 

Granting their existence, the discussion is 
short. The only criterion by which we can 
estimate the portion of natural right surren- 
dered by man on entering into society is the 
object of the surrender. If more is claimed, 
than that object exacts, what was an object 
becomes a pretext. Now the object for which 
a man resigns any portion of his natural sove- 
reignty over his own actions is, that he may 
be protected from the abuse of the same do- 
minion in other men. Nothing, therefore, 
can be more fallacious than to pretend, that 
we are precluded in the social state from 
any appeal to natural right. t It remains in 



* Burke, pp. 88 — 89. To the same purpose is 
his whole reasoning from p. 86, to p. 92. 

t It might, perhaps, not be difficult to prove, 
that far from a surrender, there is not even a 
diminution of the natural rights of men by their 
entrance into society. The existence of some 
union, with greater or less permanence and per- 
fection of public force for public protection (the 
essence of government), might be demonstrated 
to be coeval and co-extensive with man. All 
theories, therefore, which suppose the actual ex- 
istence of any state antecedent to the social, might 
be convicted of futility and falsehood. 

X " Trouver une forme d'association qui defende 
et protege de toute la force commune la personne 
et les biens de chaque associe, et par laquelle 
chacun, s'unissant a tous, n'obeisse pourtant qu'a 
Ini-meme et reste aussi libre qu'auparavaiu ?" 
— Rousseau, Contrat Social, livre i. chap. vi. I 
am not intimidated from quoting Rousseau by the 
derision of Mr. Burke. Mr. Hume's report of 
his literary secrets seems most unfiiihful. The 
sensibility, the pride, the fervour of his character, 
are pledges of his sincerity : and had he even 
commenced with the fabrication of paradoxes, for 
attracting attention, it would betray great igno- 
rance of human nature to suppose, that in the ar- 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



437 



its full integrity and vigour, if we except 
that portion of it which men have thus mu- 
tually agreed to sacrifice. Whatever, under 
pretence of that surrender, is assumed be- 
yond what that object rigorously prescribes, 
is an usurpation supported by sophistry, — a 
despotism varnished by illusion. It follows 
that the surrender of right must be equal in 
all the members of society, as the object is to 
all precisely the same. In effect, society, in- 
stead of destroying, realizes and substantiates 
equality. In a state of nature, the equality 
of right is an impotant theory, which inequa- 
lities of strength and skill every moment 
violate. As neither natural equality nor the 
equality of the sum of right surrendered by 
every individual is contested, it cannot be 
denied that the remnant spared by the so- 
cial compact must be equal also. Civil in- 
equalities, or, more correctly, civil distinc- 
tion, must exist in the social body, because 
it must possess organs destined for different 
functions : but political inequality is equally 
inconsistent with the principles of natural 
right and the object of civil institution.* 

Men, therefore, only retain a right to a 
share in their own government, because the 
exercise of the right by one man is not in- 
consistent with its possession by another. 
This doctrine is not more abstractedly evi- 
dent than it is practically important. The 
slightest deviation from it legitimatizes every 
tyranny. If the only criterion of govern- 
ments be the supposed convention which 
forms them, all are equally legitimate : for 
the only interpreter of the convention is the 
usage of the government, which is thus pre- 
posterously made its own standard. Gover- 
nors must, indeed, abide by the maxims of 
the constitution they administer; but what 
that constitution is must be on this system 
immaterial. The King of France is not per- 
mitted to put out the eyes of the Princes of 
the Blood; nor the Sophi of Persia to have 
recourse to Uttres de cachet. They must ty- 
rannize by precedent, and oppress in reve- 
rent imitation of the models consecrated by 



dour of contest, and the glory of success, he must 
not have become the dupe of his own illusions, 
and a convert to his own imposture. It is, indeed, 
not improbable, that when rallied on the eccen- 
tricity of his paradoxes, he might, in a moment of 
gay effusion, have spoken of them as a sport of 
fancy, and an experiment on the credulity of man- 
kind. The Scottish philosopher, inaccessible to 
enthusiasm, and little susceptible of those depres- 
sions and elevations — those agonies and raptures, 
so familiar to the warm and wayward heart of 
Rousseau, neither knew the sport into which he 
could be relaxed by gaiety, nor the ardour into 
which he could be exalted by passion. Mr. Burke, 
whose temperament is so different, might have 
experimentally known such variation, and learnt 
better to discriminate between effusion and deli- 
berate opinion. 

* " But as to the share of power, authority, and 
direction which each individual ought to have in 
the management of a state, that I must deny to be 
among the direct original rights of man in civil so- 
ciety." This is evidently denying the existence 
of what has been called political, in contradistinc- 
tion to civil liberty. 



the usage of despotic predecessors. But if 
they adhere to these, there is no remedy for 
the oppressed, since an appeal to the rights 
of nature were treason against the principles 
of the social union. If, indeed, any offence 
against precedent, in the kind or degree of 
oppression, be committed, this theory may 
(though most inconsistently) permit resist- 
ance. But as long as the forms of any go- 
vernment are preserved, it possesses, in the 
view of justice (whatever be its nature) 
equal claims to obedience. This inference 
is irresistible ; and it is thus evident, that 
the doctrines of Mr. Burke are doubly re- 
futed by the fallacy of the logic which sup- 
ports them, and the absurdity of the conclu- 
sions to which they lead. 

They are also virtually contradicted by 
the laws of all nations. Were his opinions 
true, the language of laws should be permis- 
sive, not restrictive. Had men surrendered 
all their rights into the hands of the magis- 
trate, the object of laws should have to an- 
nounce the portion he was pleased to return 
them, not the part of which he is compelled 
to deprive them. The criminal code of all 
nations consists of prohibitions; and what- 
ever is not prohibited by the law, men every 
where conceive themselves entitled to do 
with impunity. They act on the principle 
which this language of law teaches them, 
that they retain rights which no power can 
impair or infringe, — which are not the boon 
of society, but the attribute of their nature. 
The rights of magistrates and public officers 
are truly the creatures of society : they, 
therefore, are guided not by what the law 
does nftt prohibit, but by what it authori- 
ses or enjoins. Were the rights of citizens 
equally created by social institution, the lan- 
guage of the civil code would be similar, and 
the obedience of subjects would have the 
same limits. 

This doctrine, thus false in its principles, 
absurd in its conclusions, and contradicted 
by the avowed sense of mankind, is, lastly, 
even abandoned by Mr. Burke himself. He 
is betrayed into a confession directly repug- 
nant to his general principle : — " Whatever 
each man can do without trespassing on 
others, he has a right to do for himself; and 
he has a right to a fair portion of all that so- 
ciety, with all its combinations of skill and 
force, can do for him." Either this right is 
universal, or it is not : — if it be universal, it 
cannot be the offspring of a convention; for 
conventions must be as various as forms of 
government, and there are many of them 
which do not recognise this right, nor place 
man in this condition of just equality. All 
governments, for example, which tolerate 
slavery neglect this right ; for a slave is nei- 
ther entitled to the fruits of his own indus- 
try, nor to any portion of what the combined 
force and skill of society produce. If it be 
not universal it is no right at all ; and can 
only be called a privilege accorded by some 
governments, and withheld by others. I can 
discern no mode of escaping from this di- 
2m 2 



438 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



lemma, but the avowal that these civil claims 
are the remnant of those "metaphysic rights" 
which Mr. Burke holds in such abhorrence; 
but which it seems the more natural object 
of societv to protect than destroy. 

But it may be urged, that though all ap- 
peals to natural rights be not precluded by 
the social compact, and though their integrity 
and perfection in the civil state may theoreti- 
cally be admitted, yet as men unquestionably 
may refrain from the exercise of their rights, 
if they think their exertion unwise, and as 
government is not a scientific subtlety, but a 
practical expedient for general good, all re- 
course to these elaborate abstractions is frivo- 
lous and futile; and that the grand question 
is not the source, but the tendency of go- 
vernment, — not a question of right, but a con- 
sideration of expediency. Political forms, 
it may be added, are only the means of in- 
suring a certain portion of public felicity : if 
the end be confessedly obtained, all discus- 
sion of the theoretical aptitude of the means 
to produce it is nugatory and redundant. 

To this I answer, first, that such reasoning 
proves too much, and that, taken in its proper 
extent, it impeaches the great system of 
morals, of which political principles form 
only a part. All morality is, no doubt, found- 
ed on a broad and general expediency ; and 
the sentiment — 

" Ipsa utiliias justi prope mater et aequi,"* 
may be safely adopted, without the reserve 
dictated by the timid and inconstant philoso- 
phy of the poet. Justice is expediency, but 
it is expediency speaking by general max- 
ims, into which reason has consecrated the 
experience of mankind. Every general prin- 
ciple of justice is demonstrably expedient: 
and it is this utility alone that confers on it a 
moral obligation. But it would be fatal to 
the existence of morality, if the utility of 
every particular act were to be the subject 
of deliberation in the mind of every moral 
agent. Political principles are only moral 
ones adapted to the civil union of men. 
When I assert that a man has a right to life, 
liberty, &c. I only mean to enunciate a mo- 
ral maxim founded on the general interest, 
which prohibits any attack on these posses- 
sions. In this primary and radical sense, 
all rights, natural as well as civil, arise from 
expediency. But the moment the moral 
edifice is reared, its basis is hid from the eye 
for ever. The moment these maxims, which 
are founded on an utility that is paramount 
and perpetual, are embodied and consecra- 
ted, they cease to yield to partial and subor- 
dinate expediency. It then becomes the 
perfection of virtue to consider, not whether 
an action be useful, but whether it be right. 

The same necessity for the substitution of 
general maxims exisls in politics as in mo- 
rals. Those precise and infiexibile princi- 
ples, which yield neither to the seductions 
of passion, nor to the suggestions of interest, 
ought to be the guide of public as well as 

* Horace, lib. ii. Sat. 3. — Ed. 



private morals. "Acting according to the 
natural rights of men/' is only another ex- 
pression for acting according to those general 
maxims of social morals which prescribe 
what is right and fit in human intercourse. 
We have proved that the social compact does 
not alter these maxims, or destroy these 
rights; and it incontestably follows, from 
the same principles which guide all mo- 
ralityj that no expediency can justify their 
infraction. 

The inflexibility of general principl°s is, 
indeed, perhaps more necessary in political 
morals than in any other class of actions. If 
the consideration of expediency be admitted, 
the question recurs, — Who are to judge of 
it? The appeal is never made to the many 
whose interest is at stake, but to the few, 
whose interest is linked to the perpetuity ot 
oppression and abuse. Surely that judge 
ought to be bound down by the strictest 
rules, who is undeniably interested in the 
decision : and he would scarcely be esteemed 
a wise legislator, who should vest in the next 
heir to a lunatic a discretionary power to 
judge of his sanity. Far more necessary, 
then, is obedience to general principles, and 
maintenance of natural rights, in politics than 
in the morality of common life. The mo- 
ment that the slightest infraction of these 
rights is permitted through motives of con- 
venience, the bulwark of all upright politics 
is lost. If a small convenience will justify 
a little infraction, a greater will expiate a 
bolder violation : the Rubicon is past. Ty- 
rants never seek in vain for sophists : pre- 
tences are multiplied without difficulty and 
without end. Nothing, therefore, but an in- 
flexible adherence to the principles of gene- 
ral right can preserve the purity, consistency, 
and stability of a free state. 

If we have thus successfully vindicated 
the first theoretical principle of French legis- 
lation, the doctrine of an absolute surrender 
of natural rights by civil and social man, has 
been shown to be deduced from inadequate 
premises, — to conduct to absurd conclusions, 
to sanctify the most atrocious despotism, to 
outrage the avowed convictions of men, and, 
finally, to be abandoned, as hopelessly un- 
tenable by its own author. The existence 
and perfection of these rights being proved, 
the first duty of lawgivers and magistrates is 
to assert and protect them. Most wisely and 
auspiciously then did France commence her 
regenerating labours with a solemn declara- 
tion of these sacred, inalienable, and impre- 
scriptible rights, — a declaration which must 
be to the citizen the monitor of his duties, as 
well as the oracle of his rights, and by a per- 
petual recurrence to which the deviations of 
the magistrate will be checked, the tendency 
of power to abuse corrected, and every po- 
litical proposition (being compared with the 
end of society) correctly and dispassionately 
estimated. To the juvenile vigour of rea- 
son and freedom in the New World, — where 
the human mind was unincumbered with 
that vast mass of usage and prejudice, which 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



439 



so many ages of ignorance had accumulated, 
to load and deform society in Europe, — 
France owed this, among other lessons. 
Perhaps the only expedient that can be de- 
vised by human wisdom to keep alive public 
vigilance against the usurpation of partial in- 
terests, is that of perpetually presenting the 
general right and the general interest to the 
public eye. Such a principle has been the 
Polar Star, by which the National Assembly 
has hitherto navigated the vessel of the state, 
amid so many tempests howling destruction 
around it. 

There remains a much more extensive and 
complicated inquiry, in the consideration of 
their political institutions. As it is impossi- 
ble to examine all. we must limit our remarks 
to the most important. To speak then gene- 
rally of their Constitution, it is a preliminary 
remark, that the application of the word " de- 
mocracy" to it is fallacious and illusive. If 
that word, indeed, be taken in its etymologi- 
cal sense, as the " power of the people," it is 
a democracy ; and so are all legitimate go- 
vernments. But if it be taken in its historical 
sense, it is not so : for it does not resemble 
those governments which have been called 
democracies in ancient or modern times. In 
the ancient democracies there was neither 
representation nor division of powers : the 
rabble legislated, judged and exercised every 
political authority. I do not mean to deny 
that in Athens, of which history has trans- 
mitted to us the most authentic monuments, 
there did exist some feeble control. But it 
has been well remarked, that a multitude, if 
it was composed of Newtons, must be a 
mob: their will must be equally unwise, un- 
just, and irresistible. The authority of a 
corrupt and tumultuous populace has indeed 
by the best writers of antiquity been regarded 
rather as an ochlocracy than a democracy, — 
as the despotism of the rabble, not the do- 
minion of the people. It is a degenerate 
democracy : it is a febrile paroxysm of the 
social body which must speedily terminate 
in convalescence or dissolution. The new 
Constitution of France is almost directly the 
reverse of these forms. It vests the legisla- 
tive authority in the representatives of the 
people, the executive in an hereditary First 
Magistrate, and the judicial in judges, pe- 
riodically elected, and unconnected either 
with the legislature or with the Executive 
Magistrate. To confound such a constitution 
with the democracies of antiquity, for the 
purpose of quoting historical and experimental 
evidence against it, is to recur to the most 
paltry and shallow arts of sophistry. 

In discussing it, the first question that 
arises regards the mode of constituting the 
legislature; the first division of which, re- 
lating to the right of suffrage, is of primary 
importance. Here I most cordially agree 
with Mr. Burke* in reprobating the impotent 
and preposterous qualification by which the 
Assembly has disfranchised every citizen 

* Burke, p. 257. 



who does not pay a direct contribution 
equivalent to the price of three days' labour. 
Nothing can be more evident than its ineffi- 
cacy for any purpose but the display of in- 
consistency, and the violation of justice. 
These remarks were made at the moment 
of the discussion ; and the plan* was com- 
bated in the Assembly with all the force of 
reason and eloquence by the most conspicu- 
ous leaders of the popular party, — MM. Mi- 
rabeau, Target, and Petion, more particularly 
distinguishing themselves by their opposition. 
But the more timid and prejudiced members 
of it shrunk from so bold an innovation in 
political systems as justice. They fluctuated 
between their principles and their prejudices ; 
and the struggle terminated in an illusive 
compromise, — the constant resource of feeble 
and temporizing characters. They were con- 
tent that little practical evil should in fact be 
produced ; whde their views were not suffi- 
ciently enlarged to perceive, that the inviola- 
bility of principles is the palladium of virtue 
and of freedom. Such members do not, in- 
deed, form the majority of their own party; 
but the aristocratic minority, anxious for 
whatever might dishonour or embarrass the 
Assembly, eagerly coalesced with them, and 
stained the infant Constitution with this ab- 
surd usurpation. 

An enlightened and respectable antagonist 
of Mr. Burke has attempted the defence of 
this measure. In a Letter to Earl Stanhope, 
it is contended, that the spirit of this regula- 
tion accords exactly with the principles of 
natural justice, because, even in an unsocial 
state, the pauper has a claim only on charity, 
and he who produces nothing has no right to 
share in the regulation of what is produced 
by the industry of others. But whatever be 
the justice of disfranchising the unproductive 
poor, the argument is, in point of fact, totally 
misapplied. Domestic servants are excluded 
by the decree though they subsist as evi- 
dently on the produce of their own labour as 
any other class : and to them therefore the 
argument of our acute and ingenious writer 
is totally inapplicable. t But it is the conso- 
lation of the consistent friends of freedom, 
that this abuse must be short-lived : the 
spirit of reason and liberty, which has 
achieved such mighty victories, cannot long 
be resisted by this puny foe. The number 
of primary electors is at present so great, and 
the importance of their single votes so pro- 
portionally little, that their interest in resist- 
ing the extension of the right of suffrage is 
insignificantly small. Thus much have I 
spoken of the usurpation of the rights of suf- 

* See the Proces Verhaux of the 27th and 29th 
of October, 1789, and the Journal de Paris, No. 
301, and Les Revolutions de Paris, No. 17, p. 73. 

t It has been very justly remarked, that even 
with reference to taxation, all men have equal 
rights of election. For the man who is too poor 
to pay a direct contribution, still pays a tax in the 
increased price of his food and clothes. It is be- 
sides to be observed, that life and liberty are more 
sacred than property, and that the right of suffrage 
is the only shield that can guard them. 



440 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



frage, with the ardour of anxious affection, 
and with the freedom of liberal admiration. 
The moment is too serious for compliment; 
and I leave untouched to the partisans of 
despotism, their monopoly of blind and ser- 
vile applause.* 

I must avow, with the same frankness, 
equal disapprobation of the admission of ter- 
ritory and contribution as elements entering 
into the proportion of representation. t The 
representation of land or money is a mon- 
strous relic of ancient prejudice : men only 
can be represented ; and population alone 
ought to regulate the number of representa- 
tives which any district delegates, 

The next consideration that presents itself 
is, the nature of those bodies into which the 
citizens of France are to be organized for the 
performance of their political functions. In 
this important part of the subject, Mr. Burke 
has committed some fundamental errors : it 
is more amply, more dexterously, and more 
correctly treated by M. de Calonne ; of whose 
work this discussion forms the most interest- 
ing part. These assemblies are of four kinds : 
— Municipal, Primary, Electoral, and Ad- 
ministrative. 

To the Municipalities belong the care of 
preserving the police, and collecting the 
revenue within their jurisdiction. An accu- 
rate idea of their nature and object may be 
formed by supposing the country of England 
uniformly divided, and governed, like its 
cities and towns, by magistracies of popular 
election. 

The Primary Assemblies, the first elements 
of the commonwealth, are formed by all citi- 
zens, who pay a direct contribution, equal to 
the price of three days' labour, which may 
be averaged at half-a-crown sterling. Their 
functions are purely electoral. They send 
representatives, in the proportion of one to 
every hundred adult citizens, to the Assem- 
bly of the Department directly, and not 
through the medium of the District, as was 
originally proposed by the Constitutional 
Committee, and has been erroneously stated 
by Mr. Burke. They send, indeed, repre- 
sentatives to the Assembly of the District ; 
but it is for the purpose of choosing the Ad- 
ministrators of such District, not the Electors 
of the Department. The Electoral Assem- 
blies of the Departments elect the members 

* " He who freely magnifies what has been 
nobly done, and fears not lo declare as freely what 
might have been done belter, gives you the best 
covenant of his fidelity. His highest praise is not 
flattery, and his plainest advice is praise." — Areo- 
pagitica. 

t Montesquieu, I think, mentions a federative 
republic in Lycia, where the proportion of repre- 
sentatives deputed by each state was in a ratio 
compounded of its population and its contribution. 
There might be some plausibility in this institution 
among confederated independent slates ; but it is 
grossly absurd in a commonwealth, which is vitally 
one. In such a state, the contribution of all being 
proportioned to their capacity, it is relatively equal ; 
and if it can confer any political claims, they must 
he derived from equal rights. 



of the legislature, the judges, the administra- 
tors, and the bishop of the Department. The 
Administrators are every where the organs 
and instruments of the executive power. 

Against the arrangement of these Assem- 
blies, many subtle and specious objections 
are urged, both by Mr. Burke and the exiled 
Minister of Fiance. The first and most for- 
midable is. " the supposed tendency of it to 
dismember France into a body of confede- 
rated republics." To this there are several 
unanswerable replies. But before I state 
them, it is necessary to make one distinc- 
tion : — these several bodies are, in a certain 
sense, independent, in what regards subordi- 
nate and interior regulation ; but they are not 
independent in the sense which the objec- 
tion supposes, — that of possessing a separate 
will from that of the nation, or influencing, 
but by their representatives, the general 
system of the state. Nay, it may be demon- 
strated, that the legislators of France have 
solicitously provided more elaborate precau- 
tions against this dismemberment than have 
been adopted by any recorded government. 

The first circumstance which is adverse to 
it is the minuteness of the divided parts. They 
are too small to possess a separate force. As 
elements of the social order, as particles of a 
great political body, they are something; but, 
as insulated states, they would be impotent. 
Had France been separated into great masses, 
each might have been strong enough to claim 
a separate will : but, divided as she is, no 
body of citizens is conscious of sufficient 
strength to feel their sentiments of any im- 
portance, but as constituent parts of the 
general will. Survey the Primary, the Elec- 
toral, and the Administrative Assemblies, 
and nothing will be more evident than their 
impotence in individuality. The Munici- 
palities, surely, are not likely to arrogate 
independence. A forty-eight thousandth 
part of the kingdom has not energy sufficient 
for separate existence ; nor can a hope arise 
in it of influencing, in a direct and dictatorial 
manner, the councils of a great state. Even 
the Electoral Assemblies of the Departments 
do not, as we shall afterwards show, possess 
force enough to become independent con- 
federated republics. 

Another circumstance, powerfully hostile 
to this dismemberment, is the destruction of 
the ancient Provincial division of the king- 
dom. In no part of Mr. Burke's work have 
his arguments been chosen with such infeli- 
city of selection as in what regards this 
subject. He has not only erred ; but his 
error is the precise reverse of truth. He 
represents as the harbinger of discord, what 
is, in fact, the instrument of union. He mis- 
takes the cement of the edifice for a source 
of instability and a principle of repulsion. 
France was, under the ancient government, 
an union of provinces, acquired at various! 
times and on different conditions, and differ- 
ing in constitution, laws, language, manners, 
privileges, jurisdiction, and revenue. It had 
the exterior of a simple monarchy, but it 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



44 



was in reality an aggregate of independent 
states. The monarch was in one place King 
of Navarre, in another Duke of Brittany, in 
a third Count of Provence, in a fourth Dau- 
phin of Vienne. Under these various deno- 
minations he possessed, at least nominally, 
different degrees of power, and he certainly 
exercised it under different forms. The mass 
composed of these heterogeneous and dis- 
cordant elements, was held together by the 
compressing force of despotism. When that 
compression was withdrawn, the provinces 
must have resumed their ancient independ- 
ence. — perhaps in a form more absolute than 
as members of a federative republic. Every 
thing tended to inspire provincial and to ex- 
tinguish national patriotism. The inhabitants 
of Brittany, or Guienne. felt themselves 
linked together by ancient habitudes, by 
* congenial prejudices, by similar manners, 
by the relics of their constitution, and the 
common name of their country: but their 
character as members of the French Empire, 
could only remind them of long and igno- 
minious subjection to a tyranny, of which 
they had only felt the strength in exaction, 
and blessed the lenity in neglect. These 
causes must have formed the provinces into 
independent republics ; and the destruction 
of their provincial existence was indispensa- 
ble to the prevention of this dismemberment. 
It is impossible to deny, that men united by 
no previous habitude (whatever may be said 
of the policy of the union in other respects) 
are less qualified for that union of will and 
force, which produces an independent re- 
public, than provincials, who were attracted 
by every circumstance towards local and 
partial interests, and from the common centre 
of the national system. Nothing could have 
been more inevitable than the. independence 
of those great provinces, which had never 
been moulded into one empire ; and we may 
boldly pronounce, in direct opposition to Mr. 
Burke, that the new division of the kingdom 
was the only expedient that could have pre- 
vented its dismemberment into a confederacy 
of sovereign republics. 

The solicitous and elaborate division of 
powers, is another expedient of infallible 
operation, to preserve the unity of the body 
politic. The Municipalities are limited to 
minute and local administration ; the Primary 
Assemblies solely to election ; the Assemblies 
of the District to objects of administration 
and control of a superior class ; and the 
Assemblies of the Departments possess func- 
tions purely electoral, exerting no authority 
legislative, administrative, or judicial. 

But whatever danger might be apprehend- 
ed of the assumption of power by these 
formidable Assemblies, they are biennially 
renewed : and their fugitive nature makes 
systematic usurpation hopeless. What power, 
indeed, can they possess of dictating to the 
National Assembly:* or what interest can 

* I do not mean that their voice will not be 
there respected : that would be to suppose the 
56 



the members of that Assembly have in obey- 
ing the mandates of those whose tenure of 
power is as fugitive and precarious as their 
own ? The provincial Administrators have 
that amount of independence which the con- 
stitution demands; while the judges, who 
are elected for six years, must feel them- 
selves independent of constituents, whom 
three elections may so radically and com- 
pletely change. These circumstances, then, 
— the minuteness of the divisions, the dis- 
solution of Provincial ties, the elaborate dis- 
tribution of powers, and the fugitive consti- 
tution of the Electoral Assemblies, — seem 
to form an insuperable barrier against the 
assumption of such powers by any of the 
bodies into which France is organized, as 
would tend to produce the federal form. 

The next objection to be considered is 
peculiar to Mr. Burke. The subordination 
of elections has been regarded by the ad- 
mirers of the French lawgivers as a master- 
piece of their legislative wisdom. It seemed 
as great an improvement on representative 
government, as representation itself was on 
pure democracy. No extent of territory is 
too great for a popular government thus 
organized ; and as the Primary Assemblies 
may be divided to any degree of minuteness, 
the most perfect order is reconcilable with 
the widest diffusion of political right. De- 
mocracies were supposed by philosophers to 
be necessarily small, and therefore feeble, — 
to demand numerous assemblies, and to be 
therefore venal and tumultuous. Yet this 
great discovery, which gives force and order 
in so high a degree to popular governments, 
is condemned and derided by Mr. Burke. 
An immediate connection between the re- 
presentative and the primary constituent, he 
considers as essential to the idea of repre- 
sentation. As the electors in the Primary 
Assemblies do not immediately elect their 
lawgivers, he regards their rights of suffrage 
as nominal and illusory.*' 

It will in the first instance be remarked, 
from the statement which has already been 
given, that in stating three interposed elec- 
tions between the Primary Electors and the 
Legislature, Mr. Burke has committed a 
most important error, in point of fact. The 
original plan of the Constitutional Committee 
was indeed agreeable to the statement of 
Mr. Burke: — the Primary Assemblies were 
to elect deputies to the District, — the District 
to the Department.— and the Department to 
the National Assembly. But this plan was 
represented as tending to introduce a vicious 
complexity into the system, and, by making 
the channel through which the national will 
passes into its public acts too circuitous, to 



Legislature as insolently corrupt as that of a neigh- 
bouring nation. I only mean to assert, that they 
cannot°possess such a power as will enable them 
to dictate instructions to their representatives as 
authoritatively as sovereigns do to their ambas- 
sadors ; which is the idea of a confederated re- 
public. 
* Burke, pp. 270—272. 



442 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



enfeeble its energy under pretence of break- 
ing its violence ; and it was accordingly suc- 
cessfully combated. The series of three 
elections was still preserved for the choice 
of Departmental Administrators; but the 
Electoral Assemblies in the Departments, 
who are the immediate constituents of the 
Legislature, are directly chosen by the Pri- 
mary Assemblies, in the proportion of one 
•elector to every hundred active citizens.* 

But, — to return to the general question, 
which is, perhaps, not much affected by 
these details, — I profess I see no reason why 
the right of election is not as susceptible of 
delegation as any other civil function, — why 
a citizen may not as well delegate the right 
of choosing lawgivers, as that of making 
laws. Such a gradation of elections, says 
Mr. Burke, excludes responsibility and sub- 
stantial election, since the primary electors 
neither can know nor bring to account the 
members of the Assembly. This argument 
has (considering the peculiar system of Mr. 
Burke) appeared to me to be the most singu- 
lar and inconsistent that he has urged in his 
work. Representation itself must be con- 
fessed to be an infringement on the most 
perfect liberty : for the best organized sys- 
tem cannot preclude the possibility of a vari- 
ance between the popular and the represen- 
tative will. Responsibility', strictly speak- 
ing, it can rarely admit ; for the secrets of 
political fraud are so impenetrable, and the 
line which separates corrupt decision from 
erroneous judgment so indiscernibly minute, 
that the cases where the deputies could be 
made properly responsible are too few to be 
named as exceptions. Their dismissal is the 
only punishment that can be inflicted; and 
all that the best constitution can attain is a 
high probability of unison between the con- 
stituent and his deputy. This seems attain- 
ed in the arrangements of France. The 
Electors of the Departments are so nume- 
rous, and so popularly elected, that there is 
the highest probability of their being actu- 
ated in their elections, and re-elections, by 
the sentiments of the Primary Assemblies. 
They have too many points of contact with 
the general mass to have an insulated opi- 
nion, and too fugitive an existence to have 
a separate interest. This is true of those 
■cases, where the merits or demerits of can- 

* For a charge of such fundamental inaccuracy 
against Mr. Burke, the Public will most justly and 
naturally expect the highest evidence. See the 
Decret sur la nouvelle Division du Royaume, Art. 
17, and the Proces Verbal of the Assembly for 
the 22d Dec, 1789. If this evidence should de- 
mand any collateral aid, the authority of JV1. de 
Calonne (which it is remarkable that Mr. Burke 
should have overlooked) corroborates it most am- 
ply. " On ordonne que chacune de ces Assem- 
blies (Primaires) nommera un electeur a raison 
de 100 citoyens actifs.". . . " Ces cinquantes mille 
electenrs (des Departements) choisis de deux ans 
en deux ans par les Assemblies Primaires," p. 
360. The Ex-Minister, indeed, is rarely to be 
detected in any departure from the solicitous ac- 
curacy of professional detail. 



didates may be supposed to have reached 
the Primary Assemblies : but in those far 
more numerous cases, where they are too 
obscure to obtain that notice, but by the 
polluted medium of a popular canvass, this 
delegation of the franchise is still more evi- 
dently wise. The peasant, or artisan, who 
is a Primary Elector, knows intimately 
among his equals, or immediate superiors, 
many men who have information and hon- 
est)' enough to choose a good representative, 
but few who have genius, leisure, and ambi- 
tion for the situation themselves. Of De- 
partmental Electois he may be a disinter- 
ested, deliberate, and competent judge : but 
were he to be complimented, or rather 
mocked, with the direct right of electing 
legislators, he must, in the tumult, venality, 
and intoxication of an election mob, give his 
suffrage without any possible just knowledge 
of the situation, character, and conduct of 
the candidates. So unfortunately false, in- 
deed, seems the opinion of Mr. Burke, that 
this arrangement is the only one that sub- 
stantially, and in good faith, provides for the 
exercise of deliberate discrimination in the 
constituent. 

This hierarchy of electors was, moreover, 
obtruded on France by necessity. Had they 
rejected it, they would have had only the 
alternative of tumultuous electoral assem- 
blies, or a tumultuous Legislature. If the 
primary electoral assemblies had been so 
divided as to avoid tumult, their deputies 
would have been so numerous as to have 
made the national assembly a mob. If the 
number of electoral assemblies had been re- 
duced to the number of deputies constitut- 
ing the Legislature, each of them would 
have been too numerous. I cannot perceive 
that peculiar unfitness which is hinted at by 
Mr. Burke in the right of personal choice to 
be delegated.* It is in the practice of all 
states delegated to great officers, who are 
intrusted with the power of nominating their 
subordinate agents. It is in the most ordi- 
nary affairs of common life delegated, when 
our ultimate representatives are too remote 
from us to be within the sphere of our obser- 
vation. It is remarkable thatM. de Calonne, 
addressing his work to a people enlightened 
by the masterly discussions to which these 
subjects have given rise, has not, in all the 
fervour of his zeal to criminate the new in- 
stitutions, hazarded this objection. This is 
not the only instance in which the Ex-Minis- 
ter has shown more respect to the nation 
whom he addresses, than Mr. Burke has paid 
to the intellect and information of the Eng- 
lish public! 

* Burke, p. 271. 

t Though it may, perhaps, be foreign to the 
purpose, I cannot help thinking one remark on 
this topic interesting. It will illustrate the differ- 
ence of opinion between even the Aristocratic 
party in France and the rulers of England. M. 
de Calonne (p. 383,) rightly states it to be the 
unanimous instruction of France to her represen- 
tatives, to enact the equal admissibility of all citi- 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



443 



Thus much of the elements of the legisla- 
tive body. Concerning that body, thus con- 
stituted, various questions remain. Its unity 
or division will admit of much dispute. It 
Avill be deemed of the greatest moment by 
the zealous admirers of the English constitu- 
tion, to determine whether any semblance 
of its legislative organization could have 
been attained by France, if good, or ought 
to have been pursued by her, if attainable. 
Nothing has been asserted with more confi- 
dence by Mr. Burke than the facility with 
which the fragments of the long subverted 
liberty of France might have been formed 
into a British constitution : but of this gene- 
ral position, he has neither explained the 
mode, nor defined the limitations. Nothing 
is more favourable to the popularity of a 
work than these lofty generalities which are 
light enough to pass into vulgar currency, 
and to become the maxims of a popular 
creed. Proclaimed as they are by Mr. Burke, 
they gratify the pride and indolence of the 
people, who are thus taught to speak what 
gains applause, without any effort of intel- 
lect, and imposes silence, without any la- 
bour of confutation ; but touched by defini- 
tion, they become too simple and precise for 
eloquence, — too cold and abstract for popu- 
lar:; v. It is necessary to inquire with more 
precision in what manner Fiance could have 
assimilated the remains of her ancient con- 
stitution to that of the English Legislature. 
Three modes only seem conceivable : — the 
preservation of the three Orders distinct ; the 
union of the Clergy and Nobility in one upper 
chamber : or some mode of selecting from 
these two Orders a body like the House of 
Lords. Unless the insinuations of Mr. Burke 
point to one or other of these schemes, I can- 
not divine their meaning. 

The first mode would neither have been 
congenial in spirit nor similar in form to the 
constitution of England : — convert the Con- 
vocation into an integrant and co-ordinate 
hranch of our Legislature, and some faint 
semblance of structure might be discovered. 
But it would then be necessary to arm our 
Clergy with an immense mass of property, 
rendered still more formidable by the con- 
centration of great benefices in the hands of 
a few, and to bestow on this clerico-military 
aristocracy, in each of its shapes of Priest 
and Noble, a separate and independent 
voice. The Monarch would thus possess 
three negatives, — one avowed and disused, 
and two latent and in perpetual activity, — 
on the single voice which impotent and illu- 
sive formality had yielded to the Third Es- 
tate. 



zens to public employ ! England adheres to the 
Test Act ! The arrangements of M. Neckar for 
•elections to the States-General, and the scheme 
of MM. Mounier and Lally-Tollendal for the new 
-constitution, included a representation of the peo- 
ple nearly exact. Yet the idea of it is regarded 
with horror in England ! The highest Arislocrates 
of France approach more nearly to the creed of 
general liberty than the most popular politicians 
of England. 



Even under the reign of despotism the 
second plan was proposed by M. de Ca- 
lonne,* — that the Clergy and Nobility should 
form an Upper House, to exercise conjointly 
with the King and the Commons the legisla- 
tive authority. That such a constitution 
would have been diametrically opposite in 
its spirit and principles to that of England, 
will be evident to those who reflect how 
different were the Nobility of each country. 
In England they are a small body, united to 
the mass by innumerable points of contact, 
receiving from it perpetually new infusions, 
and returning to it, undistinguished and un- 
privileged, the majority of their children. In 
France they formed an immense caste, in- 
sulated by every barrier that prejudice or 
policy could raise. The Nobles of England 
are a senate of two hundred : the Noblesse 
of France were a tribe of two hundred thou- 
sand. Nobility is in England only heredilary. 
so far as its professed object — the support 
of an hereditary senate — demands. Nobility 
in France was as widely inheritable as its 
real purpose — the maintenance of a privi- 
leged caste — prescribed. It was therefore 
necessarily descendible to all male children. 
The Noblesse of France were at once formi- 
dable from the immense property of their 
body, and dependent from the indigence of 
their patrician rabble of cadets, whom honour 
inspired with servility, and servility excluded 
from the path to independence. To this for- 
midable property were added the revenues 
of the Church, monopolized by some of their 
children; while others had no patrimony 
but their sword . If these last were generous, 
the habits of military service devoted them, 
from loyalty, — if they were prudent, the 
hope of military promotion devoted them, 
from interest, to the King. How immense 
therefore and irresistible would the Royal 
influence have been over electors, of whom 
the majority were the servants and creatures 
of the Crown 1 What would be thought in 
England of a House of Lords, which, while 
it represented or contained the whole landed 
interest of the kingdom, should necessarily 
have a majority of its members septennially 
or triennially nominated by the King? Yet 
such a one would still yield to the French 
Upper House of M. de Calonne : for the mo- 
lded and commercial interests of England, 
which would continue to be represented by 
the Commons, are important and formidable, 
while in France they are comparatively in- 
significant. The aristocracy could have been 
strong only against the people, — impotent 
against the Crown. 

There remains only the selection of an 

* See his Lettre au Roi, 9th February, 1789. 
See also Sur l'Etat de France, p. 167. It was 
also, as we are informed by M. de Calonne, sug- 
gested in the Cahiers of the Nobility of Metz and 
Montargis. It is worthy of incidental. The pro- 
position of such radical changes by the Nobility, 
is incontestable evidence of the general conviction 
that a total change was necessary, and is an un- 
answerable reply to Mr. Burke and M. de Ca- 
lonne. 



444 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



Upper House from among the Nobility and 
Clergy : and to this there are insuperable 
objections. Had the right of thus forming a 
branch of the Legislature by a single act of 
prerogative been given to the King, it must 
have strengthened his influence to a degree 
terrible at any, — but fatal at this period. 
Had any mode of election by the provinces. 
or the Legislature, been adopted, or had any 
control on the nomination of the Crown been 
vested in them, the new dignity would have 
been sought with an activity of corruption 
and intrigue, of which, in such a national 
convulsion, it is impossible to estimate the 
danger. No general principle of selection, 
such as that of opulence or antiquity, would 
have remedied the evil ; for the excluded 
and degraded would have felt that nobility 
was equally the patrimony of all. By the 
abolition of nobility, no one was degraded ; 
for to "degrade" is to lower from a rank 
that continues to exist in society. 

So evident indeed was the impossibility of 
what Mr. Burke supposes to have been at- 
tainable, that no party in the Assembly sug- 
gested the imitation of the English model. 
The system of his oracles in French politics, 
— MM. Lally and Mounier, — approached 
more near to the constitution of the Ameri- 
can States. They proposed a Senate to be 
chosen for life by the King, from candidates 
offered to his choice by the provinces. This 
Senate was to enjoy an absolute negative on 
legislative acts, and to form the great national 
court for the trial of public delinquents. In 
effect, such a body would have formed a 
far more vigorous aristocracy than the Eng- 
lish Peerage. The latter body only preserves 
its dignity by a wise disuse of its power. 
But the Senate of M. Mounier would have 
been an aristocracy moderated and legalized, 
which, because it appeared to have less in- 
dependence, would in fact have been em- 
boldened to exert more. Deriving their 
rights equally with the Lower House from 
the people, and vested with a more dignified 
and extensive trust, they would neither 
have shrunk from the conflict with the Com- 
mons nor the King. The permanence of 
their authority must have given them a su- 
periority over the former: — the speciousness 
of their cause over the latter : and it seems 
probable, that they would have ended in 
subjugating both. Let those who suppose 
that this Senate would not have been infect- 
ed by the u corporation spirit," consider how 
keenly the ancient judicatures of France had 
been actuated by it. 

As we quit the details of these systems, a 
question arises for our consideration of a 
more general and more difficult nature, — 
Whether a simple representative legislature, 
or a constitution of mutual control, be the 
best form of government?* To examine 

* This question, translated into familiar lan- 
guage, may perhaps be thus expressed, — " Whe- 
ther the vigilance of the master, or the squabbles 
of the servants, be the best security for faithful 
service ?" 



this question at length is inconsistent with 
the object and limits of the present publica- 
tion (which already grows insensibly beyond 
its intended size); but a few general princi- 
ples may be hinted, on which the decision 
of the question chiefly depends. 

It will not be controverted, that the object 
of establishing a representative legislature is- 
to collect the general will. That will is one : 
it cannot, therefore, without a solecism, be 
doubly represented. Any absolute* negative 
opposed to the national will, decisively 
spoken by its representatives, is null, as an 
usurpation of the popular sovereignty. Thus 
far does the abstract principle of representa- 
tion condemn the division of the legislature. 

All political bodies, as well as all systems 
of law, foster the preponderance of partial 
interests. A controlling senate would be 
most peculiarly accessible to this contagious 
spirit : a representative body itself can only 
be preserved from it by those frequent elec- 
tions which break combinations, and infuse 
new portions of popular sentiments. Let us 
grant that a popular assembly may some- 
times be precipitated into unwise decision 
by the seductions of eloquence, or the rage 
of faction, and that a controlling senate might 
remedy this evil : but let us recollect, that it 
is better the public interest should be occa- 
sionally mistaken than systematically op- 
posed. 

It is perhaps susceptible of proof, that 
these governments of balance and control 
have never existed but in the vision of theo- 
rists. The fairest example will be that of 
England. If the two branches of the Legis- 
lature, which it is pretended control each 
other, are ruled by the same class of men, 
the control must be granted to be imaginary. 
The great proprietors, titled and untitled, 
possess the whole force of both Houses of 
Parliament that is not immediately dependent 
on the Crown. The Peers have a great in- 
fluence in the House of Commons. All po- 
litical parties are formed by a confederacy 
of the members of both Houses. The Court 
party, acting equally in both, is supported by 
a part of the independent aristocracy ; — the 
Opposition by the remainder of the aristo- 
cracy, whether pears or commoners. Here 
is every symptom of collusion, — no vestige 
of control. The only case indeed, where 
control could arise, is where the interest of 
the Peerage is distinct from that of the other 
great proprietors. But their separate inte- 
rests are so few and paltry, that the history 
of England will not afford one undisputed 
instance. t 

* The suspensive veto vested in the French 
King is only an appeal to the people on the con- 
duct of their representatives. The voice of the 
people clearly spoken, the negative ceases. 

t The rejection of the Peerage Bill of George 
the First is urged with great triumph by De 
Loltne. There it seems the Commons rejected 
the Bill, purely actuated by their fears, that the 
aristocracy would acquire a strength, through a 
limitation of the number of Peers, destructive of 
the balance of their respective powers. It is un- 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



445 



"Through a diversity of members and in- 
terests," if we may believe Mr. Burke, 
'•'general liberty had as many securities as 
there were separate views in the several 
orders." If by "general liberty" be under- 
stood the power of the collective body of 
these orders, the position is undeniable : but 
if it means, — what it ought to mean, — the 
liberty of mankind, nothing can be more 
false. The higher class in society, — whether 
their names be nobles, bishops, judges, or 
possessors of landed and commercial wealth, 
— has ever been united by common views, 
far more powerful than those petty repug- 
nancies of interest to which this variety of 
description may give rise. Whatever may 
be the little conflicts of ecclesiastical with 
secular, or of commercial with landed opu- 
lence, they have the one common interest of 
preserving their elevated place in the social 
order. There never was, and never will be, 
in civilized society, but two grand interests, — 
that of the rich and that of the poor. The 
privileges of the several orders among the 
former will be guarded, and Mr. Burke will 
•decide that general liberty is secure ! It is 
thus that a Polish Palatine and the Assembly 
of Jamaica profanely appeal to the principles 
of freedom. It is thus that Antiquity, with 
all her pretended political philosophy, can- 
not boast one philosopher who questioned the 
justice of servitude, — nor with all her pre- 
tended public virtue, one philanthropist who 
deplored the misery of slaves. 

One circumstance more concerning the pro- 
posed Legislature remains to be noticed, — 
the exclusion of the King's Ministers from it. 
This "Self-denying Ordinance" I unequivo- 
cally disapprove. I regard all disfranchise- 
ment as equally unjust in its principle, de- 
structive in its example, and impotent in its 
purpose. Their presence would have been 
of great utility with a view to business, and 
perhaps, by giving publicity to their opinions, 
favourable on the whole to public liberty. 
The fair and open influence of a Government 
is never formidable. To exclude them from 
the Legislature, is to devote them to the 
purposes of the Crown, and thereby to enable 
them to use their indirect and secret influ- 
ence with more impunity and success. The 
exclusion is equivalent to that of all men of 
superior talent from the Cabinet : for no man 
of genius will accept an office which banishes 
him from the supreme assembly, which is the 
natural sphere of his powers. 

Of the plan of the Judicature, I have not yet 
presumed to form a decided opinion. It cer- 
tainly approaches to an experiment, whether 
a code of laws can be formed sufficiently 
simple and intelligible to supersede the ne- 

fortunate that political theorists do not consult the 
history as well as the letter of legislative proceed- 
ings. The rejection of that Bill was occasioned 
by the secession of Walpole. The debate was 
not guided by any general legislative principles. 
It was simply an experiment on the strength of the 
two parties contending for power, in a Parliament 
to which we owe the Septennial Act. 



cessity of professional lawyers.* Of all the 
attempts of the Assembly, the complicated 
relations of civilized society seem to render 
this the most problematical. They have not, 
however, concluded this part of their labours : 
and the feebleness attributed to the elective 
judicatures of the Departments maybe re- 
medied by the dignity and force with which 
they will invest the two high national tribu- 
nals. f 

On the subject of the Executive Magis- 
tracy, the Assembly have been accused of 
violating their own principles by the assump- 
tion of executive powers; and their advo- 
cates have pleaded guilty to the charge. It 
has been forgotten that they had a double 
function to perform : they were not only to 
erect a new constitution, but they were to 
guard it from destruction. Had a supersti- 
tious tenderness for a principle confined them 
to theoretical abstractions which the breath 
of power might destroy, they would indeed 
have merited the epithets of visionaries and 
enthusiasts. We must not, as has been justly 
observed, mistake for the new political edi- 
fice what is only the scaffolding necessary to 
its erection. The powers of the First Magis- 
trate are not to be estimated by the debility 
to which the convulsions of the moment 
have reduced them, but by the provisions of 
the future constitution. 

The portion of power with which the 
King of France is invested is certainly as 
much as pure theory would demand for an 
executive magistrate. An organ to collect 
the public will, and a hand to execute it, are 
the only necessary constituents of the social 
union : the popular representative forms the 
first, — the executive officer the second. To 
the point where this principle would have 
conducted them, the French have not ven- 
tured to proceed. It has been asserted by 
Mr. Burke, that the French King is to have 
no negative on the laws. This, however, is 
not true. The minority who opposed any 
species of negative in the Crown was only 
one hundred out of eight hundred members. 
The King possesses the power of withholding 
his assent to a proposed law for two succes- 
sive Assemblies. This species of suspensive 
veto is with great speciousness and ingenuity 
contended by M. Neckar to be more efficient 
than the obsolete negative of the English 
princes. t A mild and limited negative may, 
he remarked, be exercised without danger 
or odium; while a prerogative, like the abso- 
lute veto, must sink into impotence from its 
invidious magnitude. Is not that negative 
really efficient, which is only to yield to the 
national voice, spoken after four years' de- 

* The sexennial election of the Judges is strong- 
ly and ably opposed by M. de Calonne, — chiefly 
on the principle, that the stability of judicial offices 
is the only inducement to men to devote their 
lives to legal study. 

t The Cour de Cassation and the Haute Cour 
Nationale. 

t Rapport fait au Roi dans son Conseil, 11th 
Sept., 17S9. 

2N 



446 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



liberation 1 The most absolute veto must, if 
the people persist, prove eventually only sus- 
pensiA'e.* "The power of remonstrance." 
says Mr. Burke, '''which was anciently 
vested in the Parliament of Paris, is now 
absurdly intrusted to the Executive Ma- 
gistrate." But the veto of the Parliament 
was directed against the legislative au- 
thority ; whereas the proposed one of the 
King is an appeal to the people against their 
representatives : the latter is the only share 
in legislation, — whether it be nominally 
absolute, or nominally limited, — that a free 
government can intrust to its Supreme Ma- 
gistrate. t 

On the Prerogative of declaring War and 
Peace. Mr. Burket has shortly, and M. de 
Calonnei at great length, arraigned the 
system of the Assembly. In it war is to be 
declared by a decree of the Legislature, on 
the proposition of the King, who possesses 
exclusively the initiative. The difference 
between it and the theory of the English 
constitution is purely nominal. That theory 
supposes an independent House of Com- 
mons, a rigorous responsibility of the King's 
Ministers, and an effective power of im- 
peachment of them. Were these in any 
respect realized, it is perfectly obvious, that 
a decision for war must in every case de- 
pend on the deliberation of the Legislature. 
No minister would hazard hostilities without 
the sanction of a body who held a sword 
suspended over his head ; and no power 
would remain to the Executive Magistrate 
but the initiative. The forms indeed, in the 
majority of cases, aim at a semblance of the 
theory. A Royal Message announces im- 
pending hostilities, and is re-echoed by a 
Parliamentary Address of promised support. 
It is this address alone which emboldens 
and authorizes the Cabinet to proceed. The 
Royal Message corresponds to the French 
initiative ; and if the purity of our practice 
bore any proportion to the speciousness of 
our theory, the address would be a "de- 
cree" of the Legislature, adopting the pro- 
position of the King. No man, therefore, 
who is a sincere and enlightened admirer of 
the English constitution, as it ought, and is 
pretended to exist, can consistently reprobate 
an arrangement, which differs from it only 
in the most frivolous circumstances. In our 
practice, indeed, no trace of those discordant 
powers which are supposed hi our theoretical 
constitution remains: there the most beau- 
tiful simplicity prevails. The same influence 
determines the executive, and legislative 
power : the same Cabinet makes war in the 
name of the King, and sanctions it in the 

* The negative possessed by the King is pre- 
cisely double that of the Assembly. He may 
oppose his will to that of his whole people for 
four years, — the term of the existence of two As- 
semblies. The whole of this argument is in some 
measure art hominem, for I myself am dubious 
about the utility of any species of veto, — absolute 
or suspensive. 

t Burke, p 301. 

t Ibid. p. 295. % Calonne, pp. 170—200. 



name of the Parliament. But France is 
destitute of the cement which unites these 
discordant materials : — her exchequer is 
ruined. 

Granted, however, that this formidable 
prerogative is more curtailed than it is in 
our theory, the expediency of such limita- 
tion remains to be considered. The chief 
objections to it, are its tendency to favour 
the growth of foreign factions, and to dero- 
gate from the promptitude so necessary to 
military success. To both these objections 
there is one general answer : — they proceed 
on the supposition that France will retain 
her ancient political system. But if she 
adheres to her own declarations, war must 
become to her so rare an occurrence, that 
the objections become insignificant. Foreign 
powers have no temptation to purchase fac- 
tions in a state which does not interpose in 
foreign politics : and a wise nation will re- 
gard victorious war as not less fatally intoxi- 
cating to the victors, than widely destructive 
to the vanquished. France, after having 
renounced for ever the idea of conquest, 
can indeed have no source of probable hos- 
tilities, but her colonies. Colonial posses- 
sions have been so unanswerably demon- 
strated to be commercially useless, and 
politically ruinous, that the conviction of 
philosophers cannot fail of having, in due 
time, its effect on the minds of enlightened 
Europe, and delivering the French empire 
from this cumbrous and destructive ap- 
pendage. 

But even were the exploded villany that 
has obtained the name of "politics" to be 
re-adopted in France, the objections would 
still be feeble. The first, which must be 
confessed to have a specious and formidable 
air, seems evidently to be founded on the 
history of Sweden and Poland, and on some 
facts in that of the Dutch Republic. It is a 
remarkable example of those loose and re- 
mote analogies by which sophists corrupt 
and abuse history. Peculiar circumstances 
in the situation of these states disposed them 
to be the seat of foreign faction. This did 
not arise from war being decided upon by 
public bodies; for if it had, a similar evil 
must have existed in ancient Rome and 
Carthage, in modern Venice, and Switzer- 
land, in the Republican Parliament of Eng- 
laud, and in the Congress of the United 
States of America. Holland, too, was per- 
fectly exempt from it, till the age of Charles 
II. and Louis XIV. when, divided between 
jealousy of the commerce of England and 
dread of the conquests of France, she threw 
herself into the arms of the House of Orange, 
and forced the partisans of freedom into a 
reliance on French support. The case of 
Sweden is with the utmost facility explica- 
ble. An indigent and martial people, whether 
it be governed by one or many despots, will 
ever be sold to enterprising and opulent am- 
bition : and recent facts have proved, that a 
change in the government of Sweden has 
not changed the stipendiary spirit of its mili- 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



447 



tary system. Poland is an example still less 
relevant : — there a crowd of independent 
despots naturally league themselves vari- 
ously with foreign Powers. Yet Russian 
force has done more than Russian gold ; and 
Poland has suffered still more from feeble- 
ness than venality. 

No analogy can be supposed to exist be- 
tween these cases and that of France. All 
the Powers of Europe could not expend 
money enough to form and maintain a fac- 
tion in that country. Suppose it possible 
that its Legislature could once be corrupted ; 
yet to purchase in succession a series of 
assemblies, Potosi itself would be unequal. 
All the states which have been quoted were 
poor, — therefore cheaply corrupted: their 
governments were aristocratic, and were 
therefore only to be once bought ; the people 
were ignorant, and could therefore be sold 
by their governors with impunity. The 
reverse of these circumstances will save 
France, as they have saved England, from 
this "worst of evils:" — their wealth makes 
the attempt difficult; their discernment 
makes it hazardous; their short trust of 
power renders the object worthless, and its 
permanence impossible. 

That subjecting such a decision to the 
deliberations of a popular assembly will, in 
a great measure, unnerve the vigour of hos- 
tilities, I am not disposed to deny. France 
must, howevc-r, when her constitution is 
cemented, be, in a defensive view, in- 
vincible : and if her government is unfitted 
for aggression, it is little wonder that the 
Assembly should have made no provision 
for a case which their principles do not 
suppose. 

This is the last important arrangement 
respecting the executive power which Mr. 
Burke has treated ; and its consideration 
conducts us to a subject of infinite delicacy 
and difficulty, which has afforded no small 
triumph to the enemies of the Revolution, 
the organization of the army. To reconcile 
the existence of an army of a hundred and 
fifty thousand men, of a navy of a hun- 
dred ships of the line, and of a frontier 
guarded by a hundred fortresses, with the 
existence of a free government, is a tre- 
mendous problem. History affords no ex- 
ample in which such a force has not recoiled 
on the state, and become the ready instru- 
ment of military usurpation : and if the 
state of France were not perfectly unex- 
ampled, the inference would be inevitable. 
An army, with the sentiments and habits 
which it is the system of modern Europe to 
inspire, is not only hostile to freedom, but 
incompatible with it. A body possessed of 
the whole force of a state, and systemati- 
cally divested of every civic sentiment, is a 
monster that no rational polity can tolerate; 
and every circumstance clearly shows it to 
be the object of French legislation to de- 
stroy it, — not as a body of armed citizens, 
but as an army. This is wisely and gradu- 
ally to be effected : two grand operations 



conduct to it, — arming the people, and un- 
soldiering the army. 

An army of four millions can never be 
coerced by one of a hundred and fifty thou- 
sand : neither can they have a separate sen- 
timent from the body of the nation, for they 
are the same. Whence the horror of Mr. 
Burke at thus arming the nation, under the 
title of : 'a municipal army/' has arisen, it is 
difficult even to conjecture. Has it ceased 
to be true, that the defence of a free state is 
only to be committed to its citizens'? Are 
the long opposition to a standing army in 
England, its tardy and jealous admission, 
and the perpetual clamour (at length illu- 
sively gratified) for a militia, to be exploded, 
as the gross and uncourtly sentiments of our 
unenlightened ancestors'? "They must rule," 
says Mr. Burke, "by an army." If that be 
the system of the Assembly, their policy is 
still more wretched than he has represented 
it : for they systematically strengthen the 
governed, while they enfeeble their engine 
of government. A military democracy, if it 
means a deliberative body of soldiers, is the 
most execrable of tyrannies ; but if it be un- 
derstood to denote a popular government, 
under which every citizen is disciplined and 
armed, it must then be pronounced to be the 
only free one which retains within itself the 
means of preservation. 

The professional soldiers, rendered harm- 
less by the strength of the municipal army, 
are in many other ways invited to throw off 
those abject and murderous habits which 
form the perfect modern soldier. In other 
states the soldiery are in general disfran- 
chised by their poverty : but in France a 
great part may enjoy the full rights of citi- 
zens. They are not then likely to sacrifice 
their superior to their inferior capacity, nor 
to elevate their military importance by com- 
mitting political suicide. The diffusion of 
political knowledge among them, which is 
ridiculed and reprobated by Mr. Burke, is the 
only remedy that can fortify them against 
the seduction of an aspiring commander. 
They, have, indeed, gigantic strength, and 
they may crush their fellow-citizens, by 
dragging down the social edifice ; but they 
must themselves be overwhelmed by its fall. 
The despotism of armies is the slavery of 
soldiers : an army cannot be strong enough 
to tyrannize, that is not itself cemented by 
the most absolute ulterior tyranny. The 
diffusion of these great truths will perpetu- 
ate, as they have produced, a revolution in 
the character of the French soldiery. Mili- 
tary services will be the duty of all citizens, 
and the trade of none.* If a separate body 
of citizens, as an army, is deemed necessary ; 



* Again I must encounter the derision of Mr. 
Burke, by quoting the ill-fated citizen of Geneva, 
whose life was embittered by the cold friendship 
of a philosopher, and whose memory is proscribed 
by the alarmed enthusiasm of an orator. I shall 
presume to recommend to the perusal of every 
reader his tract entitled, "Considerations sur le 
Gouvernement de Pologne," &c. — more especi- 
ally what regards the military system. 



448 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



it will probably be formed by rotation : a 
certain period of military service will be ex- 
acted from every citizen, and may, as in 
the ancient republics, be made a necessary 
qualification for the pursuit of civil honours. 
" Gallos quoque in bellis floruisse audivi- 
mus, ,; * may again be the sentiment of our 
children. The glory of heroism, and the 
splendour of conquest, have long enough 
been the patrimony of that great nation. It 
is time that it should seek a new glory, and 
a new splendour, under the shade of free- 
dom, in cultivating the arts of peace, and 
extending the happiness of mankind. Happy 
would it be for us all, if the example of that 
"manifesto of humanity" which has been 
adopted by the legislators of France, should 
make an adequate impression on surround- 
ing nations. 

Tunc genus humanum positis sibi consulat armis, 
Inque vicem gensomnis amet.t 



SECTION V. 

English admirers vindicated. 

It is thus that Mr. Burke has spoken of 
the men and measures of a foreign nation, 
where there was no patriotism to excuse his 
prepossession or his asperity, and no duty or 
feeling to preclude him from adopting the 
feelings of a disinterested posterity, and as- 
suming the dispassionate tone of a philoso- 
pher and a historian. What wonder then if 
he should wanton in all the eloquence and 
virulence of an advocate against fellow-citi- 
zens, to whom he attributes the flagitious 
purpose of stimulating England to the imita- 
tion of such enormities. The Revolution and 
Constitutional Societies, and Dr. Price, whom 
he regards as their oracle and guide, are the 
grand objects of his hostility. For them no 
contumely is too debasing, — no invective too 
intemperate, — no imputation too foul. Joy 
at the downfall of despotism is the indelible 
crime, for which no virtue can compensate, 
and no punishment can atone. An incon- 
sistency, however, betrays itself not unfre- 
quently in literary quarrels : — he affects to 
despise those whom he appears to dread. 
His anger exalts those whom his ridicule 
would vilify ; and on those whom at one mo- 
ment he derides as too contemptible for re- 
sentment, he at another confers a criminal 
eminence, as too audacious for contempt. 
Their voice is now the importunate chirp of 
the meagre shrivelled insects of the hour. — 
now the hollow murmur, ominous of con- 
vulsions and earthquakes, that are to lay the 
fabric of society in ruins. To provoke against 
the doctrines and persons of these unfortu- 
nate Societies this storm of execration and 

* The expression of Tacitus (Agricola), quoted 
by Mr. Burke in the Speech on the Army Esti- 
mates. — Ed. 

t Pharsalia, lib. i. 



derision, it was not sufficient that the French 
Revolution should be traduced ; every re- 
cord of English policy and law is to be dis- 
torted. 

The Revolution of 1688 is confessed to 
have established principles by those who 
lament that it has not reformed institutions. 
It has sanctified the theory, if it has not in- 
sured the practice of a free government. It 
declared, by a memorable precedent, the 
right of the people of England to revoke 
abused power, to frame the government, and 
bestow the crown. There was a time, in- 
deed, when some wretched followers of Fil- 
mer and Blackwood lifted their heads in op- 
position : but more than half a century had 
withdrawn them from public contempt, to 
the amnesty and oblivion which their in- 
noxious stupidity had purchased. 

It was reserved for the latter end of the 
eighteenth century to construe these innocent 
and obvious inferences into libels on the con- 
stitution and the laws. Dr. Price has as- 
serted (I presume without fear of contradic- 
tion) that the House of Hanover owes the 
crown of England to the choice of their peo- 
ple, and that the Revolution has established 
our right " to choose our own governors, to 
cashier them for misconduct, and to frame a 
government for ourselves."* The first pro- 
position, says Mr. Burke, is either false or. 
nugatory. If it imports that England is an 
elective monarchy, "it is an unfounded, 
dangerous, illegal, and unconstitutional posi- 
tion." "If it alludes to the election of his 
Majesty's ancestors to the throne, it no more 
legalizes the government of England than 
that of other nations, where the founders of 
dynasties have generally founded their claims 
on some sort of election." The first member 
of this dilemma merits no reply. The people 
may certainly, as they have done, choose an 
hereditary rather than an elective monarchy : 
they may elect a race instead of an individual. 
It is vain to compare the pretended elections 
in which a council of barons, or an army of 
mercenaries, have imposed usurpers on en- 
slaved and benighted kingdoms, with the 
solemn, deliberate, national choice of 1688. 
It is, indeed, often expedient to sanction these 
deficient titles by subsequent acquiescence 
in them. It is not among the projected in- 
novations of France to revive the claims of 
any of the posterity of Pharamond and Clovis, 
or to arraign the usurpations of Pepin or 
Hugh Capet. Public tranquillity thus de- 
mands a veil to be drawn over the successful 
crimes through which kings have so often 
"waded to the throne." But wherefore 
should we not exult, that the supreme ma- 
gistracy of England is free from this blot, — 
that as a direct emanation from the sove- 
reignty of the people, it is as legitimate in its 
origin as in its administration. Thus under- 



* A Discourse on the Love of our Country, de- 
livered on Nov. 4th, 1789, at the Meeting-house 
in Old Jewry, to the Society for commemorating 
die Revolution in Great Britain. London, 1789. 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



449 



stood, the position of Dr. Price is neither false 
nor nugatory. It is not nugatory, for it 
honourably distinguishes the English mo- 
narchy among the governments of the world ; 
and if it be false, the whole history of our 
Revolution must be a legend. The fact was 
shortly, that the Prince of Orange was elected 
King of England, in contempt of the claims, 
not only of the exiled monarch and his son, 
bnt of the Princesses Mary and Anne, the 
undisputed progeny of James. The title of 
William III. was then clearly not by succes- 
sion ; and the House of Commons ordered 
Dr. Burnet's tract to be burnt by the hands 
of the hangman, for maintaining that it was 
by conquest. There remains only election : 
for these three claims to royalty are all that 
are known among men. It is futile to urge, 
that the Convention deviated only slightly 
from the order of succession. The deviation 
was indeed slight, but the principle was de- 
stroyed. The principle that justified the 
elevation of William III. and the preference 
of the posterity of Sophia of Hanover to those 
of Henrietta of Orleans, would equally, in 
point of right, have vindicated the election 
of Chancellor Jeffreys or Colonel Kirke. The 
choice was, like every other choice, to be 
guided by views of policy and prudence ; 
but it was a choice still. 

From these views arose that repugnance 
between the conduct and the language of 
the Revolutionists, of which Mr. Burke has 
availed himself. Their conduct was manly 
and systematic : their language was conciliat- 
ing and equivocal. They kept measures 
with a prejudice which they deemed neces- 
sary to the order of society. They imposed 
on the grossness of the popular understand- 
ing, by a sort of compromise between the 
constitution and the abdicated family. " They 
drew a politic well-wrought veil,"' to use the 
expression of Mr. Burke, over the glorious 
scene which they had acted. They affected 
to preserve a semblance of succession, — to 
recur for the objects of their election to the 
posterity of Chailesand James, — that respect 
and loyalty might with less violence to public 
sentiment attach to the new Sovereign. Had 
a Jacobite been permitted freedom of speech 
in the Parliaments of William III. he might 
thus have arraigned the Act of Settlement : 
— "Is the language of your statutes to be at 
eternal war with truth? Not long ago you 
profaned the forms of devotion by a thanks- 
giving, which either means nothing, or in- 
sinuates a lie : you thanked Heaven for the 
preservation of a King and a Queen on the 
throne of their ancestors, — an expression 
which either alluded only to their descent, 
which was frivolous, or insinuated their here- 
ditary right, which was false. With the 
same contempt for consistency and truth, we 
are this day called on to settle the crown of 
England on a princess of Germany, 'because' 
she is the granddaughter of James the First. 
If that be, as the phraseology insinuates, the 
true and sole reason of the choice, consistency 
demands that the words after ' excellent' 
57 



should be omitted, and in their place be in- 
serted 'Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy, 
married to the daughter of the most excellent 
Princess Henrietta, late Duchess of Orleans, 
daughter of our late Sovereign Lord Charles I. 
of glorious memory.'' Do homage to royalty 
in your actions, or abjure it in your words: 
avow the grounds of your conduct, and your 
manliness wdl be respected by those who 
detest your rebellion. " : What reply Lord 
Somers, or Mr. Burke, could have devised to 
this Philippic, I know not, unless they con- 
fessed that the authors of the Revolution had 
one language for novices and another for 
adepts. Whether this conduct was the fruit 
of caution and consummate wisdom, or of a 
harrow, arrogant, and dastardly policy, which 
regarded the human race as only to be go- 
verned by being duped, it is useless to inquire, 
and might be presumptuous to determine. 
But it certainly was not to be expected, that 
any controversy should have arisen by con- 
founding their principles with their pretexts: 
with the latter the position of Dr. Price has 
no connection ; from the former, it is an in- 
fallible inference. 

The next doctrine of this obnoxious Sermon 
that provokes the indignation of Mr. Burke, 
is, " that the Revolution has established out- 
right to cashier our governors for miscon- 
duct." Here a plain man could have foreseen 
scarcely any diversity of opinion. To contend 
that the deposition of a king for the abuse 
of his powers did not establish a principle in 
favour of the like deposition, when the like 
abuse should again occur, is certainly one of 
the most arduous enterprises that ever the 
heroism of paradox encountered. He has, 
however, not neglected the means of retreat. 
"No government," he tells us, "could stand 
a moment, if it could be blown down with 
anything so loose and indefinite as opinion of 
misconduct >.' One might suppose, from the 
dexterous levity with which the word "mis- 
conduct" is introduced, that the partisans 
of democracy had maintained the expediency 
of deposing a king for every frivolous and 
venial fault, — of revolting against him for the 
choice of his titled or untitled valets, — his 
footmen, or his Lords of the Bedchamber. It 
would have been candid in Mr. Burke not to 
have dissembled what he must know, that 
by "misconduct" was meant that precise 
species of misconduct for which James II. 
was dethroned, — a conspiracy against the 
liberty of his country. 

Nothing can be more weak than to urge 
the constitutional irresponsibility of kings or 
parliaments. The law can never suppose 
them responsible, because their responsibility 
supposes the dissolution of society, which is 
the annihilation of law. In the governments 
which have hitherto existed, the power of 
the magistrate is the only article in the social 
compact: destroy it, and society is dissolved. 
It is because they cannot be legally and con- 
stitutionally, that they must be morally and 
rationally responsible. It is because there 
are no remedies to be found within the pale 
2n2 



450 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



of society, that we are to seek them in nature, 
and throw our parchment chains in the face 
of our oppressors. No man can deduce a 
precedent of law from the Revolution ; for 
law cannot exist in the dissolution of govern- 
ment: a precedent of reason and justice only 
can be established in it. And perhaps the 
friends of freedom merit the misrepresenta- 
tion with which they have been opposed, for 
trusting their cause to such frail and frivolous 
auxiliaries, and for seeking' in the profligate 
practices of men what is to be found in the 
sacred rights of nature. The system of law- 
yers is indeed widely different. They can 
only appeal to usage, precedents, authorities, 
and' statutes. They display their elaborate 
frivolity, and their perfidious friendship, in 
disgracing freedom with the fantastic honour 
of a pedigree. A pleader at the Old Bailey, 
who would attempt to aggravate the guilt of 
a robber or a murderer, by proving that King 
John or King Alfred punish ed robbery and 
murder, would only provoke derision. A 
man who should pretend that the reason 
why we had right to property is, because our 
ancestors enjoyed that right four hundred 
years ago, would be justly contemned. Yet 
so little is plain sense heard in the mysterious 
nonsense which is the cloak of political fraud, 
that the Cokes, the Blackstones, and the 
Burkes, speak as if our right to freedom de- 
pended on its possession by our ancestors. 
In the common cases of morality we should 
blush at such an absurdity. No man would 
justify murder by its antiquity, or stigmatize 
benevolence for being new. The genealogist 
who should emblazon the one as coeval with 
Cain, or stigmatize the other as upstart with 
Howard, would be disclaimed even by the 
most frantic partisan of aristocracy. This 
Gothic transfer of genealogy to truth and jus- 
tice is peculiar to politics. The existence of 
robbery in one age makes its vindication in 
the next ; and the champions of freedom 
have abandoned the stronghold of right for 
precedent, which, when the most favourable, 
is, as might be expected from the ages which 
furnish it, feeble, fluctuating, partial, and 
equivocal. It is not because we have been 
free, but because we have a right to be free, 
that we ought to demand freedom. Justice 
and liberty have neither birth nor race, youth 
nor age. It would be the same absurdity to 
assert, that we have a right to freedom, be- 
cause the Englishmen of Alfred's reign were 
free, as that three and three are six, because 
they were so in the camp of Genghis Khan. 
Let us hear no more of this ignoble and 
ignominious pedigree of freedom. Let us 
hear no more of her Saxon, Danish, or Nor- 
man ancestors. Let the immortal daughter 
of Reason, of Justice, and of God, be no lon- 
ger confounded with the spurious abortions 
that have usurped her name. 

Ci But," says Mr. Burke, " we do not con- 
tend that right is created bv antiquarian re- 
I We arc far from contending that 
possession legitimates tyranny, or th .; 
ought to be confounded with right. But (to 



strip his eulogies on English wisdom of their 
declamatory appendage) the impression -of 
antiquity endears and ennobles freedom, and 
fortifies it by rendering it august and vene- 
rable in the popular mind." The illusion is 
useful ; the expediency of political impos- 
ture is the whole force of the argument; — a 
principle odious to the friends of freedom, as 
the grand bulwark of secular and spiritual 
despotism. To pronounce that men are only 
to be governed by delusion is to libel the 
human understanding, and to consecrate the 
frauds that have elevated despots and muftis, 
pontiffs and sultans, on the ruin of degraded 
and oppressed humanity. But the doctrine 
is as false as it is odious. Primary political 
truths are few and simple. It is easy to 
make them understood, and to transfer to 
government the same enlightened self-inte- 
rest that presides in the other concerns of 
life. It may be made to be respected, not 
because it is ancient, or because it is sacred, 
— not because it has been established by 
barons, or applauded by priests, — but because 
it is useful. Men may easily be instructed 
to maintain rights which it is their interest 
to maintain, and duties which it is their in- 
terest to perform. This is the only principle 
of authority that does not violate justice and 
insult humanity: it is also the only one which 
can possess stability. The various fashions 
of prejudice and factitious sentiment which 
have been the basis of governments, are 
short-lived things. The illusions of chivalry, 
and the illusions of superstition, which have 
given to them splendour or sanctity, are in 
their turn succeeded by new modes of opi- 
nion and new systems of manners. Reason 
alone and natural sentiment are the denizens 
of every nation, and the contemporaries of 
every age. A conviction of the utility of 
government affords the only stable and ho- 
nourable security for obedience. 

Our ancestors at the' Revolution, it is true, 
were far from feeling the full force of these 
sublime truths : nor was the public mind of 
Europe, in the seventeenth century, suffi- 
ciently enlightened and matured for the 
grand enterprises of legislation. The science 
which teaches the rights of man, and the 
eloquence that kindles the spirit of freedom, 
had for ages been buried with the other 
monuments of wisdom, and the other relics 
of the genius of antiquity. The revival of 
letters first unlocked, — but only to a few, — 
the sacivd fountain. The necessary labours 
of criticism and lexicography occupied the 
earlier scholars ; and some time elapsed be- 
the spirit of antiquity was transfused into 
its admirers. The first man of that period 
who united elegant learning to original and 
masculine thought was Buchanan ;* and he 



* It is not a little remarkable, that Buchanan 
puts into the mouth of his antagonist, Maitland, 
the same alarms h>r the downfall of literature that 
have been excited in the mind of Mr. Burke by 
the French Revolution. We can smile at such 
alarms on a retrospect of the literary hisiory of 
Europe for the seventeenth of eighteen centuries • 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



451 



too seems to have been the first scholar who 
caught from the ancients the noble flame of 
republican enthusiasm. This praise is merit- 
ed by his neglected, though incomparable 
tract, De Jure Regni, in which the principles 
of popular politics, and the maxims of a free 
government, are delivered with a precision, 
and enforced with an energy, which no for- 
mer age had equalled, and no succeeding 
one has surpassed. The subsequent pro- 
gress of the human mind was slow. The 
profound views of Harrington were derided 
as the ravings of a visionary j and who can 
wonder, lhat the frantic loyalty which de- 
pressed Paradise Lost, should involve in 
ignominy the eloquent Apology of Milton for 
the People of England against a feeble and 
venal pedant. Sidney, 

" By ancient learning to th' enlighten'd love 
Of ancient freedom warm'd,"* 
taught the principles which he was to seal 
with his blood ; and Locke, whose praise is 
less that of being bold and original, than of 
being temperate, sound, lucid, and methodi- 
cal, deserves the immortal honour of having 
systematized and rendered popular the doc- 
trines of civil and religious liberty. In Ire- 
land, Molyneux, the friend of Locke, pro- 
duced The Case of Ireland, — a production 
of which it is sufficient praise to say, that it 
was ordered to be burnt by the despotic 
parliament. In Scotland, Andrew Fletcher, 
the scholar of Algernon Sidney, maintained 
the case of his deserted country with the 
force of ancient eloquence, and the dignity 
of ancient virtue. Such is a rapid enumera- 
tion of those who had before, or near the Re- 
volution, contributed to the diffusion of poli- 
tical light. But their number was small, 
their writings were unpopular, their dogmas 
Avere proscribed. The habits of reading had 
only then begun to reach the great body of 
mankind, whom the arrogance of rank and 
letters has ignominiously confounded under 
the denomination of the vulgar. 

Many causes too contributed to form a 
powerful Tory interest in England. The 
remnant of that Gothic sentiment, the ex- 
tinction of which Mr. Burke so pathetically 
deplores, which engrafted loyalty on a point 
of honour in military attachment, formed one 
part, which may be called the " Toryism of 
chivalry." Doctrines of a divine right in 
kings, which are now too much forgotten 
even for successful ridicule, were then sup- 
ported and revered ; — these may be called 
the " Toryism of superstition." A third spe- 
cies arose from the great transfer of property 
to an upstart commercial interest, which 
drove the ancient gentry of England, for pro- 
tection against its inroads, behind the throne ; 
— this may be called the -'Toryism of landed 
aristocracy. "t Religious prejudices, outrages 

and should our controversies reach the enlightened 
scholars of a future age, they will probably, with 
the same reason, smile at the alarms of Mr. 
Burke. 

* Thomson's Summer. 

t Principle is respectable, even in its mistakes ; 



on natural sentiments, which any artificial 
system is too feeble to withstand, and the 
stream of events which bore them along to 
extremities which no man could have fore- 
seen, involved the Tories in the Revolution, 
and made it a truly national act : but their 
repugnance to every shadow of innovation 
was invincible. 

Something the Whigs may be supposed to 
have conceded for the sake of conciliation j 
but few even of their leaders, it is probable, 
had grand and liberal views. What indeed 
could have been expected from the delegates 
of a nation, in which, a few years before, the 
University of Oxford, representing the na- 
tional learning and wisdom, had, in a solemn 
decree, offered their congratulations to Sir 
George Mackenzie (infamous for the abuse 
of brilliant accomplishments to the most 
servile and profligate purposes) for having 
confuted the abominable doctrines of Bu- 
chanan and Milton, and for having demon- 
strated the divine rights of kings to tyrannise 
and oppress mankind ! It must be evident, 
that a people who could thus, by the organ 
of its most learned body, prostrate its reason 
before such execrable absurdities, was too 
young for legislation. Hence the absurd de- 
bates in the Convention about the palliative 
phrases of ''abdicate," "desert," &c, which 
were better cut short by the Parliament of 
Scotland, when they used the correct and 
manly expression, that James II. had " for- 
feited the throne." Hence we find the Revo- 
lutionists perpetually belying their political 
conduct by their legal phraseology: hence 
their impotent and illusive, reforms : hence 
their neglect of foresight* in not providing 
bulwarks against the natural tendency of a 
disputed succession to accelerate most rapid- 
ly the progress of Royal influence, by ren- 
dering it necessary to strengthen so much 



and these Tories of the last century were a party 
of principle. There were accordingly anions them 
men of the most elevated and unnamed honour. 
Who will refuse that praise to Clarendon and 
Southampton, to Ormonde and Montrose ? But 
Toryism, as a party of principle, cannot now exist 
in England ; for the principles on which we have 
seen it to be founded, exist no more. The Gothic 
sentiment is effaced ; the superstition is exploded ; 
and the landed and commercial interests are com-- 
pletely intermixed. The Toryism of the present 
day can only arise from an abject spirit, or a cor- 
rupt heart. 

* This progress of Royal influence from a dis- 
puted succession has, in fact, most fatally taken 
place. The Protestant succession was the sup- 
posed means of preserving our liberties ; and to 
that means ihe end has been most deplorably 
sacrificed. The Whigs, the sincere though timid 
and partial friends of freedom, were forced to 
cling to the throne as the anchor of liberty. To 
preserve it from utter shipwreck, they were forced 
to yield something to its protectors ; — hence a na- 
tional debt, a septennial Parliament, and a stand- 
ing army. The avowed reason of the two last 
was Jacohitism ; — hence the unnatural coalition 
between Whiggism and Kings during the reigns 
of the two first princes of the House of Hanover, 
which the pupdage of Leicester House so totally 
broke. 



452 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



the possessor of the crown against the pre- 
tender to it. 

But to elucidate the question more fully, 
" let us listen to the genuine oracles of Revo- 
lution policy;" — not to the equivocal and 
palliative language of their statutes, but to 
the unrestrained effusion of sentiment in that 
memorable conference between the Lords 
and Commons, on Tuesday the 5th of Feb- 
ruary, 1688, which terminated in establish- 
ing the present government of England. 
The Tories, yielding to the torrent in the 
personal exclusion of James, resolved to em- 
ass the VVhigs, by urging that the 
ration'of the abdication and" vacancy of the 
throne, was a change of the government, 
pro hdc vice, into an elective monarchy. 
<ference is irresistible : and it must be 
confessed, that though the Whigs were the 
better citizens, the Tories were the more 
correct logicians. It is in this conference 
that we see the Whig leaders compelled 
to disclose so much of those principles, 
which tenderness for prejudice, and reve- 
rence for usage, had influenced them to dis- 
semble. It is here that we shall discover 
sparks kindled in the collision of debate suf- 
ficient to enlighten the "politic gloom" in 
which they had enveloped their measures. 

If there be any names venerable among 
the constitutional lawyers of England, they 
are those of Lord Somers and Serjeant May- 
nard. They were both conspicuous mana- 
gers for the Commons in this conference; 
and the language of both will more than jus- 
tify the inferences of Dr. Price, and the creed 
of the Revolution Society. My Lord Not- 
tingham, who conducted the conference on 
the part of the Tories, in a manner most 
honourable to his dexterity and acuteness, 
demanded of the managers for the Com- 
mons: — "Whether they mean the throne to 
be so vacant as to annul the succession in 
the hereditary line, and so all the heirs to be 
cut off? which we (the Lords) say, will 
make the crown elective." Maynard, whose 
argument always breathed much of the old 
republican spirit, replied with force and 
plainness: — '-'It is not that the Commons do 
say the crown of England is always and 
perpetually elective: but it is necessary 
there be a supply where there is a defect." 
It is impossible to mistake the import of 
these words. Nothing can be more evident, 
than that by the mode of denying "that the 
crown was always and perpetually elective," 
he confesses that it was for the then exigen- 
cy elective. In pursuance of his argument, 
he uses a comparison strongly illustrative of 
his belief in dogmas anathematised by Mr. 
Burke : — " If two of us make a mutual agree- 
ment to help and defend each other from 
any one that should assault us in a journey, 
and he that is with me turns upon me, and 
breaks my head, he hath undoubtedly abdi- 
cated ray assistance, and revoked." Senti- 
ments of the kingly office, more irreverent 
and more correct, are not to be found in the 
most profane evangelist that disgraces the 



Democratic canon. It is not unworthy of 
incidental remark, that there were then per- 
sons who felt as great horror at novelties, 
which have since been universally received, 
as Mr. Burke now feels at the "rights of 
men." The Earl of Clarendon, in his strict- 
ures on the speech of Mr. Somers, said : — 
"I may say thus much in general, that this 
breaking the original contract is a language 
that has not long been used in this place, 
nor known in any of our law books, or public 
records. It is sprung up but as taken from 
some late authors, and those none of the 
best received!''" This language one might 
have supposed to be that of Mr. Burke : it 
is not however his; it is that of a Jacobite 
lord of the seventeenth century. 

The Tories continued to perplex and in- 
timidate the Whigs with the idea of election. 
Maynard again replies, "'The word 'elective' 
is none of the Commons' word. The provi- 
sion must be made, and if it be, that will not 
render the kingdom perpetually elective." 
If it were necessary to multiply citations to 
prove, that the Revolution was to all intents 
and purposes an election, we might hear 
Lord Nottingham, whose distinction is pecu- 
liarly applicable to the case before us. " If," 
says he, " you do once make it elective, I do 
not say you are always bound to go to elec- 
tion ; but it is enough to make it so, if by 
that precedent there be a breach in the he- 
reditary succession." The reasoning of Sir 
Robert Howard, another of the managers for 
the Commons, is bold and explicit : — " My 
Lords, you will do well to consider. Have 
you not yourselves limited the succession, 
and cut off some that might have a line of 
right'? Have yon not concurred with us in 
our vote, that it is inconsistent with our reli- 
gion and our laws to have a Papist to rei,r;ii 
over us? Must we not then come to an 
ejection, if the next heir be a Papist?" — the 
precise fact which followed. But what tends 
the most strongly to illustrate that contradic- 
tion between the exoteric and esoteric doc- 
trine, — the legal language, and the real prin- 
ciples. — which forms the basis of this whole 
argument, is the avowal of Sir Richard Tem- 
ple, another of the managers for the Com- 
mons : — -"We are in as natural a capacity 
as any of our predecessors were to provide 
for a remedy in such exigencies as this." 
Hence it followed infallibly, that their pos- 
terity to all generations would be in the 
same " natural capacity," to provide a reme- 
dy for such exigencies. 

But let us hear their statutes : — there " the 
Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, 
do, in tin' name of all the people of England, 
most humbly and faithfully submit them- 
selves, their heirs and posterity for ever," 
&c. Here is the triumph of Mr. Burke ; — a 
solemn abdication and renunciation of right 
to change the monarch or the constitution! 
His triumph is increased by this statutory 
abolition of the rights of men being copied 
from a similar profession of eternal alle- 
giance made by the Parliament of Elizabeth. 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



453 



It is difficult to conceive any thing more pre- 
posterous. In the very act of exercising a 
right which their ancestors had abdicated in 
their name, they abdicate the same right in 
the name of their posterity. To increase 
the ridicule of this legislative farce, they 
impose an irrevocable law on their posterity, 
in the precise words of that law irrevocably 
imposed on them by their ancestors, at the 
moment when they are violating it. The 
Parliament of Elizabeth submit themselves 
and their posterity for ever : the Convention 
of 1688 spurn fhe submission for themselves, 
but re-enact it for their posterity. And after 
such a glaring inconsistency, this language 
of statutory adulation is seriously and tri- 
umphantly brought forward as " the unerring- 
oracles of Revolution policy." 

Thus evidently has it appeared, from the 
conduct and language of the leaders of the 
Revolution, that it was a deposition and an 
election; and that all language of a contrary 
tendency, which is to be found in their acts, 
arose from the remnant of their own preju- 
dice, or from concession to the prejudice of 
others, or from the superficial and presump- 
tuous policy of imposing august illusions on 
mankind. The same spirit regulated. — the 
same prejudices impeded their progress in 
every department. " They acted," says Mr. 
Burke. " by their ancient States :" — they did 
not. Were the Peers, and the Members of 
a dissolved House of Commons, with the 
Lord Mayor of London, &c. convoked by a 
summons from the Prince of Orange, the 
Parliament of England ? — no ; they were 
neither lawfully elected, nor lawfully assem- 
bled. But they affected a semblance of a 
Parliament in their Convention, and a sem- 
blance of hereditary right in their election. 
The subsequent Act of Parliament is nuga- 
tory ; for as that Legislature derived its whole 
existence and authority from the Convention, 
it could not return more than it had received, 
and could not, therefore, legalise the acts of 
the body which created it. If they were 
not previously legal, the Parliament itself 
was without legal authority, and could there- 
fore give no legal sanction. 

It is, therefore, without any view to a prior, 
or allusion to a subsequent revolution, that 
Dr. Price, and the Revolution Society of Lon- 
don, think themselves entitled to conclude, 
that abused power is revocable, and that cor- 
rupt governments ought to be reformed. Of 
the first of these Revolutions. — that in 1648, 
— they may, perhaps, entertain different sen- 
timents from Mr. Burke. They will confess 
that it was debased by the mixture of fanati- 
cism ; they may lament that History has so 
often prostituted her ungenerous suffrage to 
success; and that the commonwealth "was 
obscured and overwhelmed by the splendid 
profligacy of military usurpation : but they 
cannot arrogate to themselves the praise of 
having been the first to maintain. — nor can 
, Mr. Burke support his claim to have been 
the first to reprobate. — since that period, the 
audacious heresy of popular politics. 



The prototype of Mr. Burke is not a less 
notorious personage than the predecessor he 
has assigned to Dr. Price. History has pre- 
served fewer memorials of Hugh Peters than 
of Judge Jeffries. It was the fortune of that 
luminary ant! model of lawyers to sit in 
judgment on one of the fanatical apostles of 
democracy. In the present ignominious ob- 
scurity of the sect in England, it ma\ be 
necessary to mention, that the name of this 
criminal was Algernon Sidney, who had, it 
is true, in his own time acquired some re- 
nown, — celebrated as the hero, and deplored 
as the martyr of freedom. But the learned 
magistrate was above this - epidemical fana- 
ticism :" he inveighed against his pestilential 
dogmas in a spirit that deprives Mr. Burke's 
invective against Dr. Price of all pretensions 
to originality. An unvarnished statement 
will so evince the harmony both of the cul- 
prits and the accusers, that remark is super- 
fluous : — 



" We have a right 
to choose our own 
governors, to cashier 
them for misconduct, 
and to frame a go- 
vernment for our- 
selves." — Dr. Price's 
Sermon. 



" And that the aforesaid Al- 
gernon Sidney did make, com- 
pose and write, or cause to be 
made, composed and written, a 
certain false, scandalous and 
seditious libel, in which is con- 
tained the following English 
words : — ' The Power originally 
in the people is delegated to the 
Parliament. He (meaning the 
King) is subject to the laws of 
God, as he is a man. and to the 
people that made him a king, 
inasmuch as he is a king.' And 
in another place of the said li- 
bel he says, ' We may therefore 
take away kings without break- 
ing any yoke, or that is made a 
yoke, which ought not to be 
one; and the injury therefore 
is making or imposing, and there 
can be none in breaking it,' 
&c." — Indictment of Algernon 
Sidney, State Trials, vol. iii. p. 
716. 



Thus we see the harmony of the culprits: 
the one is only a perspicuous and precise 
abridgment of the other. The harmony of 
the judges will not be found less remarkable : 
Mr. Burke, "when he talks as if he had 
made a discbvery. only follows a prece- 
dent:"— 



" The King, it says, is 
responsible to them, and 
lie is only their trustee. 
He has misgoverned, and 
he is to give it up, that 
they may be all kings 
themselves. Gentlemen, 
I must tell you, 1 think 1 
ought, more than ordina- 
rily, to press this on you, 
because I know the mis- 
fortunes of the late un- 
happy rebellion ; and the 
bringing of the late bless- 
ed King to the scaffold 
was first begun by such 
kind of principles. ''-./(/- 
fries' Charge. 



" The Revolution Society 
chooses to assert, that a king 
is no more than I he first ser- 
vant of the public, created 
by it, and responsible to it." 
" The second claim of the 
Revolution Society is ca- 
shiering the monarch for 
misconduct." — " The Revo- 
lution Society, the heroic 
band of fabricators of go- 
vernments, electors of sove- 
reigns."— " This sermon is 
in a strain which has never 
been heard in this kingdom 
in any of the pulpits which 
are tolerated or encourag- 
ed in it since lfi4S. - ' — j\i r . 
Burke's Reflections. 

Thus does Mr. Burke chant his political 
song in exact unison with the strains of the 
venerable magistrate : they indict the same 
crimes : they impute the same motives ] they 
dread the same consequences. 



454 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



The Revolution Society felt, from the great 
event which they professedly commemora- 
ted, new motives to exult in the emancipa- 
tion of Fiance. The Revolution of 1688 de- 
serves more the attention of a philosopher 
from its indirect influence on the progress of 
human opinion, than from its immediate 
effects on the government of England. In 
the first view, it is perhaps difficult to esti- 
mate the magnitude of its effects. It sanc- 
tified, as we have seen, the general princi- 
ples of freedom. It gave the first example 
in civilized modern Europe of a government 
which reconciled a semblance of political, 
and a large portion of civil liberty, with sta- 
bility and peace. But above all, Europe owes 
to it the inestimable blessing of an asylum 
for freedom of thought. Hence England 
became the preceptress of the world in phi- 
losophy and freedom : hence arose the school 
of sages, who unshackled and emancipated 
the human mind ; from among whom issued 
the Lockes, the Rousseaus, the Turgots, and 
the Franklins, — the immortal band of pre- 
ceptors and benefactors of mankind. They 
silently operated a grand moral revolution, 
which was in due time to ameliorate the 
social order. They had tyrants to dethrone 
more formidable than kings, and from whom 
kings held their power. They wrested the 
sceptre from Superstition, and dragged Pre- 
judice in triumph. They destroyed the ar- 
senal whence Despotism had borrowed her 
thunders and her chains. These grand en- 
terprises of philosophic heroism must have 
preceded the reforms of civil government. 
The Colossus of tyranny was undermined, 
and a pebble overthrew it. 

With this progress of opinion arose the 
American Revolution; and from this last, 
most unquestionably, the delivery of France. 
Nothing, therefore, could be more natural, 
than that those who, without blind bigotry 
for the forms, had a rational reverence for 
the principles of our ancestors, should rejoice 
in a Revolution, in which these principles, 
long suffered to repose in impotent abstrac- 
tion in England, are called forth into energy, 
expanded, invigorated, and matured. If, as 
we have presumed to suppose, the Revolu- 
tion of 1688 may have had no small share 
in accelerating the progress of light which 
has dissolved the prejudices that supported 
despotism, they may be permitted, besides 
their exultation as friends of humanity, to 
indulge some pride as Englishmen. 

It must be confessed that our ancestors in 
1688, confined, in their practical regulations, 
their views solely to the urgent abuse. They 
punished the usurper without ameliorating 
the government ; and they proscribed usurpa- 
tions without correcting their source. They 
were content to clear the turbid stream, in- 
stead of purifying the polluted fountain. 
They merit, however, veneration for their 
achievements, and the most ample amnesty 
for their defects ; for the first were their own, 
and the last are imputable to the age in which 
ihev lived. The true admirers of the Revo- 



lution will pardon it for having spared use- 
less establishments, only because they revere 
it for having established grand principles. 
But the case of Mr. Burke is different; he 
deities its defects, and derides its principles: 
and were Lord Somers to listen to such mis- 
placed eulogy, and tortured inference, he 
might justly say, "You deny us the only 
praise we can claim ; and the only merit you 
allow us is in the sacrifices we were com- 
pelled to make to prejudice and ignorance. 
Your glory is our shame." Reverence for 
the principles, and pardon of the defects of 
civil changes, which arise in ages but par- 
tially enlightened, are the plain dictates of 
common sense. Admiration of Magna Charta 
does not infer any respect for villainage ; 
reverence for Roman patriotism is not incom- 
patible with detestation of slavery ; nor does 
veneration for the Revolutionists of 1688 im- 
pose any blindness to the gross, radical, and 
multiplied absurdities and corruptions in 
their political system. The true admirers 
of Revolution principles cannot venerate in- 
stitutions as sage and effectual protections 
of freedom, which experience has proved to 
be nerveless and illusive. 

-The practical claim of impeachment," — 
the vaunted responsibility ot ministers, — is 
the most sorry juggle of political empiricism 
by which a people were ever attempted to 
be lulled into servitude. State prosecutions 
in free states have ever either languished in 
impotent and despised tediousness, or burst 
forth in a storm of popular indignation, that 
has at once overwhelmed its object, without 
discrimination of innocence or guilt. Nothing 
but this irresistible fervor can destroy the 
barriers within which powerful and opulent 
delinquents are fortified. If it is not with 
imminent hazard to equity and humanity 
gratified at the moment, it subsides. The 
natural influence of the culprit, and of the 
accomplices interested in his impunity, re- 
sumes its place. As these trials are neces- 
sarily long, and the facts which produce 
conviction, and the eloquence which rouses 
indignation, are effaced from the public mind 
by time, by ribaldry, and by sophistry, the 
shame of a corrupt decision is extenuated. 
Every source of obloquy or odium that can 
be attached to the obnoxious and invidious 
character of an accuser is exhausted by the 
profuse corruption of the delinquent. The 
tribunal of public opinion, which alone pre- 
serves the purity of others, is itself polluted ; 
and a people; wearied, disgusted, irritated, 
and corrupted, suffer the culprit to retire in 
impunity and splendour.* 

" Damnatusinani 
Judicio. Quid enim salvis infamia nummis ?"t 

Such has ever been the state of things, when 

* Part of this description is purely historical. 
Heaven forbid that the sequel should prove pro- 
phetic! — When this subject [the late trial of 
Warren Hastings.— Ed.] presents Mr. Burke to 
mind, I must say, " Talis cum sis, utinam noster 
esses." 

1' Juvenal, Sat. i. 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



45: 



the force of the Government has been suffi- 
cient to protect the accused from the first 
ebullition of popular impetuosity. The de- 
mocracies of antiquity presented a spectacle 
directly the reverse; but no history affords 
any example of a just medium. State trials 
will always either be impotent or oppressive, 
— a persecution or a farce. 

Thus vain is the security of impeachment : 
and equally absurd, surely, is our confidence 
in u the control of parliaments," in their pre- 
sent constitution, and with their remaining 
powers. To begin with the last : — they pos- 
sess the nominal power of impeachment. 
Not to mention its disuse in the case of any 
minister for more than seventy years, it is 
always too late to remedy the evil, and pro- 
bably always too weak to punish the criminal. 
They possess a pretended power of with- 
holding supplies : but the situation of society 
has in truth wrested it from them. The sup- 
plies they must vote : for the army must have 
its pay, and the public creditors their interest. 
A power that cannot be exercised without 
provoking mutiny, and proclaiming bank- 
ruptcy, the blindest bigot cannot deny to be 
purely nominal. A practical substitute for 
these theoretical powers existed till our days 
in the negative exercised by the House of 
Commons on the choice of the Minister of 
the Crown. But the elevation of Mr. Pitt 
has establised a precedent which has extir- 
pated the last shadow of popular control from 
the government of England : — 

" Olim vera fides, Sulla Marioque recepiis, 
Libertaiis obit: Pompeio rebus adempio, 
Nunc et ficta perit."* • 

In truth, the force and the privileges of 
Parliament are almost indifferent to the peo- 
ple; for it is not the guardian of their rights, 
nor the organ of their voice. We are said 
to be " unequally represented." This is one 
of those contradictory phrases that form the 
political jargon of half-enlightened periods. 
Unequal freedom is a contradiction in terms. 
The law is the deliberate reason of all. guid- 
ing their occasional will. Representation is 
an expedient for peacefully, systematically, 
and unequivocally collecting this universal 
voice: — so thought and so spoke the Ed- 
mund Burke of better times. "To follow, 
not to force the public inclination, to give a 
direction, a form, a technical dress, and a 
specific sanction to the general sense of the 
community, is the true end of legislature :"t 
— there spoke the correspondent of Frank- 
lin, J the champion of America, the enlight- 
ened advocate of humanity and freedom! 
If these principles be true, and they are so 
true that it seems almost puerile to repeat 
them, who can without indignation hear the 
House of Commons of England called a po- 

* Pharsalia, lib. be. 

t Burke's " Two Letters to Gentlemen in the 
City of Bristol" (1778), p. 52. 

t Mr. Burke has had the honour of being tra- 
duced for corresponding, during the American war, 
with this great man, because he was a rebel! 



pular representative body? A more insolent 
and preposterous abuse of language is not 
to be found in the vocabulary of tyrants. 
The criterion that distinguishes laws from 
dictates, freedom from servitude, rightful 
government from usurpation. — a law being 
an expression of the general will, — is want- 
ing. This is the grievance which the ad- 
mirers of the Revolution of 1688 desire to 
remedy according to its principles. This is 
that perennial source of corruption which has 
increased, is, increasing, and ought to be 
diminished. If the general interest is not 
the object of our government, it is — it must 
be because the general will does not govern. 
We are boldly challenged to produce our 
proofs; our complaints are asserted to be 
chimerical; and the excellence of our govern- 
ment is inferred from its beneficial effects. 
Most unfortunately for us, — most unfortu- 
nately for our country, these proofs are too 
ready and too numerous. We find them in 
that "monumental debt," the bequest of 
wasteful and profligate wars, which already 
wrings from the peasant something of his 
hard-earned pittance, — which already has 
punished the industry of the useful and up- 
right manufacturer, by robbing him of the 
asylum of his house, and the judgment of 
his peers,* — to which the madness of political 
Quixotism adds a million for every farthing 
that the pomp of ministerial empiricism pays, 
— and which menaces our children with con- 
vulsions and calamities, of which no age has 
seen the parallel. We find them in the black 
and bloody roll of persecuting statutes that 
are still suffered to stain our code ; — a list 
so execrable, that were no monument to 
be preserved of what England was in the 
eighteenth century but her Statute Book, 
she might be deemed to have been then 
still plunged in the deepest gloom of super- 
stitious barbarism. We find them in the 
ignominious exclusion of great bodies of our 
fellow-citizens from political trusts, by tests 
which reward falsehood and punish probity, 
— which profane the rights of the religion 
they pretend to guard, and usurp the do- 
minion of the God they profess to revere. 
We iind them in the growing corruption of 
those who administer the government, — in 
the venality of a House of Commons, which 
nine only a cumbrous and expensive 
chamber for registering ministerial edicts. — 
in the increase of a nobility degraded by the 
profusion and prostitution of honours, which 
the most zealous partisans of democracy 
would have spared them. We find them, 
above all, in the rapid progress which has 
been made in silencing the great organ of 
public opinion, — that Press, which is the 
true control over the Ministers and Parlia- 
ments, who might else, with impunity, tram- 
ple on the impotent formalities that form the 
pretended bulwark of our freedom. The 
mutual control, the well-poised balance of 

* Alluding to the stringent provisions of the 
,: Tobacco Act."— Ed. 



456 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



the several members of our Legislature, are 
the visions of theoretical, or the pretext of 
practical politicians. It is a government, not 
of check, but of conspiracy, — a conspiracy 
which can only be repressed by the energy 
of popular opinion. 

These are no visionary ills, — no chimerical 
apprehensions: they are the sad and sober 
reflections ol as honest and enlightened men 
as any in the kingdom. Nor are they alle- 
viated by the torpid and listless security into 
which the people seem to be lulled. " Sum- 
mum otium forense non quiescentis sed sene- 
scentis civitatis." It is in this fatal temper 
that men become sufficiently debased and 
embruted to sink into placid and polluted 
servitude. It is then that it may most truly 
be said, that the mind of a country is slain. 
The admirers of Revolution principles natu- 
rally call on every aggrieved and enlightened 
citizen to consider the source of his oppres- 
sion. If penal statutes hang over our Catho- 
lic brethren,* — if Test Acts outrage our 
Protestant fellow-citizens, — if the remains 
of feudal tyranny are still suffered to exist in 
Scotland, — if the press is fettered, — if our 
right to trial by jury is abridged, — if our 
manufacturers are proscribed and hunted 
down by excise, — the reason of all these op- 
pressions is the same : — no branch of the 
Legislature represents the people. Men are 
oppressed because they have no share in 
their own government. Let all these classes 
of oppressed citizens melt their local and 
partial grievances into one great mass. Let 
them cease to be suppliants for their rights, 
or to sue for them like mendicants, as a 
precarious boon from the arrogant pity of 
usurpers. Until the Legislature speaks their 
voice it will oppress them. Let them unite 
to procure such a Reform in the representa- 
tion of the people as will make the House 
of Commons their representative. If, dis- 
missing all petty views of obtaining their 
own particular ends, they unite for this great 
object, they must succeed. The co-operating 
efforts of so many bodies of citizens must 
awaken the nation; and its voice will be 
spoken in a tone that virtuous governors will 
obey, and tyrannical ones must dread. 

This tranquil ami legal Reform is the ulti- 
mate object of those whom Mr. Burke has 
so foully branded. In effect, this would be 
amply sufficient. The powers of the King 
and the Lords have never been formidable 



* No body of men in any slate that pretends to 
freedom have ever been so insolently oppressed as 
the Catholic majority of Ireland. Their cause has 
been lately pleaded by an eloquent advocate, 
whose virtues might have been supposed to have 
influenced my praise, as the partial dictate of 
friendship, bad not his genius extorted it as a strict 
tribute to justice. I perceive that he retains much 
of that admiration which we cherished in common, 
by his classical quotation respecting Mr. Burke : — 
Uni quippe vacat, studiisque odiisque carenti, 
Humanum legere genus." Pharsalia, lib. ii. 
See " Th^e Constitutional Interests of Ireland with 
respect to the ropery Laws," (Dublin, 1791,) 
part iv. 



in England, but from discords between the 
House of Commons and its pretended con- 
stituents. Were that House really to be- 
come the vehicle of the popular voice, the 
privileges of other bodies, in opposition to 
the sense of the people and their representa- 
tives, would be but as dust in the balance. 
From this radical improvement all subaltern 
reform would naturally and peaceably arise. 
We dream of no more ; and in claiming this, 
instead of meriting the imputation of being 
apostles of sedition, we conceive ourselves 
entitled to be considered as the most sincere 
friends of tranquil and stable government. 
We desire to avert revolution by reform, — 
subversion by correction.* We admonish 
our governors to reform, while they retain 
the force to reform with dignity and secu- 
rity; and we conjure them not to await the 
moment, which will infallibly arrive, when 
they shall be obliged to supplicate that peo- 
ple, whom they oppress and despise, for the 
slenderest pittance of their present powers. 

The grievances of England do not now, 
we confess, justify a change by violence : 
but they are in a rapid progress to that fatal 
state, in which they will both justify and 
produce it. It is because we sincerely love 
tranquil freedom,! that we earnestly depre- 
cate the arrival of the moment when virtue 
and honour shall compel us to seek her with 
our swords. Are not they the true friends 
to authority who desire, that whatever is 
granted by it -'should issue as a gift of her 
bounty and beneficence, rather than as claims 
recovered against a struggling litigant 1 Or, 
at least„that if her beneficence obtained no 
credit in her concessions, they should appear 
the salutary provisions of wisdom and fore- 
sight, not as things wrung with blood by the 
cruel gripe of a rigid necessity."! We de- 
sire that the political light which is to break 
in on England should be "through well- 
contrived and well-disposed windows, not 
through flaws and breaches, — through the 
yawning chasms of our ruin."§ 

Such was the language of Mr. Burke in 
cases nearly parallel to the present. But of 
those who now presume to give similar 
counsels, his alarm and abhorrence are ex- 
treme. They deem the "present times" 
favourable " to all exertions in the cause of 
liberty." They naturally must : their hopes 
in that great cause are from the determined 
and recording voices of enlightened men. 
The shock that has destroyed the despotism 
of France has widely dispersed the clouds 
that intercepted reason from the political and 



* Let the governors of all states compare the 
convulsion which the obstinacy of the Government 
provoked in France, with the peaceful and digni- 
fied reform which its wisdom effected in Poland. 
The moment is important, the dilemma inevitable, 
the alternative awful, the lesson most instructive. ■ 

t " Manus haec inimica tyrannis i 

Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem." 
[The lines inserted by Algernon Sidney in the 
Album of the University of Copenhagen. — Ed.] 

1 Burke, Speech at Bristol. 

* Ibid. 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



457 



moral world : and we cannot suppose, that 
England is the only spot that has not been 
reached by this ••'flood of light" that has 
burst upon the human race. We might 
suppose, too, that Englishmen would be 
shamed out of their torpor by the great ex- 
ertions of nations whom we had long deemed 
buried in hopeless servitude. 

But nothing can be more absurd than to 
assert, that all who admire wish to imitate 
the French Revolution. In one view, there 
is room for diversity of opinion among the 
warmest and wisest friends of freedom, — as 
to the amount of democracy infused into the 
new government. In another, and a more 
important one, it is to be recollected, that 
the conduct of nations is apt to vary with 
the circumstances in which they are placed. 
Blind admirers of Revolutions take them for 
implicit models. Thus Mr. Burke admires 
that of 1688 : but we, who conceive that we 
pay the purest homage to the authors of that 
Revolution, not in contending for what they 
then did, but for what they now would do, 
can feel no inconsistency in looking on 
France, not to model our conduct, but to 
invigorate the spirit of freedom. We per- 
mit ourselves to imagine how- Lord Somers, 
in the light and knowledge of the eighteenth 
century. — how the patriots of France, in the 
tranquillity and opulence of England, would 
have acted. We are not bound to copy the 
conduct to which the last were driven by a 
bankrupt exchequer and a dissolved govern- 
ment, nor to maintain the establishments, 
which were spared by the first- in a preju- 
diced and benighted age. Exact imitation 
is not necessary to reverence. We venerate 
the principles which presided in both events : 
and we adapt to political admiration a maxim 
which has long been received in polite let- 
ters, — that the only manly and liberal imita- 
tion is to speak as a great man would have 
spoken, had he lived in our times, and had 
been placed in our circumstances. 

But let us hear the charge of Mr. Burke. 
''• Is our monarchy to be annihilated, with all 
the laws, all the tribunals, all the ancient 
corporations of the kingdom 1 Is every land- 
mark of the kingdom to be done away in 
favour of a geometrical and arithmetical 
constitution 1 Is the House of Lords to be 
useless ? Is episcopacy to be abolished ?" — 
and, in a word, is France to be imitated ? 
Yes ! if our governors imitate her policy, the 
state must follow her catastrophe. Man is 
every where man: imprisoned grievance 
will at length have vent ; and the storm of 
popular passion will find a feeble obstacle in 
the solemn imbecility of human institutions. 
But who are the true friends of order, the 
prerogative of the monarch, the splendour 
of the hierarchy, and the dignity of the peer- 
age'? — those most certainly who inculcate, 
that to withhold Reform is to stimulate con- 
vulsion, — those who admonish all to whom 
honour, and rank, and dignity, and wealth 
are dear, that they can only in the end pre- 
serve them by conceding, while the moment 
58 



of concession remains, — those who aim at 
draining away the fountains that feed the 
torrent, instead of opposing puny barriers to 
its course. a The beginnings of confusion in 
England are at present feeble enough : but 
with you we have seen an infancy still more 
feeble growing by moments into a strength 
to heap mountains upon mountains, and to 
wage war with Heaven itself. Whenever 
our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be 
amiss for the engines to play a little upon 
our own." This language, taken in its most 
natural sense, is exactly what the friends of 
Reform in England would adopt. Every 
gloomy tint that is added to the horrors of 
the French Revolution by the tragic pencil 
of Mr. Burke, is a new argument in support 
of their claims; and those only are the real 
enemies of the Nobility, the Priesthood, and 
other bodies of men that suffer in such con- 
vulsions, who stimulate them to unequal and 
desperate conflicts. Such are the sentiments 
of those who can admire without servilely 
copying recent changes, and can venerate 
the principles without superstitious!)' defend- 
ing the corrupt reliques of old revolutions. 

'•'Grand, swelling sentiments of liberty," 
says Mr. Burke, "I am sure I do not despise. 
Old as I am, I still read the fine raptures of 
Lucan and Comeille with pleasure." Long, 
may that virtuous and venerable age enjoy 
such pleasures! But why should he be in- 
dignant that "the glowing sentiment and 
the lofty speculation should have passed 
from the schools and the closet to the se- 
nate," and no longer only serving 

" To point a moral or adorn. a tale,"* 

should be brought home to the business and 
the bosoms of men'! The sublime genius, 
whom Mr. Burke admires, and who sung the 
obsequies of Roman freedom, has one senti- 
ment, which the friends of liberty in Eng- 
land, if they are like him condemned to look 
abroad for a free government, must adopt: — 

" Redituraque nunquam 
l.ibertas ultra Tigrim Rhenumque reccssit, 
Et toties nobis jugulo quaesita negatur."t 



SECTION VI. 

Speculations on the probable consequences of 
the French Revolution in Europe. 

There is perhaps only one opinion about 
the French Revolution in which its friends 
and its enemies agree : — they both conceive 
that its influence will not be confined to 
France ; they bo'th predict that it will pro- 
duce important changes in the general state 
of Europe. This is the theme of the exulta- 
tion of its admirers; this is the source of the 
alarms of its detractors. It were indeed 
difficult to suppose that a Revolution so un- 



* Vanity of Human Wishes. — Ed. 
t Pharsalia, lib. vii. 
20 



458 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS, 



paralleled should take place in the most re- 
nowned of the European nations, without 
spreading its influence throughout the Chris- 
tian commonwealth; connected as it is by 

the multiplied relations of politics, by the 
common interest of commerce, by the wide 
intercourse of curiosity and of literature, by 
similar aits, and by congenial manners. The 
channels by which the prevailing sentiments 
of France may enter into the other nations 
of Europe, are so obvious and so numerous, 
that it would be unnecessary and tedious to 
detail them ; but I may remark, as among 
the most conspicuous, a central situation, a 
predominating language, and an authority 
almost legislative in the ceremonial of the 
private intercourse of life. These and many 
other causes must facilitate the diffusion of 
French politics among neighbouring nations: 
but it will be justly remarked, that their ef- 
fect must, in a great measure depend on the 
stability of the Revolution. The suppression 
of an honourable revolt would strengthen all 
the governments of Europe : the view of a 
splendid revolution would be the signal of 
insurrection to their subjects. Any reason- 
ings on the influence of the French Revolu- 
tion may therefore be supposed to be prema- 
ture until its permanence be ascertained. 
Of that permanence my conviction is firm : 
but I am sensible that in the field of political 
prediction, where veteran sagacity* has so 
often been deceived, it becomes me to har- 
bour with distrust, and to propose with diffi- 
dence, a conviction influenced by partial en- 
thusiasm, and perhaps produced by the in- 
experienced ardour of youth. 

The moment at which I write (August 25th. 
1791.) is peculiarly critical. The invasion of 
France is now spoken of as immediate by 
the exiles and their partisans; and a con- 
federacy of despotst is announced with new 
■confidence. Notwithstanding these threats, 
I retain my doubts whether the jarring inte- 
rests of the European Courts will permit this 
alliance to have much energy or cordiality; 
and whether the cautious prudence of des- 
pots will send their military slaves to a 
school of freedom in Fiance. But if there 
be doubts about the likelihood of the enter- 
prise beino- undertaken, there be few about 
the probability of its event. History cele- 
brates many conquests of obscure tribes, 
whose valour was animated by enthusiasm; 

* Witness die memorable example of -Harring- 
ton, who published a demonstration of the im- 
possibility of re-establishing monarchy in England 
six months before the restoration of Charles II. 
Religious prophecies have usually the inestimable 
convenience of relating to a distant futurity. 

t The malignant hostility displayed against 
French freedom by a perfidious Prince, who oc- 
cupies and dishonours the throne of Gnsiavns 
Vasa, cannot excite our wonder, though it may 
provoke our indignation. The pensioner of r rench 
despotism could not rejoice in its destruction; nor 
could a monarch, whose boasted talents have hi- 
therto been confined to perjury and usurpation, 
fail to be wounded by the establishment of free- 
dom : for freedom demands genius, not intrigue, 
— wisdom, not cunning. 



but she records no example where a foreign 
force has subjugated a powerful and gallant 
people, governed by the most imperious pas- 
sion that can sway the human breast.* — 
Whatever wonders fanaticism has performed, 
may be again effected by a passion as ardent, 
though not so transitory, because it is sanc- 
tioned by virtue and reason. To animate 
patriotism, — to silence tumult. — to banish 
division, — would be the only effects of an 
invasion in the present state of France. A 
people abandoned to its own inconstancy, 
have often courted the yoke which they had 
thrown off: but to oppose foreign hostility 
to the enthusiasm of a nation, can only have 
the effect of adding to it ardour, and con- 
stancy, and force. These and similar views 
must offer. themselves to the European Cabi- 
nets; but perhaps they perceive themselves 
to be placed in so peculiar a situation, that 
exertion and inactivity are equally perilous. 
If they fail in the attempt to crush the infant 
liberty of France, the ineffectual effort will 
recoil on their own governments : if they 
tamely suffer a schoolf of freedom to be 
founded in the centre of Europe, they 
must foresee the hosts of disciples that are 
to issue from it for the subversion of their 
despotism. 

They cannot be blind to a species of 
danger which the history of Europe reveals 
to them in legible characters. They see, 
indeed, that the negotiations, the wars, and 
the revolutions of vulgar policy, pass away 
without leaving behind them any vestige 
of their transitory and ignominious opera- 
tion : but they must remark also, that be- 



* May I be permitted to state how the ances- 
tors of a nation now stigmatized for servility, felt 
this powerful sentiment ? The Scottish Nobles, 
contending for their liberty under Robert Bruce, 
thus spoke to the Pope : — " Non pugnamus prop- 
tor divitias, honores, aut dignitates, sed propter 
liber.tatem tantummodo, quam nemo bonus nisi 
simul cum vita, amittit !" Nor was this senti- 
ment confined to the Magnates ; for the same 
letter declares the assent of the Commons : — 
" Totaque Communitas Regni Scotia? ! : ' Reflect- 
ing on the various fortunes of my country, I can- 
not exclude from my mind the comparison between 
its present reputation and our ancient character, — 
'• terrarum et Iibertatis extremos :" nor can I for- 
get the honourable reproach against the Scottish 
name in the character of Buchanan by Thuanus, 
(Hist. lib. lxxvi. cap. 11,) " Libertate genti innata 
in feglum i'astigium acerbior." This melancholy 
retrospect is however relieved by the hope that a 
gallant and enlightened people will not be slow 
in renewing the era for such reproaches. 

t The most important materials for the philoso- 
phy of history are collected from remarks on the 
coincidence of the situations and sentiments of 
distant periods ; and it may be curious as well aa 
instructive, to present to the reader the topics 
by which the Calonnes of Charles I. were in- 
structed, to awaken the jealousy and solicit the 
aid of the European courts : — " A dangerous com- 
bination of his Majesty's subjects have laid a de- 
sign to dissolve the monarchy and frame of govern- 
ment, becoming a dangerous precedent to all the 
monarchies of Christendom, if attended with suc- 
cess in their design." — Charles I.'s Instructions 
to his Minister in Denmark, Ludlow'.' Memoirs, 
vol. iii. p. 257. 



A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



459 



sides this monotonous villany, there are 
cases in which Europe, actuated by a com- 
mon passion, has appeared as one nation. 
The religious passion animated and guided 
the spirit of chivalry : — hence arose the Cru- 
sades. "A nerve was touched of exquisite 
feeling; and the sensation vibrated to the 
heart of Europe."* In the same manner 
the Reformation gave rise to religious wars, 
the duration of which exceeded a century 
and a half. Both examples prove the exist- 
ence of that sympathy, by the means of 
which a great passion, taking its rise in any 
considerable state of Europe, must circulate 
through the whole Christian commonwealth. 
Illusion is, however, transient, while truth is 
immortal. The epidemical fanaticism of 
former times was short-lived, for it could 
only flourish in the eclipse of reason : but 
the virtuous enthusiasm of liberty, though it 
be like that fanaticism contagious, is not like 
it transitory. 

But there are other circumstances which 
entitle us to expect, that the example of 
France will have a mighty influence on the 
subjects of despotic governments. The 
Gothic governments of Europe have lived 
their time. "Man, and for ever!" is the 
sage exclamation of Mr. Hume.t Limits 
are no less rigorously prescribed by Nature 
to the age of governments than to that of 
individuals. The Heroic governments of 
Greece yielded to a body of legislative re- 
publics: these were in their turn swallowed 
up by the conquests of Rome. That great 
empire itself, under the same forms, passed 
through various modes of government. The 
first usurpers concealed it under a republican 
disguise : their successors threw off the mask, 
and avowed a military despotism: it expired 
in the ostentatious feebleness of an Asiatic 
monarchy.}: It was overthrown by savages, 
whose rude institutions and barbarous man- 
ners have, until our days, influenced Europe 
with a permanance refused to wiser and 
milder laws. But, unless historical analogy 
be altogether delusive, the decease of the 
Gothic governments cannot be distant. Their 
maturity is long past : and symptoms of 
their decrepitude are rapidly accumulating. 
Whether they are to be succeeded by more 
beneficial or more injurious forms may be 
doubted ; but that they are about to perish, 
we are authorized to suppose, from the usual 
age to which the governments recorded in 
history have arrived. 

There are also other presumptions fur- 
nished by historical analogy, which favour 
the supposition that legislative governments 
are about to succeed to the rude usurpations 
of Gothic Europe. The commonwealths 

* Gibbon, Decline and Fall, &c, chap. lvii. 

t Philosophical Works, vol. iii. p. 579. — Ed. 

t See this progress stated in the concise philoso- 
phy of Montesquieu, and illustrated by the copious 
eloquence of Gibbon. The republican disguise 
extends from Augustus to .Severus ; the military 
despotism from Severus to Diocletian ; the Asiatic 
Sultanship from Diocletian to the final extinction 
of the Roman name. 



which in the sixth and seventh centuries 
before the Christian era were erected on the 
ruins of the heroic monarchies of Greece, 
are perhaps the only genuine example of go- 
vernments truly legislative recorded in his- 
tory. A close inspection will, perhaps, dis- 
cover some coincidence between the circum- 
stances which formed them and those which 
now influence the state of Europe. The 
Phenician and Egyptian colonies were not 
like our colonies in America, populous 
enough to subdue or extirpate the native 
savages of Greece : they were, however. 
sufficiently so to instruct and civilize them. 
From that alone could their power be de- 
rived : to that therefore were their efforts, 
directed. Imparting the arts and the know- 
ledge of polished nations to rude tribes, they 
attracted, by avowed superiority of know- 
ledge, a submission necessary to the effect of 
their legislation, — a submission which impos- 
tors acquire through superstition, and con- 
querors derive from force. An ace of legisla- 
tion supposes great inequality of knowledge 
between the legislators and those who receive 
their institutions. The Asiatic colonists, who 
first scattered the seeds of refinement, pos- 
sessed this superiority over the Pelasgic 
hordes: and the legislators who in subse- 
quent periods organised the Grecian common- 
wealths, acquired from their travels in the 
polished states of the East, that reputation of 
superior knowledge, which enabled them to 
dictate laws to their fellow-citizens. Let us 
then compare Egypt and Phenicia with the 
enlightened part of Europe, — separated as 
widely from the general mass by the moral 
difference of instruction, as these countries 
were from Greece by the physical obsta- 
cles which impeded a rude navigation, — and 
we must discern, that philosophers become 
legislators are colonists from an enlightened 
country reforming the institutions of rude 
tribes. The preselit moment indeed resem- 
bles with wonderful exactness the legisla- 
tive age of Greece. The multitude have 
attained sufficient knowledge to value the 
superiority of enlightened men ; and they 
retain a sufficient consciousness of ignorance 
to preclude rebellion against their dictates. 
Philosophers have meanwhile long remained 
a distinct nation in the midst of an unen- 
lightened multitude. It is only now that 
the conquests of the press are enlarging the 
dominion of reason ; as the vessels of Cad- 
mus and Cecrops spread the aits and the 
wisdom of the East among the Pelasgic bar- 
barians. 

These general causes, — the unity of the 
European commonwealth, the decrepitude 
on which its fortuitous governments are 
verging, and the similarity between our 
age'and the only recorded period when the 
ascendant of philosophy dictated laws,- -en- 
title us to hope that freedom and reason will 
be rapidly propagated from their source in 
France. And there are not wanting symp- 
toms which justify the speculation. The first 
symptoms which indicate the approach of 



460 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



a contagious disease are the precautions 
adopted againsl it: the first marks of the 
probable progress of French principles are 
the alarms betrayed by despots. The Courts 
of Europe seem to look on France, and to 
exclaim in their despair, — 

" Hinc populum late regeni, belloque superbum, 
Venturum excidio Libyas." 

The King of Spain already seems to tremble 
for his throne, though it be erected on so 
firm a basis of general ignorance and trium- 
phant priestcraft. By expelling foreigners, 
and by subjecting the entrance of travellers 
to such multiplied restraints, he seeks the 
preservation of his despotism in a vain at- 
tempt to convert his kingdom into a Bastile, 
and to banish his subjects from the European 
commonwealth. The Chinese government 
has indeed thus maintained its permanency; 
but it is insulated by Nature more effectually 
than by policy. Let the Court of Madrid re- 
call her ambassadors, shut up her ports, 
abandon her commerce, sever every tie that 
unites her to Europe : the effect of such 
shallow policy must be that of all ineffectual 
rigour (and all rigour short of extirpation is 
here ineffectual), to awaken reflection. — to 
stimulate inquiry, — to aggravate discontent, 
— and to provoke convulsion. "There are 
no longer Pyrenees," said Louis XIV., on 
the accession of his grandson to the Spanish 
throne: "There are no longer Pyrenees," 
exclaimed the alarmed statesmen of Aran- 
juez, — " to protect our despotism from being 
consumed by the sun of" liberty." The 
alarm of the Pope for the little remnant of 
his authority naturally increases with the 
probability of the diffusion of French princi- 
ples. Even the mild and temperate aristo- 
cracies of Switzerland seem to apprehend the 
arrival of that period, when men will not be 
content to owe the benefits of government 
to the fortuitous character of their governors, 
but to its own intrinsic excellence. Even 
the unsuccessful struggle of Liege, and the 
theocratic insurrection of Brabant, have left 
behind them traces of a patriotic party, 
whom a more favourable moment may call 
into more successful action. The despotic 
Court of the Hague is betraying alarm that 
the Dutch republic may yet revive, on the 
destruction of a government odious and in- 
tolerable to an immense majority of the 
people. Every where then are those alarms 
discernible, which are the most evident 
symptoms of the approaching downfall of the 
European despotisms. 

But the impression produced by the French 
Bevolution in England; — in an enlightened 
country ; which had lonq; boasted of its free- 
dom. — merits more particular remark. Be- 
fore the publication of Mr. Burke, the public 
were not recovered from that astonishment 
into which they had been plunged by unex- 
ampled events, and the general opinion could 
not have been collected with precision. But 
that performance has divided the nation into 
marked parties. It has produced a contro- 



versy, which may be regarded as the trial 
of the French Revolution before the enlight- 
ened and independent tribunal of the Eng- 
lish public. What its decision has been I 
shall not presume to decide ; for it does not 
become an advocate to announce the deci- 
sion of the judge. But this I may be per- 
initlcd to remark, that the conduct of our 
enemies has not resembled the usual triumph 
of those who have been victorious in the war 
of reason. Instead of the triumphant calm- 
ness that is ever inspired by conscious su- 
periority, they have betrayed the bitterness 
of defeat, and the ferocity of resentment,, 
which are peculiar to the black revenge of 
detected imposture. Priestcraft and Tory- 
ism have been supported only by literary ad- 
vocates of the most miserable description : 
but 1 hey have been ably aided by auxiliaries 
of another kind. Of the two great classes 
of enemies to political reform, — the interest- 
ed and the prejudiced, — the activity of the 
first usually supplies what may be wanting 
in thejalents of the last. Judges have for- 
gotten the dignity of their function, — priests 
the mildness of their religion ; the Bench, 
which should have spoken with the serene 
temper of justice, the Pulpit, whence only 
should have issued the healing sounds of 
charity, have been prostituted to party pur- 
poses, and polluted with invectives against 
freedom. The churches have resounded 
with language at which Laud would have 
shuddered, and Sacheverell would have 
blushed : the most profane comparisons be- 
tween our duty to the Divinity and to kings, 
have been unblushingly pronounced : flat- 
tery of the Ministers has been mixed with 
the solemnities of religion, by the servants, 
and in the temple of God. These profligate 
proceedings have not been limited to a single 
spot : they have been general over England. 
In many churches the French Revolution 
has been expressly named : in a majority it 
was the constant theme of invective for 
many weeks before its intended celebration. 
Yet these are the peaceful pastors, who so 
sincerely and meekly deprecate political 
sermons.* 

Nor was this sufficient. The grossness of 
the popular mind, on which political invec- 
tive made but a faint impression, was to be 
roused into action by religious fanaticism, — 
the most intractable and domineering of all 
destructive passions. A clamour which had 
for half a century lain dormant has been re- 
vived : — the Church was in danger ! The 
spirit of persecution against an unpopular sect 
has been artfully excited ; and the friends 
of freedom, whom it might be odious and 
dangerous professedly to attack, are to be 
overwhelmed as Dissenters. That the raa- 

* These are no vague accusations. A sermon 
was preached in a parish church in Middlesex on 
the anniversary of the Restoration, in which eter- 
nal punishment was denounced against political 
disaffection ! Persons for whose discernment and 
veracity I can be responsible, were among the 
indignant auditors of this infernal homily. 



REASONS AGAINST THE FRENCH WAR OF 1793. 



461 



jority of the advocates for the French Revo- 
lution are not Dissenters is, indeed, suffi- 
ciently known to their enemies. They are 
well known to be philosophers and friends 
of humanity, superior to the creed of any 
sect, and indifferent to the dogmas of any 
popular faith. But it has suited the purpose 
of their profligate adversaries to confound 
them with the Dissenters, and to animate 
against them the fury of prejudices which 
those very adversaries despised. 

The diffusion of these invectives has pro- 
duced those obvious and inevitable effects, 
which it may require something more than 
candour to suppose not foreseen and desired. 
A banditti, which had been previously stimu- 
lated, as it has since been excused and pane- 
gyrized by incendiary libellers, have wreaked 
their vengeance on a philosopher,* illustrious 



* Alluding to the destruction of Dr. Priestley's 



by his talents and his writings, venerable 
for the spotless purity of his life, and amia- 
ble for the unoffending simplicity of his 
manners. The excesses of this mob of 
churchmen and loyalists are to be poorly 
expialed by the few misguided victims who 
are sacrificed to the vengeance of the law. 

We are, however, only concerned with 
these fads, as they are evidence from our 
enemies of the probable progress of freedom. 
The probability of that progress they all con- 
spire to prove. The briefs of the Pope, and 
the pamphlets of Mr. Burke, the edicts of 
the Spanish Court, and the mandates of the 
Spanish inquisition, the Birmingham rioters, 
and the Oxford graduates, equally render to 
Liberty the involuntary homage of their 
alarm. 



house in the neighbourhood of Birmingham by the 
mob, on the 14th of July, 1791. — Ed. 



REASONS 

AGAINST THE FRENCH WAR OF 1793.* 



At the commencement of the year 1793 
the whole body of the supporters of the war 
seemed unanimous; yet even then was per- 
ceptible the germ of a difference which time 
and events have since unfolded. The Min- 
ister had early and frequent recourse to the 
high principles of Mr. Burke, in order to adorn 
his orations, — to assail his antagonists in de- 
bate, — to blacken the character of the ene- 
my, — and to arouse the national spirit against 
them. Amid the fluctuating fortune of the 
war, he seemed in the moment of victory 
to deliver opinions scarcely distinguishable 
from those of Mr. Burke, and to recede from 
them by imperceptible degrees, as success 
abandoned the arms of the Allies. When 
the armies of the French republic were 
every where triumphant, and the pecuniary 
embarrassments of Great Britain began to 
be severely felt, he at length dismissed alto- 
gether the consideration of the internal state 
of France, and professed to view the w T ar as 
merely defensive against aggressions com- 
mitted on Great Britain and her allies. 

That the war was not just on such princi- 
ples perhaps a very short argument will be 
sufficient to demonstrate. War is just only 
to those by whom it is unavoidable ; and 
every appeal to arms is unrighteous, except 
that of a nation which has no other resource 
for the maintenance of its security or the 
assertion of its honour. Injury and insult do 
not of themselves make it lawful for a nation 
to seek redress by war, because they do not 



From the Monthly Review, vol. xl. p. 435. — Ed. 



make it necessary : another means of redress 
is still in her power, and it is still her duty 
to employ it. It is not either injury or in- 
sult ; but injury for which reparation has 
been asked and denied, or insult for which 
satisfaction has been demanded and refused, 
that places her in a state in which, having 
in vain employed every other means of vin- 
dicating her rights, she may justly assert 
them by arms. Any commonwealth, there- 
fore, which shuts up the channel of negotia- 
tion while disputes are depending, is the 
author of the war which may follow. As a 
perfect equality prevails in the society and 
intercourse of nations, no state is- bound to 
degrade herself by submitting to unavowed 
and clandestine negotiation ; but every go- 
vernment has a perfect right to be admitted 
to that open, avowed, authorized, honourable 
negotiation which in the practice of nations 
is employed for the pacific adjustment of 
their contested claims. To refuse authorized 
negotiation is to refuse the only negotiation 
to which a government is forced to submit : 
it is, therefore, in effect to refuse negotiation 
altogether; and it follows, as a necessary 
consequence, that they who refuse such au- 
thorized negotiation are responsible for a war 
which that refusal makes on their part unjust. 
These principles apply with irresistible 
force to the conduct of the English Govern- 
ment in the commencement of the present 
war. They complained, perhaps justly, of 
the opening of the Scheldt, — of the Decree 
of Fraternity, — of the countenance shown to 
disaffected Englishmen : but they refused 
2 o 2 



462 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



that authorised intercourse with the French 
Government through its ambassador, M. 
Chauvelin, which misfit have amicably ter- 
minated these disputes. It is no answer 
that they were ready to carry on a clandes- 
tine correspondence with that government 
through Noel and Maret, or any other of its 
secret agents. That Government was not 
obliged to submit to such an intercourse; 
and the British Government put itself in the 
wrong by refusing an intercourse of another 
sort. 

No difficulties arising from a refusal to ne- 
gotiate embarrass the system of Mr. Burke. 
It is founded on the principle that the nature 
of the French Government is a just ground 
of war for its destruction, and regards the 
particular acts of that government no farther 
than as they are proofs of its irreconcilable 
hostility to all other states and communities. 

We are not disposed to deny that so mighty 
a change in the frame of government and the 
state of society, of one of the greatest nations 
of the civilized world, as was effected by the 
Revolution in France, — attended by such ex- 
travagant opinions, and producing such vio- 
lent passions, — was of a nature to be danger- 
ous to the several governments and to the 
quiet of the various communities, which 
compose the great commonwealth of Europe. 
To affirm the contrary would be in effect to 
maintain that man is not the creature of 
sympathy and imitation. — that he is not al- 
ways disposed, in a greater or less degree, 
to catch the feelings, to imbibe the opinions, 
and to copy the conduct of his fellow-men. 
Most of the revolutions which have laid an- 
cient systems in ruins, and changed the 
whole face of society, have sprung from 
these powerful and active principles of hu- 
man nature. The remote effect of these re- 
volutions has been sometimes beneficial and 
sometimes pernicious : but the evil which 
accompanied them has ever been great and 
terrible; their future tendency was neces- 
sarily ambiguous and contingent ; and their 
ultimate consequences were always depend- 
ent on circumstances much beyond the con- 
trol of the agents. With these opinions, the 
only question that can be at issue between 
Mr. Burke and ourselves is, whether a war 
was a just, effectual, and safe mode of 
averting the danger with which the French 
Revolution might threaten the established 
governments of Europe; — just in its princi- 
ple, — effectual for its proposed end, — and 
safe from the danger of collateral evil. On 
all the three branches of this comprehen- 
sive question we are obliged to dissent very 
widely from the opinions of Mr. Burke. 

We are not required to affirm universally 
that there never are cases in which the state 
of the internal government of a foreign nation 
may become a just ground of war; and we 
know too well the danger of universal affir- 
mation in extend our line of posts farther 
than is absolutely necessary for our own de- 
fence. We are not convinced of the fact 
that the French Government in the year 1791 



(when the Royal confederacy originated) was 
of such a nature as to be incapable of being 
so ripened and mitigated by a wise modera- 
tion in the surrounding Powers, that it might 
not become perfectly safe and inoffensive to 
the neighbouring states. Till this fact be 
proved, the whole reasoning of Mr. Burke 
appears to us inconclusive. Whatever may 
be done by prudence and forbearance is not 
to be attempted by war. Whoever, there- 
fore, proposes war as the means of attaining 
any public good, or of averting any public 
evil, must first prove that his object is un- 
attainable by any other means. And pecu- 
liarly heavy is the burden of proof on the 
man who, in such cases as the present, is 
the author of violent counsels, — which, even 
when they r are most specious in promise, are 
hard and difficult in trial, as well as most un- 
certain in their issue, — which usually pre- 
clude any subsequent recurrence to rmlder 
and more moderate expedients, — and from 
which a safe retreat is often difficult, and an 
honourable retreat is generally impossible. 

Great and evident indeed must be the ne- 
cessity which can justify a war that in its 
nature must impair, and in its effects may 
subvert, the sacred principle of national in- 
dependence, — the great master-principle of 
public morality, from which all the rules of 
the law of nations flow, and which they are 
all framed only to defend. — of which the 
balance of power itself (for which so many 
wars, in our opinion just, have been carried 
on) is only r a safeguard and an outwork, — 
and of which the higher respect and the 
more exact observance have so happily dis- 
tinguished our western parts of Europe, in 
these latter times, above all other ages and 
countries of the world. Under the guard of 
this venerable principle, our European socie- 
ties, with the most different forms of govern- 
ment and the greatest inequalities of strength, 
have subsisted and flourished in almost equal 
security', — the character of man has been 
exhibited in all that variety and vigour which 
are necessary for the expansion and display 
both of his powers and of his virtues, — the 
spring and spirit and noble pride and gene- 
rous emulation, which arise from a division 
of territory among a number of independent 
states, have been combined with a large 
measure of that tranquil security which has 
been found so rarely reconcilable with such 
a division, — the opinion of enlightened Eu- 
rope has furnished a mild but not altogether 
ineffectual, control over the excesses of des- 
potism itself, — and the victims of tyranny 
have at least found a safe and hospitable 
asylum in foreign countries from the rage of 
their native oppressors. It has alike exempt- 
ed us from the lethargic quiet of extensive 
empire.. — from the scourge of wide and rapid 
conquest, — and from the pest of frequent do- 
mestic revolutions. 

This excellent principle, like every other 
rule which governs the moral conduct of 
men, may be productive of occasional evil. 
It must be owned that the absolute indepen- 



REASONS AGATNST THE FRENCH WAR OF 1793. 



463 



dence of states, and their supreme exclusive 
jurisdiction over all acts done within their 
own territory, secure an impunity to the most 
atrocious crimes either of usurpers or of law- 
ful governments degenerated into tyrannies. 
There is no tribunal competent to punish 
such crimes, because it is not for the interest 
of mankind to vesl in anj tribunal an au- 
thority adequate to their punishment; and it 
is better that these crimes should be unpun- 
ished, than that nations should not be inde- 
pendent. To admit such an authority would 
only be to supply fresh incitements to am- 
bition and rapine, — to multiply the grounds 
of war, — to sharpen the rage of national ani- 
mosity, — to destroy the confidence of inde- 
pendence and internal quiet, — and to furnish 
new pretexts for invasion, for conquest, and 
for partition. When the Roman general 
Flaminius was accomplishing the conquest 
of Greece, under pretence of enfranchising 
the Grecian republics, he partly covered his 
ambitious designs under colour of punishing 
the atrocious crimes of the Lacedaemonian 
tyrant Nabis.* When Catherine II. and her 
accomplices perpetrated the greatest crime 
which any modern government has ever 
committed against another nation, it was 
easy for them to pretend that the partition 
of Poland was necessary for the extirpation 
of Jacobinism in the north of Europe. 

We are therefore of opinion that the war 
proposed by Mr. Burke is unjust, both be- 
cause it has not been proved that no other 
means than war could have preserved us 
from the danger ; and because war was an 
expedient, which it was impossible to employ 
for such a purpose, without shaking the au- 
thority of that great tutelary principle, under 
the shade of which the nations of Europe 
have so long flourished in security. There 
is no case of fact made out to which the 
principles of the law of vicinage are to apply. 
If the fact had been proved, we might confess 
the justice of the war; though even in that 
case its wisdom and policy would still remain 
to be considered. 

The first question to be discussed in the 
examination of every measure of policy is, 
whether it is likely to be effectual for its 
proposed ends. That the war against France 
was inadequate to the attainment of its ob- 
ject, is a truth which is now demonstrated 
by fatal experience : but which, in our 
opinion, at the time of its commencement, 
was very evident to men of sagacity and 
foresight. The nature of the means to be 
employed was of itself sufficient to prove 
their inadequacy. The first condition es- 
sential to the success of the war was, that 
the confederacy of ambitious princes who 
were to carry it on, should become perfectly- 
wise, moderate, and disinterested, — that they 
should bury in oblivion past animosities and 
all mutual jealousies — that they should sacri- 
fice every view of ambition and every op- 

* Livy, lib. xxxiv. cap. 24 The whole narra- 
tive is extremely curious, and not without resem- 
blance and application to later events. 



portunity of aggrandisement to the great 
object of securing Europe from general con- 
fusion by re-establishing the ancient mo- 
narchy of France. No man has proved this 
more unanswerably than Mr. Burke himself. 
This moderation and this disinterestedness 
wepe not only necessary for the union of the 
Allies, but for the disunion of France. 

But we will venture to affirm, that the 
supposition of a disinterested confederacy 
of ambitious princes is as extravagant a chi- 
mera as any that can be laid to the charge 
of the wildest visionaries of democracy. 
The universal peace of the Abbe St. Pierre 
was plausible anil reasonable, when com- 
pared with this supposition. The universal 
republic of Anacharsis Cloots himself was 
not much more irreconcilable with the uni- 
form experience and sober judgment of man- 
kind. We are far from confounding two 
writers, — one of whom was a benevolent 
visionary and the other a sanguinary mad- 
man, — who had nothing in common but the 
wildness of their predictions and the extrava- 
gance of their hopes. The Abbe St. Pierre 
had the simplicity to mistake an ingenious 
raillery of the Cardinal Fleuri for a deliberate 
adoption of his reveries. That minister had 
told him "that he had forgotten an indis- 
pensable preliminary— that of sending a body 
of missionaries to turn the hearts and minds 
of the princes of Europe." Mr. Burke, with 
all his knowledge of human nature, and with 
all his experience of public affairs, has for- 
gotten a circumstance as important as that 
which was overlooked by the simple and 
recluse speculator. He has forgotten that he 
must have made ambition disinterested, — 
power moderate, — the selfish generous, — and 
the short-sighted wise, before he could hope 
for success in the contest which he recom- 
mended.* To say that if the authors of the 
partition of Poland could be made perfectly 
wise and honest, they might prevail over the 
French democracy, is very little more than 
the most chimerical projector has to offer for 
his wildest scheme. Such an answer only 
gives us this new and important information, 
that impracticable projects will be realised 
when insurmountable obstacles are overcome. 
Who are you that presume to frame laws for 
men without taking human passions into ac- 
count, — to regulate the actions of mankind 



* Perhaps something more of flexibility of cha- 
racter and accommodation of temper, — a mind 
more broken down to the practice of the world, — 
would have fined Mr. Burke better for the execu- 
tion of that art which is the sole instrument of" 
political wisdom, and without which the highest 
political wisdom is but barren speculation— we 
mean the art of guiding and managing mankind. 
How can he have forgotten that these vulgar poli- 
ticians were the only tools with which he had to 
work in reducing his schemes to practice ? These 
" creatures of the desk and creatures of favour" 
unfortunately govern Europe. The ends of gene- 
rosity were to be compassed alone through the 
agency of the selfish ; and the objects of pro- 
spective wisdom were to be attained by the exer- 
tions of the short-sighted. — Monthly Review 
(N. S.), vol. xix. p. 317.— Ed. 



464 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



without regarding the source and principle 
of those actions ? A chemist who in his ex- 
periments should forget the power of steam 
or of electricity, would have no right to be 
surprised that his apparatus should be shi- 
vered to pieces, ami his laboratory covered 
with the fragments. 

It must be owned, indeed, that no one 
could have ventured to predict the extent 
and extravagance of thai monstrous and 
almost incredible infatuation which has dis- 
tracted the strength and palsied the arms 
of the Allied Powers: but it was easy to 
foresee, and it was in fact predicted, that a 
sufficient degree of that infatuation must 
prevail to defeat the attainment of their 
professed object. We cannot help express- 
ing our surprise, that the immense differ- 
ence in this respect between the present 
confederacy and the Grand Alliance of 
King William III. did not present itself 
to the great understanding of Mr. Burke. 
This is a war to avert the danger of the 
French Revolution, in which it is indis- 
pensably necessary to avoid all appearance 
of a design to aggrandise the Allies at the 
expense of France. The other was one 
designed to limit the exorbitant power of 
Louis, which was chiefly to be effected by 
diminishing his overgrown dominions. The 
members of that confederacy gratified their 
own ambition by the same means which 
provided for the general safety. In that 
contest, every conquest promoted the gene- 
ral object : — in this, ever)- conquest retards 
and tends to defeat it. No romantic mode- 
ration — no chimerical disinterestedness — no 
sacrifice of private aggrandisement to the 
cause of Europe, was required in that con- 
federacy. Yet, with that great advantage, 
it is almost the only one recorded in history, 
which was successful. Still it required, to 
build it up, and hold it together, all the ex- 
alted genius, all the comprehensive wisdom, 
all the disinterested moderation, and all the 
unshaken perseverance of William* — other 
talents than those of petty intrigue and pom- 
pous declamation. The bitterest enemies 
of our present ministers could scarcely ima- 

* " If there be any man in ihe present age who 
deserves the honour of being compared with this 
great prince, it is George Washington. The 
merit of both is more solid than dazzling. The 
same plain sense, the same simplicity of character, 
the same love of their country, the same unarrest- 
ed heroism, distinguished both these illustrious 
men; and both were so highly favoured by Pro- 
vidence as to be made its chosen instruments for 
redeeming nations from bondage. As William 
had to contend with greater captains, and to strug- 
gle with more complicated political difficulties, we 
are able more decisively to ascertain his martial 
prowess, and his civil prudence. It has been the 
fortune of Washington to give a more signal proof 
of his disinterestedness, as he was placed in a 
situation in which he could without blame resign 
the supreme administration of that commonwealth 
which his valour had guarded in infancy against 
a foreign force, and which his wisdom has since 
guided through still more formidable domestic 
perils." — Monthly Review, vol. xi. p. 303.— Ed. 



gine so cruel a satire upon them, as any 
comparison between their talents and policy, 
and those of the great monarch. The dis- 
approbation of the conduct of the British 
Cabinet must have arisen to an extraordinary 
degree of warmth in the mind of Mr. Buike, 
before he could have prevailed on himself 
to bring into view the policy of other and 
better times, and to awaken recollections of 
past wisdom and glory which must tend so 
much to embitter our indignation at the pre- 
sent mismanagement of public affairs. In 
a word, the success of the war required it to 
be felt by Frenchmen to be a war direct- 
ed against the Revolution, and not against 
France; while the ambition of the Allies 
necessarily made it a war against France, 
and not against the Revolution. Mr. Burke, 
M. de Calonne, M. Mallet du Pan, and all 
the other distinguished writers who have 
appeared on behalf of the French Royalists 
— a name which no man should pronounce 
without pity, and no Englishman ought to 
utter without shame — have acknowledged, 
lamented, and condemned the wretched 
policy of the confederates. We have still 
to impeach their sagacity, for not having ori- 
ginally foreseen what a brittle instrument 
such a confederacy must prove; we have 
still to reproach them, for not having from 
the first perceived, that to embark the safety 
of Europe on the success of such an alliance, 
was a most ambiguous policy, — only to be 
reluctantly embraced, after every other ex- 
pedient was exhausted, in a case of the most 
imminent danger, and in circumstances of 
the most imperious necessity. 

These reflections naturally lead us to the 
consideration of the safety of the war, or of 
the collateral evil with which it was preg- 
nant in either alternative, of its failure or 
success : and we do not hesitate to affirm, 
that, in our humble opinion, its success was 
dangerous to the independence of nations, 
and its failure hostile to the stability of go- 
vernments. The choice between two such 
dreadful evils is embarrassing and cruel : yet, 
with the warmest zeal for the tranquillity of 
every people, — with the strongest wishes 
that can arise from personal habits and cha- 
racter for quiet and repose, — with all our 
heartfelt and deeply-rooted detestation for 
the crimes, calamities, and horrors of civil 
confusion, we cannot prevail on ourselves to 
imagine that a greater evil could befall the 
human race than the partition of Europe 
among the spoilers of Poland. All the wild 
freaks of popular licentiousness, — all the 
fantastic transformations of government, — all 
the frantic cruelty of anarchical tyranny, 
almost vanish before the terrible idea of 
gathering the whole civilized world under 
the iron yoke of military despotism. It is — 
at least, it was — an instinct of the English 
character, to feel more alarm and horror at 
despotism than at any other of those evils 
which afflict human society; and we own 
our minds to be still under the influence of 
this old and perhaps exploded national preju- 



REASONS AGAINST THE FRENCH WAR OF 1793. 



465 



■dice. It is a prejudice, however, which ap- 
pears to us founded on the most sublime and 
profound philosophy ; and it has been im- 
planted in the minds of Englishmen by their 
long experience of the mildest and freest 
government with which the bounty of Divine 
Providence has been pleased for so many 
centuries to favour so considerable a portion 
of the human race. It has been nourished 
by the blood of our forefathers; it is em- 
bodied in our most venerable institutions; 
it is the spirit of our sacred laws; it is the 
animating principle of the English character ; 
it is the very life and soul of the British con- 
stitution ; it is the distinguishing nobility of 
the meanest Englishman ; it is that proud 
privilege which exalts him, in his own re- 
spect, above the most illustrious slave that 
drags his gilded chain in the court of a ty- 
rant. It has given vigour and lustre to our 
warlike enterprises, justice and humanity to 
our laws, ami character and energy to our 
national genius and literature. Of such a 
prejudice we are not ashamed : and w r e have 
no desire to outlive its extinction in the minds 
of our countrymen : — 

tunc omne Latinum 
Fabula nomen erit.* 

To return from what may be thought a 
digression, but which is inspired by feelings 
that we hope at least a few of our readers 
may still be old-fashioned enough to pardon 
us for indulging, — we proceed to make some 
remarks on the dangers with which the 
failure of this war threatened Europe. It is 
a memorable example of the intoxication of 
men, and of their governors, that at the com- 
mencement of this war, the bare idea of the 
possibility of its failure would have been 
rejected with indignation and scorn : yet it 
became statesmen to consider this event as 
at least possible; and, in that alternative, 
what were the consequences which the 
European governments had to apprehend ? 
With their counsels baffled, their armies de- 
feated, their treasuries exhausted, their sub- 
jects groaning under the weight of taxes, 
their military strength broken, and their 
reputation for military superiority destroyed, 
— they have to contend, in their own states, 
against the progress of opinions, which their 
own unfortunate policy has surrounded with 
the dazzling lustre of heroism, and with all 
the attractions and fascinations of victory. 
Disgraced in a conflict with democracy 
abroad, with what vigour and effect can they 
repress it at home 1 If they had forborne 
from entering on the war, the reputation of 
their power would at least have been whole 
and entire : the awful question, whether the 
French Revolution, or the established go- 
vernments of Europe, are the strongest, 
would at least have remained undecided ; 

* Pharsalia, lib. vii. 
59 



and the people of all countries would not 
have witnessed the dangerous examples of 
their sovereigns humbled before the leaders 
of the new sect. Mr. Burke tells us that the 
war has at least procured a respite for Eu- 
rope ; but he has forgotten to inform us, that 
there are respites which aggravate the se- 
verity of the punishment, and that there are 
violent struggles which provoke a fate that 
might otherwise be avoided. 

We purposely forbear to enlarge on this sub- 
ject, because the display of those evils which, 
at the commencement of the war, were likely 
to arise from its failure, is now become, unfor- 
tunately, the melancholy picture of the actual 
situation of Europe. This is a theme more 
adapted for meditation than discourse. It is 
as sincere wellwishers to the stability and 
tranquil improvement of established govern- 
ments, — as zealous and ardent friends to that 
admirable constitution of government, and 
happy order of society, which prevail in our 
native land, that we originally deprecated, 
and still condemn, a war which nas brought 
these invaluable blessings into tne most im- 
minent peril. All the benevolence and pa- 
triotism of the human heart cannot, in our 
opinion, breathe a prayer more auspicious 
for Englishmen to the Supreme Ruler of the 
world, than that they may enjoy to the latest 
generations the blessings of that constitution 
which has been bequeathed to them by their 
forefathers. We desire its improvement, 
indeed. — we ardently desire its improve- 
ment — as a means of its preservation ; but, 
above all things, we desire its preservation. 

We cannot close a subject, on which we 
are serious even to melancholy, without of- 
fering the slender but unbiassed tribute of 
our admiration and thanks to that illustrious 
statesman, — the friend of what we must call 
the better days of Mr. Burke, — whose great 
talents have been devoted to the cause of 
liberty and of mankind, — who, of all men, 
most ardently loves, because he most tho- 
roughly understands, the British constitution, 
— who has made a noble and memorable, 
though unavailing, struggle to preserve us 
from the evils and dangers of the present 
war, — who is requited for the calumnies of 
his enemies, the desertion of his friends, and 
the ingratitude of his country, by the appro- 
bation of his own conscience, and by a well- 
grounded expectation of the gratitude and 
reverence of posterity. We never can reflect 
on the event of this great man's counsel 
without calling to mind that beautiful pas- 
sage of Cicero, in which he deplores the 
death of his illustrious rival Hortensius : " Si 
fuit tempus ullum cum extorquere arma pos- 
set e manibus iratorum civium boni civis 
auctoritas et oratio, turn profecto fuit, cum 
patrocinium pacis exclusum est aut errore ho- 
minum aut timore."* 

* De Claris Oratoribus. 



466 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



ON THE STATE OF FRANCE IN 1815 



To appreciate the effects of the French 
Revolution on the people of France, is an 
undertaking for which no man now alive has 
sufficient materials, or sufficient impartiality, 
even if he had sufficient ability. It is a task 
from which Tacitus and Machiavel would 
have shrunk ; and to which the little pam- 
phleteers, who speak on it with dogmatism, 
prove themselves so unequal by their pre- 
sumption, that men of sense do not wait for the 
additional proof which is always amply fur- 
nished by their performances. The French Re- 
volution was a destruction of great abuses, ex- 
ecuted with much violence, injustice, and in- 
humanity. The destruction of abuse is, in 
itself, and for so much, a good : injustice and 
inhumanity would cease to be vices, if they 
were not productive of great mischief to so- 
ciety. This is a most perplexing account to 
balance. 

As applied, for instance, to the cultivators 
and cultivation of France, there seems no 
reason to doubt the unanimous testimony of 
all travellers and observers, that agriculture 
has advanced, and that the condition of the 
agricultural population has been sensibly im- 
proved. M. de la Place calculates agricul- 
tural produce to have increased one fifth 
during the last twenty-five years. M. Cu- 
vier, an unprejudiced and dispassionate man, 
rather friendly than adverse to much of what 
the Revolution destroyed, and who, in his 
frequent journeys through Fiance, surveyed 
the country with the eyes of a naturalist and 
a politician, bears the most decisive testi- 
mony to the same general result. M. de 
Candolle, a very able and enlightened Gene- 
vese, who is Professor of Botany at Mont- 
pellier, is preparing for the press the fruit of 
several years devoted to the survey of French 
cultivation, in which we are promised the 
detailed proofs of its progress. The appre- 
hensions lately entertained by the landed in- 
terest of England, and countenanced by no 
less an authority than that of Mr. Malthus, 
that France, as a permanent exporter of corn, 
would supply our market, and drive our in- 
ferior lands out of cultivation, — though we 
consider them as extremely unreasonable, — 
must be allowed to be of some weight in 
this question. No such dread of the rival- 
ship of French corn-growers was ever felt 
or affected in this country in former times. 
Lastly, the evidence of Mr. Birkbeck, an 



* From the Edinburgh Review, vol. xxiv. p. 
518. Those remarks were written during the 
Hundred Days, the author having spent part of 
the preceding winter in Paris. — Ed. 



independent thinker, a shrewd observer, 
and an experienced farmer, though his jour- 
ney was rapid, and though he perhaps wish- 
ed to find benefits resulting from the Re- 
volution, must be allowed to be of high 
value. 

But whatever may have been the benefits 
conferred by the Revolution on the cultiva- 
tors, supposing them to have been more ques- 
tionable than they appear to have been, it is 
at all events obvious, that the division of the 
confiscated lands among the peasantry must 
have given that body an interest and a pride 
in the maintenance of the order or disorder 
which that revolution had produced. All 
confiscation is unjust. The French confisca- 
tion, being the most extensive, is the most 
abominable example of that species of legal 
robbery. But we speak only of its political 
effects on the temper of the peasantry. These 
effects are by no means confined to those 
who had become proprietors. The promo- 
tion of many inspired all with pride : the 
whole class was raised in self-importance by 
the proprietary dignity acquired by nume- 
rous individuals. Nor must it be supposed 
that the apprehensions of such a rabble of 
ignorant owners, who had acquired their 
ownerships by means of which their own 
conscience would distrust the fairness, were 
to be proportioned to the reasonable pro- 
babilities of danger. The alarms of a mul- 
titude for objects very valuable to them, 
are always extravagantly beyond the degree 
of the risk, especially when they are strength- 
ened by any sense, however faint and indis- 
tinct, of injustice, which, by the immutable 
laws of human nature, stamps every posses- 
sion which suggests it with a mark of inse- 
curity. It is a panic fear ; — one of those fears 
which are so rapidly spread and so violently 
exaggerated by sympathy, that the lively 
fancy of the ancients represented them as 
inflicted by a superior power. 

Exemption from manorial rights and feu- 
dal services was not merely, nor perhaps 
principally, considered by the French far- 
mers as a relief from oppression. They were 
connected with the exulting recollections of 
deliverance from a yoke, — of a triumph over 
superiors, — aided even by the remembrance 
of the licentiousness with which they had 
exercised their saturnalian privileges in the 
first moments of their short and ambiguous 
liberty. They recollected these distinctions 
as an emancipation of their caste. The in- 
terest, the pride, the resentment, and the 
fear ; had a great tendency to make the 



ON THE STATE OF FRANCE IN 1815. 



467 



maintenance of these changes a point of 
honour among the whole peasantry of France. 
On this subject, perhaps, they were likely 
to acquire that jealousy and susceptibility 
which the dispersed population of the coun- 
try rarely exhibit, unless when their religion, 
or their national pride, or their ancient usa- 
ges, are violently attacked. The only secu- 
rity for these objects would appear to them to 
be a government arising, like their own pro- 
perty and privileges, out of the Revolution. 

We are far from commending these senti- 
ments, and still farther from confounding 
them with the spirit of liberty. If the forms 
of a free constitution could have been pre- 
served under a counter-revolutionary govern- 
ment, perhaps these hostile dispositions of 
the peasants and new proprietors against 
such a government, might have been gradu- 
ally mitigated and subdued into being one 
of the auxiliaries of freedom. But, in the 
present state of France, there are unhappily 
no elements of such combinations. There is 
no such class as landed gentry, — no great 
proprietors resident on their estates, — conse- 
quently no leaders of this dispersed popula- 
tion, to give them permanent influence on 
the public counsels, to animate their general 
sluggishness, or to restrain their occasional 
violence. In such a state they must, in ge- 
neral, be inert ; — in particular matters, which 
touch their own prejudices and supposed in- 
terest, unreasonable and irresistible. The 
extreme subdivision of landed property might, 
under some circumstances, be favourable to 
a democratical government. Under a limit- 
ed monarchy it is destructive of liberty, be- 
cause it annihilates the strongest bulwarks 
against the power of the crown. Having 
no body of great proprietors, it delivers the 
monarch from all regular and constant re- 
straint, and from every apprehension but 
that of an inconstant and often servile popu- 
lace. And, melancholy as the conclusion is, 
it seems too probable that the present state 
of property and prejudice among the larger 
part of the people of France, rather disposes 
them towards a despotism deriving its sole 
title from the Revolution, and interested in 
maintaining the system of society which it 
has established, and armed with that tyran- 
nical power which may be necessary for its 
maintenance. 

Observations of a somewhat similar nature 
are applicable to other classes of the French 
population. Many of the tradesmen and 
merchants, as well as of the numerous bo- 
dies of commissaries and contractors grown 
rich by war, had become landed proprietors. 
These classes in general had participated 
in the early movements of the Revolution. 
They had indeed generally shrunk from its 
horrors; but they had associated their pride, 
their quiet, almost their moral character, 
with its success, by extensive purchases of 
co ifisca,ted land. These feelings were not 
to be satisfied by any assurances, however 
solemn and repeated, or however sincere, 
that the sales of national property were to be 



inviolable. The necessity of such assurance 
continually reminded them of the odicusness 
of their acquisitions, and of the light in which, 
the acquirers were considered by the govern- 
ment. Their property was to be spared as 
an evil, incorrigible from its magnitude. 
What they must~have desired, was a govern- 
ment from whom no such assurances could 
have been necessary. 

The middle classes in cities were precisely 
those who had been formerly humbled, mor- 
tified, and exasperated by the privileges of 
the nobility, — for whom the Revolution was 
a triumph over those who, in the daily in- 
tercourse of life, treated them with constant 
disdain, — and whom that Revolution raised 
to the vacant place of these deposed chiefs. 
The vanity of that numerous, intelligent, and 
active part of the community — merchants, 
bankers, manufacturers, tradesmen, lawyers, 
attorneys, physicians, surgeons, artists, ac- 
tors, men of letters — had been humbled by 
the monarchy, and had triumphed in the Re- 
volution : they rushed into the stations which 
the gentry — emigrant, beggared, or proscrib- 
ed — could no longer fill : the whole govern- 
ment fell into their hands. 

Buonaparte's nobility was an institution 
framed to secure the triumph of all these 
vanities, and to provide against the possibili- 
ty of a second humiliation. It was a body 
composed of a Revolutionary aristocracy, 
with some of the ancient nobility, — either 
rewarded for their services to the Revolu- 
tion, by its highest dignities, or compelled to 
lend lustre to it, by accepting in it secondary 
ranks, with titles inferior to their own, — and 
with many lawyers, men of letters, mer- 
chants, physicians, &c, who often receive in- 
ferior marks of honour in England, but whom 
the ancient system of the French monarchy 
had rigorously excluded from such distinc- 
tions. The military principle predominated,, 
not only from th»nature of the government, 
but because military distinction was the pur- 
est that was earned during the Revolution. 
The Legion of Honour spread the same prin- 
ciple through the whole army, which proba- 
bly contained six-and-thirty thousand out of 
the forty thousand who composed the order. 
The whole of these institutions was an array 
of new against old vanities. — of that of the 
former roturiers against that of the former 
nobility. The new knights and nobles were 
daily reminded by their badges, or titles, of 
their interest to resist the re-establishment 
of a system which would have perpetuated 
their humiliation. The real operation of 
these causes was visible during the short 
reign of Louis XVIII. Military men, indeed, 
had the courage to display their decorations, 
and to avow their titles : but most civilians 
were ashamed, or afraid, to use their new 
names of dignity ; they were conveyed, if at 
all, in a subdued voice, almost in a whisper, 
they were considered as extremely unfa- 
shionable and vulgar. Talleyrand renounced 
his title of Prince of Beneventum ; and Mas- 
sena's resumption of his dignity 7 of Prince 



468 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



was regarded as an act of audacity, if not of 
intentional defiance. 

From these middle classes were chosen 
another body, who were necessarily attached 
to the Revolutionary government, — the im- 
mense body of civil officers who were placed 
in all the countries directly or indirectly sub- 
ject to France, — in Italy, in Germany, in 
Poland, in Holland, in the Netherlands, — for 
nrposes of administration of finance, and 
of late to enforce the vain prohibition of 
commerce with England. These were all 
thrown back on France by the peace. They 
had no hope of employment : their gratitude, 
their resentment, and their expectations 
bound them to the fortune of Napoleon. 

The number of persons in France interest- 
ed, directly or indirectly, in the sale of con- 
fiscated property — by original purchase, by 
some part in the successive transfers, by 
mortgage, or by expectancy, — has been com- 
puted to be ten millions. This must be a 
threat exaggeration : but one half of that 
number would be more than sufficient to 
give colour to the general sentiment. Though 
the lands of the Church and the Crown were 
never regarded in the same invidious light 
with those of private owners, yet the whole 
mass of confiscation was held together by its 
Revolutionary origin : the possessors of the 
most odious part were considered as the out- 
posts and advanced guards of the rest. The 
purchasers of small lots were peasants ; those 
of considerable estates were the better classes 
of the inhabitants of cities. Yet, in spite of 
the powerful causes which attached these 
last to the Revolution, it is certain, that 
among the class called "Laboririe bourgeoisie" 
are to be found the greatest number of those 
who approved the restoration of the Bour- 
bons as the means of security and quiet. 
They were weary of revolution, and they 
dreaded confusion: but they are inert and 
timid, and almost as little qualified to defend 
a throne as they are disposed to overthrow it. 
Unfortunately, their voice, of great weight 
in the administration of regular governments, 
is scarcely heard in convulsions. They are 
destined to stoop to the bold; — too often, 
though with vain sorrow and indignation, to 
crouch under the yoke of the guilty and the 
desperate. 

The populace of great towns (a most im- 
portant constituent part of a free community, 
when the union of liberal institutions, with a 
vigorous authority, provides both a vent for 
their sentiments, and a curb on their vio- 
lence,) have, throughout the French Revolu- 
tion, showed at once all the varieties and 
excesses of plebeian passions, and all the pe- 
culiarities of the French national character 
in their most exaggerated state. The love 
of show, or of change, — the rage for liberty 
or slavery, for war or for peace, soon wearing 
itself out into disgust and weariness, — the 
idolatrous worship of demagogues, soon aban- 
doned, and at last cruelly persecuted, — the 
envy of wealth, or the servile homage paid 
to it, — all these, in every age, in everyplace. 



from Athens to Paris, have characterised a 
populace not educated by habits of reverence 
for the laws, or bound by ties of character 
and palpable interest to the other classes of 
a free commonwealth. When the Parisian 
mob were restrained by a strong government, 
and compelled to renounce their democratic 
orgies, they became proud of conquest, — 
proud of the splendour of their despotism, — 
proud of the magnificence of its exhibitions 
and its monuments. Men may be so bru- 
talised as to be proud of their chains. That 
sort of interest in public concerns, which the 
poor, in their intervals of idleness, and es- 
pecially when they are met together, feel 
perhaps more strongly than other classes 
more constantly occupied with prudential 
cares, overflowed into new channels. They 
applauded a general or a tyrant, as they had 
applauded Robespierre, and worshipped Ma- 
rat. They applauded the triumphal entry 
of a foreign army within their walls as a 
grand show ; and they huzzaed the victori- 
ous sovereigns, as they would have celebra- 
ted the triumph of a French general. The 
return of the Bourbons was a novelty, and a 
sight, which, as such, might amuse them for 
a day; but the establishment of a pacific 
and frugal government, with an infirm mo- 
narch and a gloomy court, without sights or 
donatives, and the cessation of the gigantic 
works constructed to adorn Paris, were sure 
enough to alienate the Parisian populace. 
There was neither vigour to overawe them, — 
nor brilliancy to intoxicate them, — nor foreign 
enterprise to divert their attention. 

Among the separate parties into which 
every people is divided, the Protes1ant< are 
to be regarded as a body of no small import- 
ance in France. Their numbers were rated 
at between two and three millions ; but their 
importance was not to be estimated by their 
numerical strength. Their identity of inte- 
rest, — their habits of concert, — their com- 
mon wrongs and resentments, — gave them 
far more strength than a much larger number 
of a secure, lazy, and dispirited majority. It 
was, generally speaking, impossible that 
French Protestants should wish well to the 
family of Louis XIV., peculiarly supported 
as it was by the Catholic party. The lenity 
with which they had long been treated, was 
ascribed more to the liberality of the age 
than that of the Government. TilTthe year 
1788, even their marriages and their inheri- 
tances had depended more upon the conni- 
vance of the tribunals, than upon the sanc- 
tion of the law. The petty vexations, and 
ineffectual persecution of systematic exclu- 
sion from public offices, and the consequent 
degradation of their body in public opinion. 
lonu- survived the detestable but effectual 
persecution which had been carried on by 
missionary dragoons, and which had benevo- 
lently left them the choice to be hypocrites, 
or exiles, or galley-slaves. The Revolution 
first gave them a secure and effective equali- 
ty with the Catholics, and a real admission 
into civil office. It is to be feared that they 



ON THE STATE OF FRANCE IN 1815. 



469 



may have sometimes exulted over the suffer- 
ings of the Catholic Church, and thereby 
contracted some part of the depravity of their 
ancient persecutors. But it cannot be doubted 
that they were generally attached to the Re- 
volution, and to governments founded on it. 

The same observations may be applied. 
without repetition, to other sects of Dissi- 
dents. Of all the lessons of history, there is 
none more evident in itself, and more uni- 
formly neglected by governments, than that 
persecutions, disabilities, exclusions, — all 
systematic wrong to great bodies of citizens, 
— are sooner or later punished ; though the 
punishment often falls on individuals, who are 
not only innocent, but who may have had 
the merit of labouring to repair the wrong. 

The voluntary associations which have led 
or influenced the people during the Revolu- 
tion, are a very material object in a review 
like the present. The very numerous body 
who, as Jacobins or Terrorists, had partici- 
pated in the atrocities of 1793 and 1794, had, 
in the exercise of tyranny, sufficiently un- 
learned the crude notions of liberty with 
which they had set out. But they all re- 
quired a government established on Revolu- 
tionary foundations. The)' all took refuge 
under Buonaparte's authority. The more 
base accepted clandestine pensions or insig- 
nificant places : Barrere wrote slavish para- 
graphs at Paris; Tallien was provided for by 
an obscure or a nominal consulship in Spain. 
Fouche, who conducted this part of the sys- 
tem, thought the removal of an active Jaco- 
bin to a province cheaply purchased by five 
hundred a year. Fouche himself, one of the 
most atrocious of the Terrorists, had been 
gradually formed into a good administrator 
under a civilized despotism, — regardless in- 
deed of forms, but paying considerable re- 
spect to the substance, and especially to the 
appearance of justice, — never shrinking from 
what was necessary to crush a formidable 
enemy, but carefully avoiding wanton cru- 
elty and unnecessary evil. His administra- 
tion, during the earlier and better part of Na- 
poleon's government, had so much repaired 
the faults of his former life, that the appoint- 
ment of Savary to the police was one of the 
most alarming acts of the internal policy 
during the violent period which followed the 
invasion of Spain. 

At the head of this sort of persons, not 
indeed in guilt, but in the conspicuous nature 
of the act in which they had participated, 
were the Regicides. The execution of Louis 
XVI. being both unjust and illegal, was un- 
questionably an atrocious murder : but it 
would argue great bigotry and ignorance of 
human nature, not to be aware, that many 
who took a share in it must have viewed it 
in a directly opposite light. Mr. Hume him- 
self, with all his passion for monarchy, ad- 
mits that Cromwell probably considered his 
share in the death of Charles I. as one of 
his most distinguished merits. Some of 
those who voted for the death of Louis XVI. 
have proved that they acted only from erro- 



neous judgment, by the decisive evidence 
of a virtuous life. One of them perished in 
Guiana, the victim of an attempt to restore 
the Royal Family. But though among the 
hundreds who voted for the death of that 
unfortunate Prince, there might be seen 
every shade of morality from the blackest 
depravity to the very confines of purity — at 
least in sentiment, it was impossible that any 
of them could be contemplated without hor- 
ror by the brothers and daughter of the mur- 
dered Monarch. Nor would it be less vain 
to expect that the objects of this hatred 
should fail to support those Revolutionary 
authorities, which secured them from punish- 
ment, — which covered them from contempt 
by station and opulence, — and which com- 
pelled the monarchs of Europe to receive 
them into their palaces as ambassadors. 
They might be — the far greater part of them 
certainly had become — indifferent to liberty, 
— perhaps partial to that exercise of unlimit- 
ed power to which they had been accustom- 
ed under what they called a " free" govern- 
ment: but they could not be indifferent in 
their dislike of a government, under which 
their very best condition was that of par- 
doned criminals, whose criminality was the 
more odious on account of the sad necessity 
which made it pardoned. All the Terrorists, 
and almost all the Regicides, had accordingly 
accepted emoluments and honours from Na- 
poleon, and were eager to support his autho- 
rity as a Revolutionary despotism, strong 
enough to protect them from general un- 
popularity, and to insure them against the 
vengeance or the humiliating mercy of a 
Bourbon government. 

Another party of Revolutionists had com- 
mitted great errors in the beginning, which 
co-operated with the alternate obstinacy and 
feebleness of the Counter-revolutionists, to 
produce all the evils which we feel and fear, 
and which can only be excused by their own 
inexperience in legislation, and by the pre- 
valence of erroneous opinions, at that period, 
throughout the most enlightened part of Eu- 
rope. These were the best leaders of the Con- 
stituent Assembly, who never relinquished 
the cause of liberty, nor disgraced it by sub- 
missions to tyranny, or participation in guilt. 

The best representative of this small class, 
is M. de La Fayette, a man of the purest ho- 
nour in private life, who has devoted himself 
to the defence of liberty from his earliest 
youth. He may have committed some mis- 
takes in opinion ; but his heart has always 
been worthy of the friend of Washington 
and of Fox. In due time the world will 
see how victoriously he refutes the charges 
against him of misconduct towards the Roy- 
al Family, when the palace of Versailles was 
attacked by the mob, and when the King 
escaped to Varennes. Having hazarded his 
life to preserve Louis XVI., he was impri- 
soned in various dungeons, by Powers, who 
at the same time released Regicides. His 
wife fell a victim to her conjugal heroism. 
His liberty was obtained by Buonaparte, who 
2P 



470 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



paid court to him during the short period of 
apparent liberality and moderation which 
opened his political career. M. de La Fay- 
ette repaid him, by faithful counsel ; and 
when he saw his rapid strides towards arbi- 
trary power, he terminated all correspond- 
ence with him, by a letter, which breathes 
the calm dignity of constant and intrepid 
virtue. In the choice of evils, he considered 
the prejudices of the Court and the Nobility 
as more capable of being reconciled with 
liberty, than the power of an army. After a 
long absence from courts, he appeared at the 
levee of Monsieur, on his entry into Paris ; 
and was, received with a slight, — not justi- 
fied by his character, nor by his rank — more 
important than character in the estimate of 
palaces. He returned to his retirement, far 
from courts or conspiracies, with a reputation 
for purity and firmness, which, if it had been 
less rare among French leaders, would have 
secured the liberty of that great nation, and 
placed her fame on better foundations than 
those of mere military genius and success. 

This party, whose principles are decisively 
favourable to a limited monarchy, and indeed 
to the general outlines of the institutions of 
Great Britain, had some strength among the 
reasoners of the capital, but represented no 
interest and no opinion in the country at 
large. Whatever popularity they latterly 
appeared to possess, arose but too probably 
from the momentary concurrence, in opposi- 
tion to the Court, of those who were really 
their most irreconcilable enemies, — the dis- 
contented Revolutionists and concealed Na- 
poleonists. During the late short pause of 
restriction on the press, they availed them- 
selves of the half-liberty of publication which 
then existed, to employ the only arms in 
which they were formidable, — those of ar- 
gument and eloquence. The pamphlets of 
M. Benjamin Constant were by far the most 
distirumished of those which they produced) 
and he may be considered as the literary 
representative of a party, which their ene- 
mies, as well as their friends, called the 
" Liberal," who were hostile to Buonaparte 
and to military power, friendly to the gene- 
ral principles of the constitution established 
by Louis XVIII., though disapproving some 
of its parts, and seriously distrusting the spi- 
rit in which it was executed, and the max- 
ims prevalent at Court. M. Constant, who 
had boen expelled from the Tribunal, and in 
■effect exiled from France, by Buonaparte, 
began an attack on him before the Allies 
had crossed the Rhine, and continued it till 
after his march from Lyons. He is unques- 
tionably the first political writer of the Con- 
tinent, and apparently the ablest man in 
France. His first Essay, that on Conquest, 
is a most ingenious development of the prin- 
ciple, that a system of war and conquest, 
suitable to the condition of barbarians, is so 
much at variance with the habits and pur- 
suits of civilized, commercial, and luxurious 
nations, that it cannot be long-lived in such 
.an age as ours. If the position be limited to 



those rapid and extensive conquests which 
lend towards universal monarchy, and if the 
tendency in human affairs to resist them be 
stated only as of great force, and almost sure 
within no long time of checking their pro- 
gress, the doctrine of M. Constant will be 
generally acknowledged to be true. With 
the comprehensive views, and the brilliant 
poignancy of Montesquieu, he unites some 
of the defects of thai great writer. Like 
him. his mind is too systematical for the 
irregular variety of human affairs; and he 
sacrifices too many of those exceptions and 
limitations, which political reasonings re- 
quire, to the pointed sentences which com- 
pose his nervous and brilliant style. His 
answer to the Abbe Montesquieu's foolish 
plan of restricting the press, is a model of 
polemical politics, uniting English solidity 
and strength with French urbanity. His 
tract on Ministerial Responsibility, with some 
errors (though surprisingly few) on English 
details, is an admirable discussion of one of 
the most important institutions of a free go- 
vernment, and, though founded on English 
practice, would convey instruction to most 
of those who have best studied the English 
constitution. We have said thus much of 
these masterly productions, because we con- 
sider them as the only specimens of the 
Parisian press, during its semi-emancipa- 
tion, which deserve the attention of political 
philosophers, and of the friends of true li- 
berty, in all countries. In times of more 
calm, we should have thought a fuller ac- 
count of their contents, and a free discussion 
of their faults, due to the eminent abilities 
of the author. At present we mention them, 
chiefly because they exhibit, pretty fairly, 
the opinions of the liberal party r in that 
country. 

But, not to dwell longer on this little fra- 
ternity (who are too enlightened and con- 
scientious to be of importance in the shocks 
of faction, and of whom we have spoken 
more from esteem for their character, than 
from an opinion of their political influence), 
it will be already apparent to our readers, 
that many of the most numerous and guiding 
classes in the newly-arranged community 
of France, were bound, by strong ties of in- 
terest and pride, to a Revolutionary govern- 
ment, however little they might be qualified 
or sincerely disposed for a free constitution, 
— which they struggled to confound with 
the former: that these dispositions among 
the civil classes formed one great source of 
danger to the administration of the Bour- 
bons; and that they now constitute a mate- 
rial part of the strength of Napoleon. Tc 
them he appeals in his Proclamations, when 
he speaks of " a new dynasty founded on 
the same bases with the new interests and 
new institutions which owe their rise to the 
Revolution." To them he appeals, though 
more covertly, in his professions of zeal for 
the dignity of the people, and of hostility 
to feudal nobility, and monarchy by Divine 
risrht. 



ON THE STATE OF FRANCE IN 1815. 



47J 



It is natural to inquire how the conscrip- 
tion, and the prodigious expenditure of human 
life in the campaigns of Spain and Russia, 
were not of themselves sufficient to make 
the government of Napoleon detested by the 
great majority of the French people. But it 
is a very melancholy trnth, that the body of 
a people may be gradually so habituated to 
war, that their habits anil expectations are 
at least so adapted to its demand for men, 
and its waste of life, that they become almost 
insensible to its evils, and require long dis- 
cipline to re-inspire them with a relish for 
the blessings of peace, and a capacity for the 
virtues of industry. The complaint is least 
when the evil is greatest : — it is as difficult 
to teach such a people the value of peace, 
as it would be to reclaim a drunkard, or to 
subject a robber to patient labour. 

A conscription is, under pretence of equa- 
lity, the most unequal of all laws; because 
it assumes that military service is equally 
easy to all classes and ranks of men. Ac- 
cordingly, it always produces pecuniary com- 
mutation in the sedentary and educated 
classes. To them in many of the towns of 
France it was an oppressive and grievous tax. 
But to the majority of the people, always 
accustomed to military service, the life of a 
soldier became perhaps more agreeable than 
any other. Families even considered it as a 
means of provision for their children; each 
parent labouring to persuade himself that his 
children would be among those who should 
have the fortune to survive. Long and con- 
stant wars created a regular demand for men, 
to which the principle of population adapted 
itself. An army which had conquered and 
plundered Europe, and in which a private 
soldier might reasonably enough hope to be 
a marshal or a prince, had more allurements, 
and not more repulsive qualities, than many 
of those odious, disgusting, unwholesome, or 
perilous occupations, which in the common 
course of society are always amply supplied. 
The habit of war unfortunately perpetuates 
itself: and this moral effect is a far greater 
evil than the more destruction of life. What- 
ever may be the justness of these specula- 
tions, certain it is, that the travellers who 
lately visited France, neither found the con- 
scription so unpopular, nor the decay of male 
population so perceptible, as plausible and 
confident statements had led them to ex- 
pect. 

It is probable that among the majority of 
the French (excluding the army), the restored 
Bourbons gained less popularity by abolish- 
ing the conscription, than they lost by the 
cession of all the conquests of France. This 
fact affords a most important warning of the 
tremendous dangers to which civilized na- 
tions expose their character by long war. 
To say that liberty cannot survive it. is say- 
ing little: — liberty is one of the luxuries 
which only a few nations seem destined to 
enjoy; — and they only for a short period. 
It is not only fatal to the refinements and 
ornaments of civilized life : — its long con- 



tinuance must inevitably destroy even that 
degree (moderate as it is) of order and secu- 
rity which prevails even in the pure mon- 
archies of Europe, and distinguishes them 
above all other societies ancient or modern. 
It is vain to inveigh against the people of 
France for delighting in war, for exulting in 
conquest, and for being exasperated and mor- 
tified by renouncing those vast acquisitions. 
These deplorable consequences arise from 
an excess of the noblest and most necessary 
principles in the character of a nation, acted 
upon by habits of arms, and "cursed with 
every granted prayer," during years of vic- 
tory and conquest. No nation could endure 
such a trial. Doubtless those nations who 
have the most liberty, the most intelligence, 
the most virtue, — who possess in the highest 
degree all the constituents of the most perfect 
civilization, will resist it the longest. But, 
let us not deceive ourselves, — long war ren- 
ders all these blessings impossible : it dis- 
solves all the civil and pacific virtues ; it 
leaves no calm for the cultivation of reason; 
and by substituting attachment to leaders, 
instead of reverence for laws, it destroys 
liberty, the parent of intelligence and of 
virtue. 

The French Revolution has strongly con- 
firmed the lesson taught by the history of all 
ages, that while political divisions excite the 
activity of genius, and teach honour in en- 
mity, as well as fidelity in attachment, the 
excess of civil confusion and convulsion pro- 
duces diametrically opposite effects, — sub- 
jects society to force, instead of mind, — 
renders its distinctions the prey of boldness 
and atrocity, instead of being the prize of 
talent, — and concentrates the thoughts and 
feelings of every individual upon himself, — 
his own sufferings and fears. Whatever 
beginnings of such an unhappy state may be 
observed in France. — whatever tendency it 
may have had to dispose the people to a light 
transfer of allegiance, and an undistinguishing 
profession of attachment, — it is more useful 
to consider them as the results of these 
general causes, than as vices peculiar to that 
great nation. 

To this we must add, before we conclude 
our cursory survey, that frequent changes of 
government, however arising, promote a dis- 
position to acquiesce in change. No people 
can long preserve the enthusiasm, which first 
impels them to take an active part in change. 
Its frequency at least teaches them patiently 
to bear it. They become indifferent to go- 
vernments and sovereigns. They are spec- 
tators of revolutions, instead of actors in 
them. They are a prey to be fought for by 
the hardy and bold, and are generally dis- 
posed of by an army. In this state of things, 
revolutions become bloodless, not from the 
humanity, but from the indifference of a 
people. * Perhaps it may be true, though it 
will appear paradoxical to many, that such 
revolutions, as those of England and Ame- 
rica, conducted with such a regard for mo- 
deration and humanity, and "even with such 



472 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. - 



respect for established authorities and insti- novating, beyond the necessities of the case,. 



tutions, independently of their necessity for 
the preservation of liberty, may even have 
a tendency to strengthen, instead of weaken- 
ing, the frame of the commonwealth. The 
example of reverence for justice, — of caution 
in touching ancient institutions, — of not in- 



even in a season of violence and anger, may 
impress on the minds of men those conser- 
vative principles of society, more deeply and 
strongly, than the most uninterrupted obser- 
vation of them in the ordinary course of quiet 
and regular government. 



ON 



THE RIGHT OF PARLIAMENTARY SUFFRAGE/ 



What mode of representation is most 
likely to secure the liberty, and consequent- 
ly the happiness, of a community circum- 
stanced like the people of Great Britain 1 
On the elementary part of this great ques- 
tion, it will be sufficient to remind the reader 
of a few undisputed truths. The object of 
government, is security against wrong. — 
Most civilized governments, tolerably secure 
their subjects against wrong from each other. 
But to secure them, by laws, against wrong 
from the government itself, is a problem of 
a far more difficult sort, which few nations 
have attempted to solve, — and of which it is 
not so much as pretended that, since the be- 
ginning of history, more than one or two 
great states have approached the solution. 
It will be universally acknowledged, that 
this approximation has never been affected 
by any other means than that of a legislative 
assembly, chosen by some considerable por- 
tion of the people. 

The direct object of a popular representa- 
tion is, that one, at least, of the bodies exer- 
cising the legislative power being dependent 
on the people by election, should have the 
strongest inducement to guard their interests, 
and to maintain their rights. For this pur- 
pose, it is not sufficient, that it should have 
the same general interests with the people ; 
for every government has, in truth, the same 
interests with its subjects. It is necessary 
that the more direct and palpable interest, 
arising from election, should be superadded. 
In every legislative senate, the modes of ap- 
pointment ought to be such as to secure the 
nomination of members the best qualified, 
ami the mos! disposed, to make laws condu- 
cive to the well-being of the whole commu- 
nity. In a representative assembly this con- 
dition, though absolutely necessary, is not 
of itself sufficient. 

To understand the principles of its compo- 
sition thoroughly, we must divide the people 
into classes, and examine the variety of local 
and professional interests of which the whole 



* From the Edinburgh Review, vol. xxxi. p. 
1/4.— Ed. 



is composed. Each of these classes must be 
represented by persons who will guard its 
peculiar interest, whether that interest arises 
from inhabiting the same district, or pursu- 
ing the same occupation, — such as traffic, or 
husbandry, or the useful or ornamental arts. 
The fidelity and zeal of such representatives, 
are to be secured by every provision which, 
to a sense of common interest, can superadd 
a fellow-feeling with their constituents. Nor 
is this all : in a great state, even that part of 
the public interest which is common to all 
classes, is composed of a great variety of 
branches. A statesman should indeed have 
a comprehensive view of the whole : but no 
one man can be skilled in all the particulars. 
The same education, and the same pursuits, 
which qualify men to understand and regu- 
late some branches, disqualify them for 
others. The representative assembly must 
therefore contain, some members peculiarly 
qualified for discussions of the constitution 
and the laws, — others for those of foreign 
policy, — some for those of the respective in- 
terests of agriculture, commerce, and manu- 
factures, — some for those of military affairs 
by sea and land, — and some also who are 
conversant with the colonies and distant pos- 
sessions of a great empire. It would be a 
mistake to suppose that the place of such 
representatives could be supplied by wit- 
nesses examined on each particular subject. 
Both are not more than sufficient; — skilful 
witnesses occasionally, for the most minute 
information, — skilful representatives contin- 
ally, to discover and conduct evidence, and 
to enforce and illustrate the matters belong- 
ing to their department with the weight of 
those who speak on a footing of equality. 

It is obvious, that as long as this composi- 
tion is insured, it is for the present purpose 
a matter of secondary importance whether it 
be effected by direct or indirect means. To 
be a faithful representative, it is necessary 
that such an assembly should be numerous, 
— that it should learn, from experience, the 
movements that agitate multitudes, — and 
that it should be susceptible, in no small de- 
gree, of the action of those causes which 



ON THE RIGHT OF PARLIAMENTARY SUFFRAGE. 



473 



sway the thoughts and feelings of assemblies 
of the people. For the same reason, among 
others, it is expedient that its proceedings 
should be public, and the reasonings on 
which they are founded, submitted to the 
judgment of mankind . These democratical 
elements are indeed to be tempered and re- 
strained by such contrivances as may be 
necessary to maintain the order and inde- 
pendence of deliberation : but, without them, 
no assembly, however elected, can truly 
represent a people. 

Among the objects of representation, two 
may, in an especial manner, deserve ob- 
servation : — the qualifications for making- 
good laws, and those for resisting oppression. 

Now, the capacity of an assembly to make 
good laws, evidently depends on the quan- 
tity of skill and information of every kind 
which it possesses. But it seems to be ad- 
vantageous that it should contain a large 
proportion of one body of a more neutral and 
inactive character, — not indeed to propose 
much, but to mediate or arbitrate in the dif- 
ferences between the more busy classes, 
from whom important propositions are to be 
expected. The suggestions of every man 
relating to his province, have doubtless a 
peculiar value : but most men imbibe preju- 
dices with their knowledge; and, in the 
struggle of various classes for their conflict- 
ing interests, the best chance for an approach 
to right decision, lies in an appeal to the 
largest body of well-educated men, of lei- 
sure, large property, temperate character, 
and who are impartial on more subjects than 
any other class of men. An ascendency, 
therefore, of landed proprietors must be con- 
sidered, on the whole, as a beneficial cir- 
cumstance in a representative bod)'. 

For resistance to oppression, it is pecu- 
liarly necessary that the lower, and, in some 
places, the lowest classes, should possess the 
right of suffrage. Their rights would other- 
wise be less protected than those of any 
other class; for some individuals of every 
other class, would generally find admittance 
into the legislature; or, at least, there is no 
other class which is not connected with some 
of its members. But in the uneducated 
classes, none can either sit id a representa- 
tive assembly, or be connected on an equal 
footing with its members. The right of suf- 
frage, therefore, is the only means by which 
they can make their voice heard in its de- 
liberations. They also often send to a repre- 
sentative assembly, members whose charac- 
ter is an important element in its composi- 
tion, — men of popular talents, principles, and 
feelings, — quick in suspecting oppression, — 
bold in resisting it, — not thinking favourably 
of the powerful, — listening, almost with cre- 
dulity to the complaints of the humble and 
the feeble, — and impelled by ambition, where 
they are not prompted by generosity, to be 
the champions of the defenceless. 

In all political institutions, it is a fortunate 
circumstance when legal power is bestowed 
on those who already possess a natural in- 
60 



fluence and ascendant over their fellow-citi- 
zens. Wherever, indeed, the circumstances 
of society, and the appointments of law, are 
in this respect completely at variance, sub- 
mission can hardly be maintained without 
the odious and precarious means of force 
and fear. But in a representative assembly, 
which exercises directly no power, and of 
which the members are too numerous to de- 
rive much individual consequence from their 
stations, the security and importance of the 
body, more than in any other case, depend 
on the natural influence of those who com- 
pose it. In this respect, talent and skill, 
besides their direct utility, have a secondary 
value of no small importance. Together 
with the other circumstances which com- 
mand respect or attachment among men. — 
with popularity, with fame, with property, 
with liberal education and condition, — they 
form a body of strength, which no law could 
give or take away. As far as an assembly 
is deprived of any of these natural princi- 
ples of authority, so far it is weakened both 
for the purpose of resisting the usurpations 
of government and of maintaining the order 
of society. 

An elective system tends also, in other 
material respects, to secure that free govern- 
ment, of which it is the most essential mem- 
ber. As it calls some of almost every class- 
of men to share in legislative power, and 
many of all classes to exercise the highest 
franchises, it engages the pride, the honour, 
and the private interest as well as the gene- 
rosity, of every part of the community, in 
defence of the constitution. Every noble 
sentiment, every reasonable consideration, 
every petty vanity, and every contemptible 
folly, are made to contribute towards its se- 
curity. The performance of some of its 
functions becomes part of the ordinary habits 
of bodies of men numerous enough to spread 
their feelings over great part of a nation. 

Popular representation thus, in various 
ways, tends to make governments good, and 
to make good governments secure : — these 
are its primary advantages. But free, that 
is just, governments, tend to make men more 
intelligent, more honest, more brave, more 
generous. Liberty is the parent of genius, — 
the nurse of reason, — the inspirer of that 
valour which makes nations secure and 
powerful, — the incentive to that activity and 
enterprise to which they owe wealth and 
splendour, the school of those principles of 
humanity and justice which bestow an un- 
speakably greater happiness, than any of the 
outward advantages of which they are the 
chief sources, and the sole guardians. 

These effects of free government on the 
character of a people, may, in one sense, be 
called indirect and secondary ; but they are 
not the less to be considered as among its 
greatest blessings: and it is scarcely neces- 
sary to observe, how much they tend to en- 
large and secure the liberty from which they 
spring. But their effect will perhaps be 
better shown by a more particular view of 
2p2 



474 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



the influence of popular elections on the 
character of the different classes of the com- 
munity. 

To begin with the higher classes : — the 
English nobility, who are blended with the 
gentry by imperceptible shades, are the most 
opulent and powerful order of men in Europe. 
They are comparatively a small body, who 
unite great legal privileges with ample pos- 
sessions, and names both of recent renown 
and historical glory. They have attained 
almost all the objects of human pursuit. 
They are surrounded by every circumstance 
which might seem likely to fill them with 
arrogance, — to teach them to scorn their in- 
feriors, and which might naturally be sup- 
posed to extinguish enterprise, and to lull 
every power of the understanding to sleep. 
What has preserved their character ? What 
makes them capable of serving or adorning 
their country as orators and poets, men of 
letters and men of business, in as great a 
proportion as in any equal number of the 
best educated classes of their countrymen'? 
Surely only one solution can be given of these 
phenomena, peculiar to our own country.* 
Where all the ordinary incentives to action 
are withdrawn, a free constitution excites it, 
by presenting political power as a new object 
of pursuit. By rendering that power in a 
great degree dependent on popular favour, it 
compels the highest to treat their fellow- 
creatures with decency and courtesy, and 
disposes the best of them to feel, that inferiors 
in station may be superiors in worth, as they 
are equals in right. Hence chiefly arises 
that useful preference for country life, which 
distinguishes the English gentry from that 
of other nations. In despotic countries they 
flock to the court, where all their hopes are 
fixed : but here, as they have much to hope 
from the people, they must cultivate the 
esteem, and even court the favour of their 
own natural dependants. They are quicken- 
ed in the pursuit of ambition, by the rivalship 
of that enterprising talent, which is stimu- 
lated by more urgent motives. These dis- 
positions and manners have become, in some 
measure, independent of the causes which 
originally produced them, and extend to 
many on whom these causes could have little 
operation. In a great body, we must allow 
for every variety of form and degree. It is 
sufficient that a system of extensively popu- 
lar representation has, in a course of time, 
produced thisgeneral character, and that the 
English democracy is the true preservative 
of the talents and virtues of the aristocracy. 

The effects of the elective franchise upon 
the humbler classes, are, if possible, still 

* To be quite correct, we must remind the rea- 
der, that we speak of the character of the whole 
body, composed, as it is, of a small number. In 
a body like the French noblesse, amounting per- 
haps to a hundred thousand, many of whom were 
acted upon by the strongest stimulants of neces- 
sity, and, in a country of such diffused intelligence 
as France, it would have been a miracle if many 
had not risen to eminence in the stale, and in let- 
ters, as well as in their natural profession of arms. 



more obvious and important. By it the pea- 
sant is taught to u venerate himself as a 
man'"' — to employ his thoughts, at least oc- 
casionally, upon high matters, — to meditate 
on the same subjects with the wise and the 
great, — to enlarge his feelings beyond the 
circle of his narrow concerns, — to sympa- 
thise, however irregularly, with great bodies 
of his fellow-creatures, and sometimes to do 
acts which he may regard as contributing 
directly to the welfare of his country. Much 
of this good tendency is doubtless counter- 
acted by other circumstances. The outward 
form is often ridiculous or odious. The judg- 
ments of the multitude are never exact, and 
their feelings often grossly misapplied : but, 
after all possible deductions, great benefits 
must remain. The important object is, that 
they should think and feel, — that they should 
contemplate extensive consequences as capa- 
ble of arising from their own actions, and 
thus gradually become conscious of the moral 
dignity of their nature. 

Among the very lowest classes, where the 
disorders of elections are the most offensive, 
the moral importance of the elective fran- 
chise is, in some respects, the greatest. As 
individuals, they feel themselves of no con- 
sequence ; — hence, in part, arises their love 
of numerous assemblies, — the only scenes in 
which the poor feel their importance. Brought 
together for elections, their tumultuary dis- 
position, which is little else than a desire to 
display their short-lived consequence, is 
gratified at the expense of inconsiderable 
evils. It is useful that the pride of the high- 
est should be made occasionally to bend 
before them, — that the greatest objects of 
ambition should be partly at their disposal ; 
it teaches them to feel that they also are 
men. It is to the exercise of this franchise, 
by some bodies of our lowest classes, that we 
are to ascribe that sense of equality, — that 
jealousy of right, — that grave independence, 
and calm pride, which has been observed by 
foreigners as marking the deportment of En- 
glishmen. 

By thus laying open some of the particular 
modes in which representation produces its 
advantages to the whole community, and to 
its separate classes, we hope that we have 
contributed somewhat to the right decision 
of the practical question which now presents 
itself to our view. Systems of election may 
be of very various kinds. The right of suf- 
frage may be limited, or universal; it may 
be secretly, or openly exercised ; the repre- 
sentatives may be directly, or indirectly, 
chosen by the people ; and where a qualifi- 
cation is necessary, it may be uniform, or it 
may vary in different places. A variety of 
rights of suffrage is the principle of the En- 
glish representation. In the reign of Edward 
the First, as much as at the present moment, 
the members for counties were chosen by 
freeholders, and those for cities and towns 
by freemen, burgage tenants, householders 
or freeholders. Now, we prefer this general 
principle of our representation to any uniform 



ON THE RIGHT OF PARLIAMENTARY SUFFRAGE. 



475 



right of suffrage ; though we think that, in 
the present state of things, there are many 
particulars which, according to that principle, 
ought to be amended. 

Our reasons for this preference are shortly 
these: — every uniform system which se- 
riously differs from universal suffrage, must 
be founded on such a qualification, as to take 
away the elective franchise from those por- 
tions of the inferior classes who now enjoy 
it. Even the condition of paying direct taxes 
would disfranchise many. After what we 
have already said, on the general subject of 
representation, it is needless for us to add, 
that we should consider such a disfranchise- 
ment as a most pernicious mutilation of the 
representative system. It has already been 
seen, how much, in our opinion, the proper 
composition of the House of Commons, the 
justice of the government and the morality 
of the people, depend upon the elections 
which would be thus sacrificed. 

This tendency of an uniform qualification 
is visible in the new French system. The 
qualification for the electors, is the annual 
payment of direct taxes to the amount of 
about 12?. When the wealth of the two 
countries is compared, it will be apparent 
that, in this country, such a system would 
be thought a mere aristocracy. In France, 
the result is a body of one hundred thousand 
electors;* and in the situation and temper of 
the French nation, such a scheme of repre- 
sentation may be eligible. But we mention 
it only as an example, that every uniform 
qualification, which is not altogether illusory, 
must incline towards independent property, 
as being the only ground on which it can 
rest. The reform of Cromwell had the same 
aristocratical character, though in a far less 
degree. It nearly excluded what is called 
the "populace;" and, for that reason, is 
commended by the most sagacious! of our 
Tory writers. An uniform qualification, in 
short, must be so high as to exclude true 
popular election, or so low. as to be liable to 
most of the objections which we shall pre- 
sently offer against universal suffrage. It 
seems difficult to conceive how it could be 
so adjusted, as not either to impair the spirit 
of liberty, or to expose the quiet of society 
to continual hazard. 

Our next objection to uniformity is, that it 
exposes the difference between the proprie- 
tors and the indigent, in a way offensive and 
degrading to the feelings of the latter. The 
difference itself is indeed real, and cannot be 
removed: but in our present system, it is 
disguised under a great variety of usages; it 
is far from uniformly regulating the franchise ; 
and, even where it does, this invidious dis- 
tinction is not held out in its naked form. It 
is something, also, that the system of various 
rights does not constantly thrust forward that 
qualification of property which, in its undis- 



* The population of France is now [1818, Ed.] 
estimated at twenty-nine millions and a half, 
t Clarendon, Hume, &c. 



guised state, may be thought to teach the 
people too exclusive a regard for wealth. 

This variety, by giving a very great weight 
to property in some elections, enables us 
safely to allow an almost unbounded scope 
to popular feeling in others. While some 
have fallen under the influence of a few great 
proprietors, others border on universal suf- 
frage. All the intermediate varieties, and 
all their possible combinations, find their 
place. Let the reader seriously reflect how- 
all the sorts of men, who are necessary com- 
ponent parts of a good House of Commons, 
could on any other scheme find their way to 
it. We have already sufficiently animad- 
verted on the mischief of excluding popular- 
leaders. Would there be no mischief in ex- 
cluding those important classes of men, whose 
character unfits them for success in a can- 
vass, or whose fortune may be unequal to 
the expense of a contest 1 A representative 
assembly, elected by a low uniform quali- 
fication, would fluctuate between country 
gentlemen and demagogues: — elected on a 
high qualification, it would probably exhibit 
an unequal contest between landholders and 
courtiers. All other interests would, on either 
system, be unprotected : no other class would 
contribute its contingent of skill aid know- 
ledge to aid the deliberations of the legisla- 
ture. 

The founders of new commonwealths 
must, we confess, act upon some uniform 
principle. A builder can seldom imitate, 
with success, all the fantastic but picturesque 
and comfortable irregularities, of an old man- 
sion, which through a course of ages has been 
repaired, enlarged, and altered, according to 
the pleasure of various owners. This is one 
of the many disadvantages attendant on the 
lawgivers of infant states. Something, per- 
haps, by great skill and caution, they might 
do ; but their wisdom is most shown, after 
guarding the great principles of liberty, by 
leaving time to do the rest. 

Though we are satisfied, by the above and 
by many other considerations, that we ought 
not to exchange our diversified elections for 
any general qualification, we certainly consi- 
der universal suffrage as beyond calculation 
more mischievous than any other uniform 
right. The reasons which make it important to 
liberty, that the elective franchise should be 
exercised by large bodies of the lower classes, 
do not in the least degree require that it 
should be conferred on them all. It is ne- 
cessary to their security from oppression, that 
the whole class should have some represen- 
tatives : but as their interest is every where 
the same, representatives elected by one 
body of them are necessarily the guardians 
of the rights of all. The great object of 
representation for them, is to be protected 
against violence and cruelty. Sympathy with 
suffering, and indignation against cruelty, are 
easily excited in numerous assemblies, and 
must either be felt or assumed by all their 
members. Popular elections generally insure 
the return of some men, who shrink "from no 



476 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



appeal, however invidious, on behalf of the 
oppressed. We must again repeat, that we 
consider such men as invaluable members 
of a House of Commons; — perhaps their 
number is at present too small. What we 
now maintain is, that, though elected by one 
place, they are in truth the representatives 
of the same sort of people in other places. 
Their number must be limited, unless we 
are willing to exclude other interests, and to 
sacrifice other most important objects of 
representation. 

The exercise of the elective franchise by 
some of the labouring classes, betters the 
character, raises the spirit, and enhances the 
consequence of all. An English farmer or 
artisan is more high-spirited and independent 
than the same classes in despotic countries ; 
but nobody has ever observed that there is 
in England a like difference between the 
husbandman and mechanic, who have votes, 
and who have not. The exclusion of the 
class degrades the whole : but the admission 
X)f a part bestows on the whole a sense of 
importance, and a hold on the estimation of 
their superiors. It must be admitted, that a 
small infusion of popular election would not 
produce these effects : whatever might seem 
to be the accidental privilege of a few, would 
have no influence on the rank of their fellows. 
It must be considerable, and, — what is per- 
haps still more necessary, — it must be con- 
spicuous, and forced on the attention by the 
circumstances which excite the feelings, and 
strike the imagination of mankind. The 
value of external dignity is not altogether 
confined to kings or senates. The people 
also have their majesty ; and they too ought 
to display their importance in the exercise 
of their rights. 

The question is, whether all interests will 
be protected, where the representatives are 
chosen by all men, or where they are elect- 
ed by considerable portions only, of all 
classes of men. This question will perhaps 
be more clearly answered by setting out 
from examples, than from general reason- 
ings. If we suppose Ireland to be an inde- 
pendent state, governed by its former House 
of Commons, it will at once be admitted, 
that no shadow of just government existed, 
where the legislature were the enemies, in- 
stead of being the protectors, of the Catholics, 
who formed a great class in the community. 
That this evil was most cruelly aggravated 
by the numbers of the oppressed, is true. 
But, will it be contended, that such a go- 
vernment was unjust, only because the Ca- 
tholics were a majority ? We have only then 
to suppose the case reversed ; — that the Ca- 
tholics were to assume the whole power, 
and to retaliate upon the Protestants, by ex- 
cluding them from all political privilege. 
Would this be a just or equal government? 
That will hardly be avowed. But what 
would be the effect of establishing universal 
suffrage in Ireland ? It would be, to do that 
in substance, which no man would propose 
in- form. The Catholics, forming four- fifths of 



the population, would, as far as depends on 
laws, possess the whole authority of the stale. 
Such a government, instead of protecting all 
interests, would be founded in hostility to 
that which is the second interest in numbers, 
and in many respects the first. The oppres- 
sors and the oppressed would, indeed, change 
places; — we should have Catholic tyrants, 
and Protestant slaves : but our only conso- 
lation would be, that the island would con- 
tain more tyrants, and fewer slaves. If there 
be persons who believe that majorities have 
any power over the eternal principles of jus- 
tice, or that numbers can in the least degree 
affect the difference between right and 
wrong, it would be vain for us to argue 
against those with whom we have no prin- 
ciples in common. To all others it must be 
apparent, that a representation of classes 
might possibly be so framed as to secure 
both interests ; but that a representation of 
numbers must enslave the Protestant mi- 
nority. 

That the majority of a people may be a 
tyrant as much as one or a few, is most ap- 
parent in the cases where a state is divided, 
by conspicuous marks, into a permanent ma- 
jority and minority. Till the principles of 
toleration be universally felt, as well as ac- 
knowledged, religion will form one of these 
cases. Till reason and morality be far more 
widely diffused than they are, the outward 
distinctions of colour and feature will form 
another, more pernicious, and less capable 
of remedy. Does any man doubt, that the 
establishment of universal suffrage, among 
emancipated slaves, would be only another 
word for the oppression, if not the destruc- 
tion, of their former masters 1 But is slavery 
itself really more unjust, where the slaves 
are a majority, than where they are a mi- 
nority 1 or may it not be said, on the con- 
trary, that to hold men in slavery is most 
inexcusable, where society is not built on 
that unfortunate foundation, — where the sup- 
posed loss of the labour would be an incon- 
siderable evil, and no danger could be pre- 
tended from their manumission'? Is it not 
apparent, that the lower the right of suffrage 
descends in a country, where the whites are 
the majority, the more cruel would be the op- 
pression of the enslaved minority ? An aris- 
tocratical legislature might consider, with 
some impartiality, the disputes of the free 
and of the servile labourers ; but a body, in- 
fluenced chiefly by the first of these rival 
classes, must be the oppressors of the latter. 

These, it maybe said, are extreme cases; 
— they are selected for that reason : but the 
principle which they strikingly illustrate, 
will, on a very little reflection, be found ap- 
plicable in some degree to all communities 
of men. 

The labouring classes are in every country 
a perpetual majority. The diffusion of edu- 
cation will doubtless raise their minds, and 
throw open prizes for the ambition of a few, 
which will spread both activity and content 
among tne rest : but in the present state of 



ON THE RIGHT OF PARLIAMENTARY SUFFRAGE. 



477 



the population and territory of European 
countries, the majority of men must earn 
their subsistence by daily labour. Notwith- 
standing local differences, persons in this situ- 
ation have a general resemblance of charac- 
ter, and sameness of interest. Their interest, 
or what they think their interest, may be at 
variance with the real or supposed interests 
of the higher orders. If they are considered 
as forming, in this respect, one class of so- 
ciety, a share in the representation may be 
allotted to them, sufficient to protect their 
interest, compatibly with the equal protec- 
tion of the interests of all other classes, and 
regulated by a due regard to all the qualities 
which are required in a well-composed le- 
gislative assembly- But if representation be 
proportioned to numbers alone, every other 
interest in society is placed at the disposal 
of the multitude. No other class can be 
effectually represented ; no other class can 
have a political security for justice ; no other 
can have any weight in the deliberations of 
the legislature. No talents, no attainments, 
but such as recommend men to the favour 
of the multitude, can have any admission 
into it. A representation so constituted, 
would produce the same practical effects, 
as if every man whose income was above a 
certain amount, were excluded from the 
right of voting. It is of little moment to the 
proprietors, whether they be disfranchised, 
or doomed, in every election, to form a hope- 
less minority. 

Nor is this all. A representation, founded 
on numbers only, would be productive of 
gross inequality in that very class to which 
all others are sacrificed. The difference be- 
tween the people of the country and those 
of towns, is attended with consequences 
which no contrivance of law can obviate. 
Towns are the nursery of political feeling. 
The frequency of meeting, the warmth of 
discussion, the variety of pursuit, the rival- 
ship of interest, the opportunities of informa- 
tion, even the fluctuations and extremes of 
fortune, direct the minds of their inhabitants 
to public concerns, and render them the 
seats of republican governments, or the pre- 
servers of liberty in monarchies. But if this 
difference be considerable among educated 
men, it seems immeasurable wdien we con- 
template its effects on the more numerous 
classes. Among them, no strong public senti- 
ment can be kept up without numerous meet- 
ings. It is chiefly when they are animated 
by a view of their own strength and numbers. 
— when they are stimulated by an eloquence 
suited to their character, — and when the pas- 
sions of each are strengthened by the like 
emotions of the multitude which surround 
him, that the thoughts of such men are direct- 
ed to subjects so far from their common call- 
ings as the concerns of the commonwealth. 
All these aids are necessarily wanting to the 
dispersed inhabitants of the country, whose 
frequent meetings are rendered impossible 
by distance and poverty, — who have few 
■opportunities of being excited by discussion 



or declamation, and very imperfect means 
of correspondence or concert with those at 
a distance. An agricultural people is gene- 
rally submissive to the laws, and observant 
of the ordinary duties of life, but stationary 
and stagnant, without the enterprise which 
is the source of improvement, and the public 
spirit which preserves liberty. If the whole 
political power of the state, therefore, were 
thrown into the hands of the lowest classes, 
it would be really exercised only by the 
towns. About two-elevenths of the people 
of England inhabit towns which have a 
population of ten thousand souls or upwards. 
A body so large, strengthened by union, dis- 
cipline, and spirit, would without difficulty 
domineer over the lifeless and scattered 
peasants. In towns, the lower part of the 
middle classes are sometimes tame; while 
the lowest class are always susceptible of 
animation. But the small freeholders, and 
considerable farmers, acquire an indepen- 
dence from their position, which makes them 
very capable of public spirit. While the 
classes below them are incapable of being 
permanently rendered active elements in any 
political combination, the dead weight of 
their formal suffrages would only oppress 
the independent votes of their superiors. 
All active talent would, in such a case, fly- 
to the towns, where alone its power could 
be felt. The choice of the country would 
be dictated by the cry of the towns, where- 
ever it was thought worth while to take it 
from the quiet influence of the resident pro- 
prietors. Perhaps the only contrivance, which 
can in any considerable degree remedy the 
political inferiority of the inhabitants of the 
country to those of towns, has been adopted 
in the English constitution, which, while it 
secures an ascendant of landholders in the 
legislature, places the disposal of its most 
honoured and envied seats in the hands of 
the lowest classes among the agricultural 
population, who are capable' of employing 
the ri^ht of suffrage with spirit and effect. 

They who think representation chiefly 
valuable, because whole nations cannot meet 
to deliberate in one place, have formed a 
very low notion of this great improvement. 
It is not a contrivance for conveniently col- 
lecting or blindly executing all the pernicious 
and unjust resolutions of ignorant multitudes. 
To correct the faults of democratical govern- 
ment, is a still more important object of 
representation, than to extend the sphere to 
which that government may be applied. It 
balances the power of the multitude by the 
influence of other classes: it substitutes 
skilful lawgivers for those who are utterly 
incapable of any legislative function; and 
it continues the trust long enough to guard 
the legislature from the temporary delusions 
of the people. By a system of universal 
suffrage and annual elections, all these tem- 
peraments would be destroyed. The effect 
of a crowded population, in increasing the 
intensity and activity of the political pas- 
sions, is extremely accelerated in cities of 



478 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



the first class. The population of London 
and its environs is nearly equal to that of all 
other towns in England of or above ten thou- 
sand souls. According to the principle of 
universal suffrage, it would contain about 
two hundred and fifty thousand electors; and 
send fifty-five members to Parliament. This 
electoral army would be occupied for the 
whole year in election or canvass, or in the 
endless animosities in which both would be 
fertile. A hundred candidates for their suf- 
frages would be daily employed in inflaming 
their passions. No time for deliberation, — 
no interval of repose in which inflamed pas- 
sions might subside, could exist. The repre- 
sentatives would naturally be the most da- 
ring, and, for their purposes, the ablest of 
their body. They must lead or overawe 
the legislature. Every transient delusion, or 
momentary phrensy of which a multitude 
is susceptible, must rush with unresisted 
violence into the representative body. Such 
a representation would differ in no beneficial 
respect from the wildest democracy. It 
would be a democracy clothed in a specious 
disguise, and armed with more effective in- 
struments of oppression. — but not wiser or 
more just than the democracies of old, which 
Hobbes called "an aristocracy of orators, 
sometimes interrupted by the monarchy of a 
single orator." 

It may be said that such reasonings sup- 
pose the absence of those moral restraints 
of property and opinion which would temper 
the exercise of this, as well as of every other 
kind of suffrage. Landholders would still 
influence their tenants, — farmers their la- 
bourers, — artisans and manufacturers those 
whom they employ ; — property would still 
retain its power over those who depend on 
the proprietor. To this statement we in 
some respects accede; and on it we build 
our last and most conclusive argument against 
universal suffrage. 

It is true, that in very quiet times, a multi- 
plication of dependent voters would only 
augment the influence of wealth. If votes 
were bestowed on every private soldier, the 
effect would be only to give a thousand votes 
to the commanding officer who marched his 
battalion to the poll. Whenever the people 
felt little interest in public affairs, the same 
power would be exercised by every master 
through his dependants. The traders who 
employ many labourers in great cities would 
possess the highest power ; the great consu- 
mers and landholders would engross the re- 
mainder; the rest of the people would be 
insignificant. As the multitude is composed 
of those individuals who are most incapable 
of fixed opinions, and as they are, in their 
collective capacity, peculiarly alive to pre- 
sent impulse, there is no vice to which they 
are so liable as inconstancy. Their passions 
are quickly worn out by their own violence. 
They become weary of the excesses into 
which they have been plunged. Lassitude 
and indifference succeed totheir fury, and 
are proportioned to its violence. They aban- 



don public affairs to any hand disposed to 
guide them. They give up their favourite 
measures to reprobation, and their darling 
leaders to destruction. Their acclamations 
are often as loud around the scaffold of the 
demagogue, as around his triumphal car. 

Under the elective system, against which 
we now argue, the opposite evils of too much 
strengthening wealth, and too much subject- 
ing property to the multitude, are likely, by 
turns, to prevail. In either case, in may be 
observed that the power of the middle classes 
would be annihilated. Society, on such a 
system, would exhibit a series of alternate 
fits of phrensy and lethargy. When the 
people were naturally disposed to violence, 
the mode of election would inflame it to mad- 
ness. When they were too much inclined 
of themselves to listlessness and apathy, it 
would lull them to sleep. In these, as in every 
other respect, it is the reverse of a wisely con- 
stituted representation, which is a restraint on 
the people in times of heat, and a stimulant 
to their sluggishness when they would other- 
wise fall into torpor. This even and steady 
interest in public concerns, is impossible in 
a scheme which, in every case, would aggra- 
vate the predominant excess. 

It must never be forgotten, that the whole 
proprietary body must be in a state of per- 
manent conspiracy against an extreme de- 
mocracy. They are the natural enemies of 
a constitution, which grants them no power 
and no safety. Though property is often 
borne down by the torrent of popular tyranny, 
yet it has man)' chances of prevailing at 
last. Proprietors have steadiness, vigilance, 
concert, secrecy, and, if need be, dissimula- 
tion. They yield to the storm : they regain 
their natural ascendant in the calm. Not 
content with persuading the people to sub- 
mit to salutary restraints, they usually betray 
them, by insensible degrees, into absolute 
submission. 

If the commonwealth does not take this 
road to slavery, there are many paths that 
lead to that state of perdition. "A dema- 
gogue seizes on that despotic power for him- 
self, which he for a long time has exercised 
in the name of his faction ; — a victorious gene- 
ral leads his army to enslave their country : 
and both these candidates for tyranny too 
often find auxiliaries in those classes of so- 
ciety which are at length brought to regard 
absolute monarchy as an asylum. Thus, 
wherever property is not allowed great 
weight in a free state, it will destroy liberty. 
The history of popular clamour, even in Eng- 
land, is enough to show that it is easy some- 
times to work the populace into "a sedition 
for slavery." 

These obvious consequences have dis- 
posed most advocates of universal suffrage 
to propose its combination with some other 
ingredients, by which, they tell us, that the 
poison will be converted into a remedy. 
The composition now most in vogue is its 
union with the Ballot. Before we proceed 
to the consideration of that proposal, we shall 



ON THE RIGHT OF PARLIAMENTARY SUFFRAGE. 



479 



bestow a few words on some other plans 
which have been adopted or proposed, to 
render uniform popular election consistent 
with public quiet. The most remarkable 
of these are that of Mr. Hume, where the 
freeholders and the inhabitants assessed to 
the poor, elect those who are to name the 
members of the Supreme Council; — that 
lately proposed in France, where a popular 
body would propose candidates, from whom 
a small number of the most considerable pro- 
prietors would select the representatives; — 
and the singular plan of Mr. Home Tooke, 
which proposed to give the right of voting 
to all persons rated to the land-tax or parish- 
rates at 21. 2s. per annum, on condition of 
their paying to the public 21. 2s. at the time 
of voting : but providing, that if the number 
of voters in any district fell short of four 
thousand, every man rated at 207. per annum 
might give a second vote, on again paying 
the same sum ; and making the same provi- 
sion, in case of the same failure, for third, 
fourth, fifth, &c. votes for every additional 
1007. at which the voter is rated, till the 
number of four thousand votes for the dis- 
trict should be completed. 

This plan of Mr. Tooke is an ingenious stra- 
tagem for augmenting the power of wealth, 
under pretence of bestowing the suffrage 
almost universally. To that of Mr. Hume 
it is a decisive objection, that it leaves to the 
people only those subordinate elections which 
would excite no interest in their minds, and 
would consequently fail in attaining one of 
the principal objects of popular elections. 
All schemes for separating the proposition 
of candidates for public office from the choice 
of the officers, become in practice a power 
of nomination in the proposers. It is easy to 
leave no choice to the electors, by coupling 
the favoured candidates with none but such 
as are absolutely ineligible. Yet one reason- 
able object is common to these projects : — 
they all aim at subjecting elections to the 
joint influence of property and popularity. 
In none of them is overlooked the grand prin- 
ciple of equally securing all orders of men, 
and interesting all in the maintenance of the 
constitution. It is possible that any of them 
might be in some measure effectual j but it 
would be an act of mere wantonness in us 
to make the experiment. By that variety of 
rights of suffrage which seems so fantastic, 
the English constitution has provided for the 
union of the principles of property r and popu- 
larity, in a manner much more effectual than 
those which the most celebrated theorists 
have imagined. Of the three, perhaps the 
least unpromising is that of Mr. Tooke, be- 
cause it approaches nearest to the forms of 
public and truly popular elections. 

In the system now established in France, 
where the right of suffrage is confined to 
those who pay direct taxes amounting to 
twelve pounds by the year, the object is evi- 
dently to vest the whole power in the hands 
of the middling classes. The Royalists, who 
are still proprietors of the greatest estates in 



the kingdom, would have preferred a greater 
extension of suffrage, in order to multiply 
the votes of their dependants. But. as the 
subdivision of forfeited estates has created a 
numerous body of small land-owners, who 
are deeply interested in maintaining the new 
institutions, the law. which gives them almost 
the whole elective power, may on that ac- 
count be approved as politic. As a general 
regulation, it is very objectionable. 

If we were compelled to confine all elec- 
tive influence to one order, we must indeed 
vest it in the middling classes ; both because 
they possess the largest share of sense and 
virtue, and because they have the most 
numerous connections of interest with the 
other parts of society. It is right that they 
should have a preponderating influence, be- 
cause they are likely to make the best choice. 
But that is not the sole object of representa- 
tion; and, if it were, there are not wanting 
circumstances which render it unfit that they 
should engross the whole influence. Per- 
haps there never was a time or country in 
which the middling classes were of a cha- 
racter so respectable and improving as they 
are at this day in Great Britain : but it un- 
fortunately happens, that this sound and pure 
bod}' have more to hope from the favour of 
Government than any other part of the nation. 
The higher classes may, if they please, be 
independent of its influence ; the lower are 
almost below its direct action. On the mid- 
dling classes, it acts with concentrated and 
unbroken force. Independent of that local 
consideration, the virtues of that excellent 
class are generally of a circumspect nature, 
and apt to degenerate into timidity. They 
have little of that political boldness which 
sometimes belongs to commanding fortune, 
and often, hi too great a degree, to thought- 
less poverty. They require encouragement 
and guidance from higher leaders; and they 
need excitement from the numbers and even 
turbulence of their inferiors. The end of 
representation is not a medium between 
wealth and numbers, but a combination of 
the influence of both. It is the result of the 
separate action of great property, of delibe- 
rate opinion, and of popular spirit, on different 
parts of the political system. 

'•'That principle of representation," said 
Mr. Fox, " is the best which calls into ac- 
tivity the greatest number of independent 
votes, and excludes those whose condition 
takes from them the powers of deliberation." 
But even this principle, true in general, can- 
not be universally applied. Many who are 
neither independent nor capable of delibera- 
tion, are at present rightly vested with the 
elective franchise, — not because they are 
qualified to make a good general choice of 
members, — but because they indirectly con- 
tribute to secure the good composition and 
right conduct of the legislature. 

The question of the Ballot remains. On 
the Ballot the advocales of universal suffrage 
seem exclusively to rely for the defence 
of their schemes : without it, they appear 



480 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



tacitly to admit that universal suffrage would 
be an impracticable and pernicious proposal. 

But all males in the kingdom, it is said, 
may annually vote at elections with quiet 
and independence; if the Ballot enables them 
to give their votes secretly. Whether this 
expectation be reasonable, is the question Qn 
which the decision of ihe dispute seems now 
to depend. 

The first objection to this proposal is, that 
the Ballot would not produce secrecy. Even 
in those classes of men who are most ac- 
customed to keep their own secret, the effect 
of the Ballot is very unequal and uncertain. 
The common case of clubs, in which a small 
minority is generally sufficient to exclude a 
candidate, may serve as an example. Where 
the club is numerous, the secret may be 
kept, as it is difficult to distinguish the few 
who reject : but in small clubs, where the 
dissentients may amount to a considerable 
proportion of the whole, they are almost 
always ascertained. The practice, it is true, 
is, in these cases, still useful : but it is only 
because it is agreed, by a sort of tacit con- 
vention, that an exclusion by Ballot is not a 
just cause of offence : it prevents quarrel. 
not disclosure. In the House of Commons, 
Mr. Bentham allows that the Ballot does not 
secure secrecy or independent choice. The 
example of the elections at the India House is 
very unfortunately selected; for every thing 
which a Ballot is supposed to prevent is to be 
found in these elections: public and private 
canvass, — the influence of personal friend- 
ship, connexion, gratitude, expectation, — pro- 
mises almost universally made and observed, 
— votes generally if not always known, — as 
much regard, indeed, to public grounds of 
preference as in most other bodies, — but 
scarcely any exclusion of private motives, 
unless it be the apprehension of incurring re- 
sentment, which is naturally confined within 
narrow limits, by the independent condition 
of the greater part of the electors. In gene- 
ral, indeed, they refuse the secrecy which 
the legislature seems to tender to them. 
From kindness, from esteem, from other 
motives, they are desirious that their votes 
should be known to candidates whom they 
favour. And what is disclosed to friends, 
is speedily discovered by opponents. 

If the Ballot should be thought a less of- 
fensive mode of voting against an individual 
than the voice, this slight advantage is alto- 
gether confined to those classes of society 
who have leisure for such fantastic refine- 
ments. But are any such influences likely, 
or rather sure, to act on the two millions of 
voters who would be given to us by univer- 
sal suffrage 1 Let us examine them closely. 
Will the country labourer ever avail himself 
of the proffered means of secrecy ? To be- 
lieve this, we must suppose that he performs 
the most important act of his life, — that 
which most natters his pride, and gratifies 
his inclination, — without speaking of his in- 
tention before, or boasting of his vote when 
he has given it. His life has no secrets. 



The circle of his village is too small for con- 
cealment. His wife, his children, his fellow- 
labourers, the companions of his recreations, 
know all that he does, and almost all that he 
thinks. Can any one believe that he would 
pass the ev< rang before, or the evening after 
the day of election, at his alehouse, wrapt 
up in the secrecy ot a Venetian senator, and 
concealing a suffrage as he would do a mur- 
der '. [( his character disposed him to se- 
crecy, would his situation allow it ? His 
landlord, or his employer, or their agents, or 
the leaders of a party in the election, could 
never have any difficulty in discovering him. 
The simple acts of writing his vote, of de- 
livering it at the poll, or sending it if he could 
not attend, would betray his secret in spite 
of the most complicated Ballot ever contrived 
in Venice. In great towns, the veiy men- 
tion of secret suffrage is ridiculous. By what 
contrivance are public meetings of the two 
hundred and fifty thousand London electors 
to be prevented ? There may be quiet and 
secrecy at the poll ; but this does not in the 
least prevent publicity and tumult at other 
meetings occasioned by the election. A can- 
didate will not forego the means of success 
which such meetings afford. The votes of 
those who attend them must be always 
known. If the Council of Ten were dispersed 
among a Westminster mob while candidates 
were speaking, they would catch its spirit, 
and betray their votes by huzzas or hisses. 
Candidates and their partisans, committees 
in parishes, agents in every street during an 
active canvass, would quickly learn the se- 
cret of almost any man in Westminster. The 
few who affected mystery would be detected 
by their neighbours. The evasive answer 
of the ablest of such dissemblers to his fa- 
voured friend or party, would be observably 
different, at least in tone and manner, from 
that which he gave to the enemy. The zeal, 
attachment, and enthusiasm, which must 
prevail in such elections, as long as they con- 
tinue really popular, would probably bring- 
all recurrence to means of secrecy into dis- 
credit, and very speedily into general disuse. 
Even the smaller tradesmen, to whom the 
Ballot might seem desirable, as a shield from. 
the displeasure of their opulent customers, 
would betray the part they took in the elec- 
tion, by their ambition to be leaders in their 
parishes. The formality of the Ballot might 
remain : but the object of secrecy is incom- 
patible with the nature of such elections. 

The second objection is, that if secrecy of 
suffrage could be really adopted, it would, 
in practice, contract, instead of extending, 
the elective franchise, by abating, if not ex- 
tinguishing, the strongest inducements to its 
exercise. All wise laws contain in them- 
selves effectual means for their own execu- 
tion : but, where votes are secret, scarcely 
any motive for voting is left to the majority 
of electors. In a blind eagerness to free the 
franchise from influence, nearly all the com- 
mon motives for its exercise are taken away. 
The common elector is neither to gain the 



ON THE RIGHT OF PARLIAMENTARY SUFFRAGE. 



481 



favour of his superiors, nor the kindness of 
his fellows, nor the gratitude of the candi- 
date for whom he votes : from all these, se- 
crecy must exclude him. He is forbidden 
to strengthen his conviction, — to kindle his 
zeal, — to conquer his fears or selfishness, in 
numerous meetings of those with whom he 
agrees; for, if he attends such meetings, he 
must publish his suffrage, and the Ballot, in 
his case, becomes altogether illusory. Every 
blamable motive of interest, — every pardon- 
able inducement of personal impartiality, is. 
indeed, taken away. But what is left in their 
place ? Nothing but a mere sense of pub- 
lic duty, unaided by the popular discipline 
which gives fervour and vigour to public 
sentiments. A wise lawgiver does not trust 
to a general sense of duty in the most unim- 
portant law. If such a principle could be 
trusted, laws would be unnecessary. Yet 
to this cold feeling, stripped of all its natural 
and most powerful aids, would the system 
of secret suffrage alone trust for its execu- 
tion. At the poll it is said to be sufficient, 
because all temptations to do ill are sup- 
posed to be taken away : but the motives by 
which electors are induced to go to a poll, 
have been totally overlooked. The infe- 
rior classes, for whom this whole system is 
contrived, would, in its practice, be speedily 
disfranchised. They would soon relinquish 
a privilege when it was reduced to a'trouble- 
some duty. Their public principles are often 
generous ; but they do not arise from secret 
meditation, and they do not flourish in soli- 
tude. 

Lastly, if secret suffrage were to be per- 
manently practised by all voters, it would 
deprive election of all its popular qualities, 
and of many of its beneficial effects. The 
great object of popular elections is, to in- 
spire and strengthen the love of liberty. 
On the strength of that sentiment freedom 
wholly depends, not only for its security 
against the power of time and of enemies, 
but for its efficiency and reality while it lasts. 
If we could suppose a people perfectly indif- 
ferent to political measures, and without any 
disposition to take a part in public affairs, 
the most perfect forms and institutions of 
liberty would be among them a dead let- 
ter. The most elaborate machinery would 
stand still for want of a moving power. In 
proportion as a people sinks more near to that 
slavish apathy, their constitution becomes 
so far vain, and their best laws impotent. 
Institutions are carried into effect by men, 
and men are moved to action by their feel- 
ings. A system of liberty can be executed 
only by men who love liberty. With the 
spirit of liberty, very unpromising forms 
grow into an excellent government : without 
it, the most specious cannot last, and are nol 
worth preserving. The institutions of a free 
.state are safest and most effective, when nu- 
merous bodies of men exercise their politi- 
cal rights with pleasure and pride,— conse- 
quently with zeal and boldness, — when these 
rights are endeared to them by tradition and 
61 



by habit, as well as by conviction and feel- 
ing of their inestimable value, — and when 
the mode of exercising privileges is such as 
to excite the sympathy of all who view it. 
and to spread through the whole society a 
jealous love of popular right, and a prom 
to repel with indignation every encroach- 
ment on it. 

Popular elections contribute to these ob- 
jects, partly by the character of the majority 
of the electors, and partly by the mode in 
which they give their suffrage. Assemblies 
of the people of great cities, are indeed very 
ill qualified to exercise authority; but with- 
out their occasional use, it can never be 
strongly curbed. Numbers are nowhere else 
to be collected. On numbers, alone, much 
of their power depends. In numerous meet- 
ings, every man catches animation from 
the feelings of his neighbour, and gathers 
courage from the strength of a multitude. 
Such assemblies, and they alone, with all 
their defects and errors, have the privilege 
of inspiring many human beings with a per- 
fect, however transient, disinterestedness, 
and of rendering the most ordinary men 
capable of foregoing interest, and forgetting 
self, in the enthusiasm of zeal for a common 
cause. Their vices are a corrective of the 
deliberating selfishness of their superiors. 
Their bad, as well as good qualities, render 
them the portion of society the most sus- 
ceptible of impressions, and the most acces- 
sible to public feelings. They are fitted to 
produce that democratic spirit which, tem- 
pered in its progress through the various 
classes of the community, becomes the vital 
principle of liberty. It is very true, that the 
occasional absurdity and violence of these 
meetings, often alienate men of timid virtue 
from the cause of liberty. It is enough for 
the present purpose, that in those long pe- 
riods to which political reasonings must al- 
ways be understood to apply, they contribute 
far more to excite and to second, than to 
offend or alarm, the enlightened friends of 
the rights of the people. But meetings for 
election are by far the safest and the most 
effective of all popular assemblies. They 
are brought together by the constitution; 
they have a legal character; they display 
theensigns of public authority; they assem- 
ble men of all ranks and opinions; and, in 
them, the people publicly and conspicuously 
bestow some of the highest prizes pursued 
by a generous ambition. Hence they derive 
a consequence, and give a sense of self-im- 
portance, to their humblest members, which 
would be vainly sought for in spontaneous 
meetings. They lend a part of their own 
seriousness and dignity to other meetings 
occasioned by the election, and even to those 
which, at other times are really, or even no- 
minally, composed of electors. 

In elections, political principles cease to 
be mere abstractions. They are embodied 
in individuals; and the cold conviction of a 
truth, or the languid approbation of a mea 
sure, is animated by attachment for leaders, 
2Q 



482 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



and hostility to adversaries. Every political 
passion is warmed in the contest. Even the 
outward circumstances of the scene strike 
the imagination, and affect the feelings. The 
recital of them daily spreads enthusiasm over 
a country. The various fortunes of the com- 
bat excite anxiety and agitation on all sides; 
and an opportunity is offered of discussing 
almost every political question, under cir- 
cumstances in which the hearts of hearers 
and readers take part in the argument: till 
the issue of a controversy is regarded by the 
nation with some degree of the same solici- 
tude as the event of a battle. In this man- 
ner is formed democratical ascendency, 
which is most perfect when the greatest 
numbers of independent judgments influence 
the measures of government. Reading may, 
indeed, increase the number and intelligence 
of those whose sentiments compose public 
opinion ; but numerous assemblies, and con- 
sequently popular elections, can alone gene- 
rate the courage and zeal which form so large 
a portion of its power. 

With these effects it is apparent that secret 
suffrage is absolutely incompatible : they can- 
not exist together. Assemblies to elect, or 
assemblies during elections, make all suffra- 
ges known. The publicity and boldness in 
which voters give their suffrage are of the 
very essence of popular elections, and greatly 
contribute to their animating effect. The 
advocates of the Ballot tell us, indeed, that 
it would destroy canvass and tumult. But 
after the destruction of the canvass, elections 
would no longer teach humility to the great, 
nor self-esteem to the humble. Were the 
causes of tumult destroyed, elections would 
no longer be nurseries of political zeal, and 
instruments for rousing national spirit. The 
friends of liberty ought rather to view the 
turbulence of the people with indulgence and 
pardon, as powerfully tending to exercise and 
invigorate their public spirit. It is not to be 
extinguished, but to be rendered safe by 
countervailing institutions of an opposite ten- 
dency on other parts of the constitutional 
system. 

The original fallacy, which is the source 
of all erroneous reasoning in favour of the 
Ballot, is the assumption that the value of 
popular elections chiefly depends on the ex- 
ercise of a deliberate judgment by the elec- 
tors. The whole anxiety of its advocates is 
to remove the causes which might disturb a 
considerate choice. In order to obtain such 
a choice, which is not the great purpose of 
popular elections, these speculators would 
deprive them of the power to excite and dif- 
fuse public spirit, — the great and inestima- 
ble service which a due proportion of such 
elections renders to a free state. In order to 
make the forms of democracy universal, their 
plan would universally extinguish its spirit. 
In a commonwealth where universal suffrage 
was already established, the Ballot might 
perhaps be admissible as an expedient for 
tempering such an extreme democracy. 
Even there, it might be objected to, as one 



of these remedies for licentiousness which 
are likely to endanger liberty by destroying 
all democratic spirit: — it would be one of 
those dexterous frauds by which the people 
are often weaned from the exertion of their 
privileges. 

The system which we oppose is establish- 
ed in the United States of America; and it 
is said to be attended with no mischievous 
effects. To this we answer, that, in America, 
universal suffrage is not the rule, but the ex- 
ception. In twelve out of the nineteen states* 
which compose that immense confederacy, 
the disgraceful institution of slavery deprives 
great multitudes not only of political fran- 
chises, but of the indefeasible rights of all 
mankind. The numbers of the representa- 
tives of the Slave-states in Congress is pro- 
portioned to their population, whether slaves 
or freemen ; — a provision arising, indeed, 
from the most abominable of all human in- 
stitutions, but recognising the just principle, 
that property is one of the elements of every 
wise representation. In many states, the 
white complexion is a necessary qualifica- 
tion for suffrage, and the disfranchised are 
separated from the privileged order by a phy- 
sical boundary, which no individual can ever 
pass. In countries of slavery, where to be 
free is to be noble, the universal distribution 
of privilege among the ruling caste, is a na- 
tural consequence of the aristocratical pride 
with which each man regards the dignity of 
the whole order, especially when they are 
all distinguished from their slaves by the 
same conspicuous and indelible marks. Yet, 
in Virginia, which has long been the ruling- 
state of the confederacy, even the citizens 
of the governing class cannot vote without 
the possession of a freehold estate. A real 
or personal estate is required in New Eng- 
land. — the ancient seat of the character and 
spirit of America, — the parent of those sea- 
men, who. with a courage and skill worthy 
of our common forefathers, have met the fol- 
lowers of Nelson in war, — the nursery of the 
intelligent and moral, as well as hardy and 
laborious race, who now annually colonize 
the vast regions of the West. 

But were the fact otherwise. America con- 
tains few large, and no very great towns ; 
the people are dispersed, and agricultural ; 
and, perhaps, a majority of the inhabitants 
are either land-owners, or have that imme- 
diate expectation of becoming proprietors, 
which produces nearly the same effect on 
character with the possession of property. 
Adventurers who, in other countries, disturb 
society, are there naturally attracted towards 
the frontier, where they pave the way for in- 
dustry, and become the pioneers of civiliza- 
tion. There is no part of their people in the 
situation where democracy is dangerous, or 
even usually powerful. The dispersion of 
the inhabitants, and their distance from the 

* This was written in 1819. In 1845 the pro- 
portion is thirteen Slave to fourteen Free states, 
exclusive of Texas. — Ed. 



ON THE RIGHT OF PARLIAMENTARY SUFFRAGE. 



[8$ 



scene of great affairs, are perhaps likely ra- 
ther to make the spirit of liberty among them 
languid, than to rouse it to excess. 

In what manner the present elective sys- 
tem of America may act. at the remote pe- 
riod when the progress of society shall have 
conducted that country to the crowded cities 
and unequal fortunes of Europe, no man will 
pretend to foresee, except those whose pre- 
sumptuous folly disables them from forming 
probable conjectures on such subjects. If. 
from the unparalleled situation of America, 
the present usages should quietly prevail for 
a very long time, they may insensibly adapt 
themselves to the gradual changes in the 
national condition, and at length be found 
capable of subsisting in a state of things to 
which, if they had been suddenly introduced, 
they would have proved irreconcilably ad- 
verse. In the thinly peopled states of the 
West, universal suffrage itself may be so long 
exercised without the possibility of danger, 
as to create a national habit which may be 
strong enough to render its exercise safe in 
the midst of an indigent populace. In that 
long tranquillity it may languish into forms, 
and these forms may soon follow the spirit. 
For a period far exceeding our foresight, it 
cannot affect the confederacy further than 
the effect which may arise from very popu- 
lar elections in a few of the larger Western 
towns. The order of the interior country 
wherever it is adopted, will be aided by the 
compression of its firmer and more compact 
confederates. It is even possible that the 
extremely popular system which prevails in 
some American elections, may, in future 
times, be found not more than sufficient to 
counterbalance the growing influence of 
wealth in the South, and the tendencies to- 
wards Toryism which are of late perceptible 
in New England. 

The operation of different principles on 
elections, in various parts of the Continent, 
may even now be discerned. Some remarka- 
ble facts have already appeared. In the 
state of Pennsylvania, we have* a practical 
proof that the Ballot is not attended with 
secrecy. We also know,t that committees 
composed of the leaders of the Federal and 
Democratic parties, instruct their partisans 
how they are to vote at every election ; and 
that in this manner the leaders of the Demo- 
cratic party who now predominate in their 
Caucus! or committee at Washington, do in 



* Fearon, Travels in North America, p. 138. 
How could this intelligent writer treat the absence 
of tumult, in such a city and country, as bearing 
any resemblance to the like circumstance in Eu- 
rope ? 

t Ibid. p. 320. 

t The following account of this strange term. 
will show its probable origin, and the long-experi- 
enced efficacy of such an expedient for controlling 
the Ballot : — " About the year 1738, the father of 
Samuel Adams, and twenty others who lived in 
the north or shipping part of Boston, used to meet, 
to make a Caiccus, and lay their plan for intro- 
ducing certain persons into places of trust. Each 
distributed the ballots in his own circle, and they 



effect nominate to all the important offices 
in North America. Thus, we already see 
combinations formed, and interests arising, 
on which the future government of the con- 
federacy may depend more than on the forms 
of election, or the letter of its present laws. 
Those who condemn the principle of party, 
may disapprove these associations as uncon- 
stitutional. To us who consider parties as 
inseparable from liberty, they seem remark- 
able as examples of those undesigned and 
unforeseen correctives of inconvenient laws 
which spring out of the circumstances of 
society. The election of so great a magis- 
trate as the President, by great numbers of 
electors, scattered over a vast continent, 
without the power of concert, or the means 
of personal knowledge, would naturally pro- 
duce confusion, if it were not tempered by 
the confidence of the members of both parties 
in the judgment of their respective leaders. 
The permanence of these leaders, slowly 
raised by a sort of insensible election to the 
conduct of parties, tends to counteract the 
evil of that system of periodical removal, 
which is peculiarly inconvenient in its appli- 
cation to important executive offices. The 
internal discipline of parties may be found 
to be a principle of subordination of great 
value in republican institutions. Certain it 
is, that the affairs of the United States have 
hitherto been generally administered, in 
times of great difficulty and under a succes- 
sion of Presidents, with a forbearance, cir- 
cumspection, constancy, and vigour, not sur- 
passed by those commonwealths who have 
been most justly renowned for the wisdom 
of their councils. 

The only disgrace or danger which we 
perceive impending over America, arises 
from the execrable institution of slavery, — 
the unjust disfranchisement of free Blacks, — 
the trading in slaves carried on from state 
to state, — and the dissolute and violent cha- 
racter of those adventurers, whose impa- 
tience for guilty wealth spreads the horrors 
of slavery over the new acquisitions in the 
South. Let the lawgivers of that Imperial 
Republic deeply consider how powerfully 
these disgraceful circumstances tend to 
weaken the love of liberty, — the only bond 
which can hold together such vast territo- 
ries, and therefore the only source ^md 
guard of the tranquillity and greatness of 
America. 



generally carried the election. In this manner 
Mr. S. Adams first became representative for 
Boston. Caucusing means electioneering." — 
(Gordon, History of the American Revolution, p. 
216, note.) It is conjectured, that as this practice 
originated in the shipping part of Boston. ' Caucus' 
was a corruption of Caulkers' Meeting. For this 
information we are indebted to Pickering's Ameri- 
can Vocabulary (Boston, 1816); a modest and 
sensible book, of which the principal fault is, ihat 
the author ascribes too much importance to sonic 
English writers, who are not objects of much 
reverence to a near observer. Mr. Pickering's 
volume, however, deserves a place in English 
libraries. 






MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



A SPEECH 



DEFENCE OF JEAN PELTIER, 

ACCUSED OF A LIBEL ON THE FIRST CONSUL OF FRANCE. 

DELIVERED IN THE COURT OF KING'S BENCH ON THE 21ST OF FEBRUARY. 1803.* 



Gentlemen of the Jury, 

The time is now come for me to address 
you on behalf of the unfortunate Gentleman 
who is the defendant on this record. 

I must begin with observing, that though 
f know myself too well to ascribe to any- 
thing but to the kindness and good-nature of 
my learned friend the Attorney-General t the 
unmerited praises which he has been pleased 
to bestow on me, yet I will venture to say, 
he has done me no more than justice in sup- 
posing that in this place, and on this occasion, 
where I exercise the functions of an inferior 
minister of justice, — an inferior minister in- 
deed, but a minister of justice still, — I am 
incapable of lending myself to the passions 
of any client, and that I will not make the 
proceedings of this Court subservient to any 
political purpose. Whatever is respected by 
the laws and government of my country, 
shall, in this place, be respected by me. In 
considering matters that deeply interest the 
quiet, the safety, and the liberties of all 
mankind, it is impossible for me not to feel 
warmly and strongly; but I shall make an 
■effort to control my feelings, however painful 
that effort may be, and where I cannot speak 

* The First Consul had for some time previ- 
ously shown considerable irritability under the fire 
of the English journalists, when the Peace of 
Amiens, by permitting a rapprochement with the 
English Ministry, afforded an opening through 
which his paw could reach the source of annoyance. 
M. Jean Peltier, on whom it lighted, was an emi- 
grant, who had been conducting for some years 
various periodical works in the Royalist interest. 
From one of these, — " L'Ambigu" — three arti- 
cles, which are alluded to separately in the course 
of the speech, were selected by the law officers 
of the Crown for prosecution, as instigating the 
assassination of the First Consul. Nor perhaps, 
could such a conclusion have been successfully 
struggled with by any advocate. The proceeding 
was one that was accompanied with much excite- 
ment in public opinion, as was evidenced by the 
concourse of persons surrounding the court on the 
day of trial. It was supposed by some that a ver- 
dict of acquittal would have had an unfavourable 
effect upon the already feverish state of the inter- 
course between the two Governments. In fact, 
though found ' guilty,' the Defendant escaped 
any sentence through the recurrence of hostili- 
ties. — Ed. 

t The Right Honourable Spencer Perceval. 
—Ed. 



out at the risk of offending either sincerity 
or prudence, I shall labour to contain myself 
and be silent. 

I cannot but feel. Gentlemen, how much I 
stand in need of your favourable attention, 
and indulgence. The charge which I have 
to defend is surrounded with the most in- 
vidious topics of discussion. But they are 
not of my seeking. The case, and the topics 
which are inseparable from it, are brought 
here by the prosecutor. Here I find them, 
and here it is my duty to deal with them, as 
the interests of Mr. Peltier seem to me to 
require. He, by his choice and confidence, 
has cast on me a very arduous duty, which 
I could not decline, and which I can still less 
betray. He has a right to expect from me a 
faithful, a zealous, and a fearless defence ; 
and this his just expectation, according to 
the measure of my humble abilities, shall be 
fulfilled. I have said, a fearless defence : — 
perhaps that word was unnecessary in the 
place where I now stand. Intrepidity in the 
discharge of professional duty is so common 
a quality at the English Bar, that it has, 
thank God ! long ceased to be a matter of 
boast or praise. If it had been otherwise, 
Gentlemen, — if the Bar could have been 
silenced or overawed by power, I may pre- 
sume to say- that an English jury would not 
this day have been met to administer justice. 
Perhaps I need scarce say that my defence 
shall be fearless, in a place where fear never 
entered any heart but that of a criminal. But 
you will pardon me for having said so much, 
when you consider who the real parties 
before you are. 

Gentlemen, the real prosecutor is the mas- 
ter of the greatest empire the civilized world 
ever saw. The Defendant is a defenceless 
proscribed exile. He is a French Royalist, 
who fled from his country in the autumn of 
1792, at the period of that memorable and 
awful emigration when all the proprietors 
and magistrates of the greatest civilized 
country of Europe were driven from their 
homes by the daggers of assassins ; — when 
our shores were covered, as with the wreck 
of a great tempest, with old men, and wo- 
men, and children, and ministers of religion, 
who fled from the ferocity of their country- 
men as before an army of invading bar^a- 



DEFENCE OF JEAN PELTIER. 



4Si 



rians. The greater part of these unfortunate 
exiles, — of those I mean who have been 
spared by the sword, or who have survived 
the effect of pestilential climates or broken 
hearts, — have been since permitted to re- 
visit their country. Though despoiled of 
their all, they have eagerly embraced even 
the sad privilege of being suffered to die in 
their native land. Even this miserable in- 
dulgence was to be purchased by compli- 
ances, — by declarations of allegiance to the 
new government, — which some of these suf- 
fering royalists deemed, incompatible with 
their conscience, with their dearest attach- 
ments and their most sacred duties. Among 
these last is Mr. Peltier. I do not presume 
to blame those who submitted ; and I trust 
you will not judge harshly of those who re- 
fused. You will not think unfavourably of 
a man who stands before you as the volun- 
tary victim of his loyalty and honour. If a 
revolution (which God avert !) were to drive 
us into exile, and to cast us on a foreign 
shore, we should expect, at least, to be par- 
doned by generous men, for stubborn loyalty, 
and unseasonable fidelity, to the laws and 
government of our fathers. 

This unfortunate Gentleman had devoted 
a great part of his life to literature. It was 
the amusement and ornament of his better 
days : since his own ruin, and the desolation 
of his country, he has been compelled to 
employ it as a means of support. For the 
last ten years he has been engaged in a va- 
riety of publications of considerable import- 
ance : but, since the peace, he has desisted 
from serious political discussion, and confined 
himself to the obscure journal which is now 
before you, — the least calculated, surely, of 
any publication that ever issued from the 
press, to rouse the alarms of the most jeal- 
ous government, — which will not be read in 
England, because it is not written in our 
language, — which cannot be read in Fiance, 
because its entry into that country is pro- 
hibited by a power whose mandates are not 
very supinely enforced, nor often evaded 
with impunity, — -which can have no other 
object than that of amusing the companions 
of the author's principles and misfortunes, by 
pleasantries and sarcasms on their victorious 
enemies. There is, indeed, Gentlemen, one 
remarkable circumstance in this unfortunate 
publication : it is the only, or almost the 
only, journal, which still dares to espouse 
the cause of that royal and illustrious family, 
which but fourteen years ago was flattered 
by every press, and guarded by every tribu- 
nal, in Europe. Even the court in which we 
are met affords an example of the vicissi- 
tudes of their fortune, My Learned Friend 
has reminded you. that the last prosecution 
tried in this place, at the instance of a French 
government, was for a libel on that magnani- 
mous princess, who has since been butchered 
in sight of her palace. 

I do not make these observations with any 
purpose of questioning the general principles 
which have been laid down by my Learned 



Friend. I must admit his right to bring be- 
fore you those who libel any government re- 
cognised by His Majesty, and at peace withe 
the British empire. I admit that, whether 
such a government be of yesterday or a thou- 
sand years old, — whether it be a crude and 
bloody usurpation, or the most ancient, just,- 
and paternal authority upon earth, — we are 
equally bound by His Majesty's recognition 
to protect it against libellous attacks. I ad- 
mit that if. during our Usurpation, Lord Cla- 
rendon had published his History at Paris, 
or the Marquis of Montrose his verses en- 
tire murder of his sovereign, or Mr. Cowley 
his Discourse on Cromwell's Government, 
and if the English ambassador had com- 
plained, the President de Mole, or anyother 
of the great magistrates who then adorned 
the Parliament of Paris, however reluctant- 
ly, painfully, and indignantly, might have 
been compelled to have condemned these il- 
lustrious men to the punishment of libellers. 
I say this only for the sake of bespeaking a 
favourable attention from your generosity 
and compassion to what will be feebly urged 
in behalf of my unfortunate Client, who has 
sacrificed his fortune, his hopes, his connec- 
tions, and his country, to his conscience, — 
who seems marked out for destruction in this 
his last asylum. 

That he still enjoys the security of this 
asylum, — that he has not been sacrificed te 
the resentment of his powerful enemies, is 
perhaps owing to the firmness of the King's 
Government. If that be the fact, Gentle- 
men. — if his Majesty's Ministers have re- 
sisted the applications to expel this unfor- 
tunate Gentleman from England, I should' 
publicly thank them for their firmness, if it 
were not unseemly and improper to suppose 
that they could have acted otherwise, — to 
thank an English Government for not viola- 
ting the most sacred duties of hospitality,— 
for not bringing indelible disgrace on their 
country. But be that as it may, Gentlemen, 
he now comes before you perfectly satisfied 
that an English jury is the most refreshing 
prospect that the eye of accused innocence 
ever met in a human tribunal ; and he feels 
with me the most fervent gratitude to the 
Protector of empires, that, surrounded a? 
we are with the ruins of principalities and 
powers, we still continue to meet together, 
after the manner of our fathers, to adminis- 
ter justice in this her ancient sanctuary. 

There is another point of view, Gentle- 
men, in which this case seems to me to 
merit your most serious attention. I con- 
sider it as the first of a long series of con- 
flicts between the greatest power in the 
world, and the only free press remaining in 
Europe. No man living is more thoroughly 
convinced than I am, that my Learned Friend 
will never degrade his excellent character. — 
that he will never disgrace his high magis- 
tracy by mean compliances, — by an immode- 
rate" and unconscientious exercise of power; 
yet I am convinced by circumstances which 
I shall now abstain from discussing, that i 
2q2 



486 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



am to consider this as the first of a long series 
of conflicts, betiveen the greatest power in the 
world, and the only free press now remaining 
in Europe. Gentlemen, this distinction of 
the English press is new : it is a proud and 
melancholy distinction. Before the great 
earthquake of the French Revolution had 
swallowed up all the asylums of free discus- 
sion on the Continent, we enjoyed that pri- 
vilege, indeed, more fully than others, but 
we did not enjoy it exclusively. In great 
monarchies the press has always been con- 
sidered as too formidable an engine to be 
intrusted to unlicensed individuals. But in 
other Continental countries, either by the 
laws of the state, or by long habits of libe- 
rality and toleration in magistrates, a liberty 
of discussion has been enjoyed, perhaps suffi- 
cient for the most useful purposes. It ex- 
isted, in fact, where it was not protected by 
law : and the wise and generous connivance 
of governments was daily more and more 
secured by the growing civilization of their 
subjects. In Holland, in Switzerland, and in 
the Imperial towns of Germany, the press 
was either legally or practically free. Hol- 
land and Switzerland are no more: and, 
since the commencement of this prosecu- 
tion, fifty Imperial tow r ns have been erased 
from the list of independent states, by one 
dash of the pen. Three or four still preserve 
a precarious and trembling existence. I will 
not say by what compliances they must pur- 
chase its continuance. I will not insult the 
feebleness of states whose unmerited fall I 
do most bitterly deplore. 

These governments were in many respects 
one of the most interesting parts of the an- 
cient system of Europe. Unfortunately for 
the repose of mankind, great states are com- 
pelled, by regard to their own safety, to con- 
sider the military spirit and martial habits 
of their people as one of the main objects 
of their policy. Frequent hostilities seem 
almost the necessary condition of their great- 
ness : anil, without being great, they cannot 
long remain safe. Smaller states, exempted 
from this cruel necessity, — a hard condition 
of greatness, a bitter satire on human nature, 
— devoted themselves to the arts of peace, 
to the cultivation of literature, and the im- 
provement of reason. They became places 
of refuge for free and fearless discussion : 
they were the impartial spectators and judges 
of the various contests of ambition, which. 
from time to time, disturbed the quiet of the 
world. They thus became peculiarly quali- 
fied to be the organs of that public opinion 
which converted Europe into a great repub- 
lic, with laws which mitigated, though they 
could not extinguish, ambition, and with 
moral tribunals to which even the most de- 
spotic sovereigns were amenable. If wars 
of aggrandisement were undertaken, their 
authors were arraigned in the face of Europe. 
If acts of internal tyranny were perpetrated, 
they resounded from a thousand presses 
throughout all civilized countries. Princes 
on whose will there were no legal checks. 



thus found a moral restraint which the most 
powerful of them could not brave with abso- 
lute impunity. They acted before a vast 
audience, to whose applause or condemna- 
tion they could not be utterly indifferent. 
The very constitution of human nature,— the 
unalterable laws of the mind of man. against 
which all rebellion is fruitless, subjected the 
proudest tyrants to this control. No eleva- 
tion of power, — no depravity, however con- 
summate, — no innocence, however spotless, 
can render man wholly independent of the 
praise or blame of his fellow-men. 

These governments were in other respects 
one of the most beautiful and interesting 
parts of our ancient system. The perfect 
security of such inconsiderable and feeble 
states, — their undisturbed tranquillity amidst 
the wars and conquests that surrounded 
them, attested, beyond any other part of the 
European system, the moderation, the jus- 
tice, the civilization to which Christian Eu- 
rope had reached in modern times. Their 
weakness was protected only by the habitual 
reverence for justice, which, during a long 
series of ages, had grown up in Christendom. 
This was the only fortification which de- 
fended them against those mighty monarchs 
to whom they offered themselves so easy a 
prey. And, till the French Revolution, this 
was sufficient. Consider, for instance, the 
situation of the republic of Geneva : think of 
her defenceless position in the very jaws of 
France ) but think also of her undisturbed 
security, — of her profound quiet, — of the 
brilliant success with which she applied to 
industry and literature, while Louis XIV. 
was pouring his myriads into Italy before 
her gates. Call to mind, if ages crowded 
into years have not effaced them from your 
memory, that happy period when we scarcely 
dreamt more of the subjugation of the feeblest 
republic of Europe, than of the conquest of 
her mightiest empire, and tell me if you can 
imagine a spectacle more beautiful to the 
moral eye. or a more striking proof of pro- 
gress in the noblest principles of true civili- 
zation. 

These feeble states, — these monuments of 
the justice of Europe, — the asylums of peace, 
of industry, and of literature, — the organs 
of public reason, — the refuge of oppressed 
innocence and persecuted truth, — have pe- 
rished with those ancient principles which 
were their sole guardians and protectors. 
They have been swallowed up by that fear- 
ful convulsion which has shaken the utter- 
most corners of the earth. They are de- 
stroyed and gone for ever. One asylum of 
free discussion is still inviolate. There is 
still one spot in Europe where man can freely 
exercise his reason on the most important 
concerns of society, — where he can boldly 
publish his judgment on the acts of the 
proudest and most powerful tyrants. The 
press of England is still free. It is guarded 
by the free constitution of our forefathers; — 
it is guarded by the hearts and arms of 
Englishmen : and I trust I may venture to 



DEFENCE OF JEAN PELTIER. 



487 



say, that if it be to fall, it will fall only 
under the ruins of the British empire. It is 
an awful consideration, Gentlemen : — every 
other monument of European liberty has 
perished : that ancient fabric which has been 
gradually reared by the wisdom and virtue 
of our fathers still stands. It stands, (thanks 
be to God!) solid and entire; but it stands 
alone, and it stands amidst ruins. 

In these extraordinary circumstances, I 
repeat that I must consider this as the first 
of a long series of conflicts between the 
greatest power in the world and the only 
free press remaining in Europe; and I trust 
that you will consider yourselves as the ad- 
vanced guard of liberty, as having this day 
to fight the first battle of free discussion 
against the most formidable enemy that it 
ever encountered. You will therefore ex- 
cuse me, if on so important an occasion I 
remind you at more length than is usual, of 
those general principles of law and policy on 
this subject, which have been handed down 
to us by our ancestors. 

Those who slowly built up the fabric of 
our laws, never attempted anything so absurd 
as to define by any precise rule the obscure 
and shifting boundaries which divide libel 
from history or discussion. It is a subject 
which, from its nature, admits neither rules 
nor definitions. The same words may be 
perfectly innocent in one case, and most 
mischievous and libellous in another. A 
change of circumstances, often apparently 
slight, is sufficient to make the whole differ- 
ence. These changes, which may be as 
numerous as the variety of human intentions 
and conditions, can never be foreseen or 
comprehended under any legal definitions; 
and the framers of our law have never at- 
tempted to subject them to such definitions. 
They left such ridiculous attempts to those 
who call themselves philosophers, but who 
have in fact proved themselves most grossly 
and stupidly ignorant of that philosophy 
which is conversant with human affairs. 

The principles of the law of England on 
the subject of political libel are few and sim- 
ple ; and they are necessarily so broad, that, 
without an habitually mild administration 
of justice,, they might encroach materially 
on the liberty of political discussion. Every 
publication which is intended to vilify either 
our own government or the government of 
any foreign state in amity with this kingdom, 
is, by the law of England, a libel. To pro- 
tect political discussion from the danger to 
which it would be exposed by these wide 
principles, if they were severely and literally 
enforced, our ancestors trusted to various 
securities ; some growing out of the law and 
constitution, and others arising from the 
character of those public officers whom the 
constitution had formed, and to whom its 
administration is committed. They trusted 
in the first place to the moderation of the 
legal officers of the Crown, educated in the 
maxims and imbued with the spirit of a free 
government, controlled by the superintending 



power of Parliament, and peculiarly watched 
in all political prosecutions by the reasonable 
and wholesome jealousy of their fellow-sub- 
jects. And I am bound to admit, that since 
the glorious era of the Revolution.— making 
due allowance for the frailties, the faults, and 
the occasional vices of men. — they have upon 
the whole not been disappointed. I know that, 
in the hands of my Learned Friend, that trust 
will never be abused. But, above all. they 
confided in the moderation and good sense of 
juries. — popular in their origin, — popular in 
their feelings, — popular in their very preju- 
dices, — taken from the mass of the people, 
and immediately returning to that mass again. 
By these checks and temperaments they 
hoped that they should sufficiently repress 
malignant libels, without endangering that 
freedom of inquiry which is the first security 
of a free state. They knew that the offence 
of a political libel is of a very peculiar nature, 
and differing in the most important particu- 
lars from all other crimes. In all other cases 
the most severe execution of law can only 
spread terror among the guilty ; but in politi- 
cal libels it inspires even the innocent with 
fear. This striking peculiarity arises from 
the same circumstances which make it im- 
possible to define the limits of libel and inno- 
cent discussion, — which make it impossible 
for a man of the purest and most honourable 
mind to be always perfectly certain, whether 
he be within the territory of fair argument 
and honest narrative, or whether he may 
not have unwittingly overstepped the faint 
and varying line which bounds them. But, 
Gentlemen, I will go farther: — this is the 
only offence where severe and frequent pun- 
ishments not only intimidate the innocent, 
but deter men from the most meritorious 
acts, and from rendering the most important 
services to their country. — indispose and dis- 
qualify men for the discharge of the most 
sacred duties which they owe to mankind. 
To inform the public on the conduct of 
those who administer public affairs, requires 
courage and conscious security. It is always 
an invidious and obnoxious office : but it is 
often the most necessary of all public duties. 
If it is not done boldly, it cannot be done 
effectually: and it is not from writers trem- 
bling under the uplifted scourge, that we are 
to hope for it. 

There are other matters, Gentlemen, to 
which I am desirous of particularly calling 
your attention. These are, the circum- 
stances in the condition of this country, which 
have induced our ancestors, at all times, to 
handle with more than ordinary tenderness 
that branch of the liberty of discussion which 
is applied to the conduct of foreign states. 
The relation of this kingdom to the common- 
wealth of Europe is so peculiar, that no his- 
tory, I think, furnishes a parallel to it. From 
the moment in which we abandoned all pro- 
jects of Continental aggrandisement, we 
could have no interest respecting the state 
of the Continent, but the interests of national 
safety, and of commercial prosperity. The 



488 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



paramount interest of every state, — that 
which comprehends every other, is security: 
and the security of Great Britain requires 
nothing on the Continent but the uniform 
observance of justice. It requires nothing 
but the inviolability of ancient boundaries, 
and the sacredness of ancient possessions, 
which, on these subjects, is but another form 
of words for justice. 

As to commercial prosperity, it is, indeed. 
a secondary, but still a very important branch 
of our national interest; and it requires no- 
thing on the Continent of Europe but the 
maintenance of peace, as far as the para- 
mount interest of security will allow. What- 
ever ignorant or prejudiced men may affirm, 
no war was ever gainful to a commercial na- 
tion. Losses may be less in some, and in- 
cidental profits may arise in others. But no 
such profits ever formed an adequate com- 
pensation for the waste of capital and indus- 
try which all wars must produce. Next to 
peace, our commercial greatness depends 
chiefly on the affluence and prosperity of our 
neighbours. A commercial nation has, in- 
deed, the same interest in the wealth of her 
neighbours, that a tradesman has in the 
wealth of his customers. The prosperity 
of England has been chiefly owing to the 
general progress of civilized nations in the 
arts and improvements of social life. Not 
an acre of land has been brought into culti- 
vation in the wilds of Siberia, or on the shores 
of the Mississippi, which has not widened 
the market for English industry. It is nou- 
rished by the progressive prosperity of the 
world; and it amply repays all that it has 
received. It can only be employed in spread- 
ing civilization and enjoyment over the earth j 
and by the unchangeable laws of nature, in 
spite of the impotent tricks of governments, 
it is now partly applied to revive the industry 
of those very nations who are the loudest in 
their senseless clamours against its pretended 
mischiefs. If the blind and barbarous pro- 
ject of destroying English prosperity could 
be accomplished, it could have no other 
effect than that of completely beggaring the 
very countries, which now stupidly ascribe 
their own poverty to our wealth. 

Under these circumstances, Gentlemen, it 
became the obvious policy of this kingdom, 
— a policy in unison with the maxims of a 
free government, — to consider with great in- 
dulgence even the boldest animadversions 
of our political writers on the ambitious pro- 
jects of foreign slates. Bold, and sometimes 
indiscreet, as these animadversions mi^ht be, 
they had at least the effect of warning the 
people of their danger, and of rousing the 
national indignation against those encroach- 
ments vvhich England has almost always 
been compelled in the end to resist by arms. 
Seldom, indeed, has she been allowed to 
wait, till a provident regard to her own safety 
should compel her to take up arms in defence 
of others. For, as it was said by a great 
orator of antiquity, "that no man ever was 
the enemy of the republic who had not first 



declared war against him,' ; * so I may say, 
with truth, that no man ever meditated the 
subjugation of Europe, who did not consider 
the destruction, or the corruption, of England 
as the first condition of his success. If you 
examine history you will find, that no such 
project was ever formed in which it was not 
deemed a necessary preliminary, either to 
detach England from the common cause, or 
to destroy her. It seems as if all the con- 
spirators against the independence of nations 
might have sufficiently taught other states 
that England is their natural guardian and 
protector, — that she alone has no interest but 
their preservation, — that her safety is inter- 
woven with their own. When vast projects 
of aggrandisement are manifested, — when 
schemes of criminal ambition are carried into 
effect, the day of battle is fast approaching 
for England. Her free government cannot 
engage in dangerous wars, without the hearty 
and affectionate support of her people. A 
state thus situated cannot without the utmost 
peril silence those public discussions, which 
are to point the popular indignation against 
those who must soon be enemies. In do- 
mestic dissensions, it may sometimes be the 
supposed interest of government to overawe 
the press : but it never can be even their 
apparent interest when the danger is purely 
foreign. A King of England who, in such 
circumstances, should conspire against the 
free press of this country, would undermine 
the foundations of his own throne; — he 
would silence the trumpet which is to call 
his people round his standard. 

Gentlemen, the public spirit of a people 
(by which I mean the whole body of those 
affections which unites men's hearts to the 
commonwealth) is in various countries com- 
posed of various elements, and depends on 
a great variety of causes. In this country, I 
may venture to say, that it mainly depends 
on the vigour of the popular parts and prin- 
ciples of our government ; and that the spirit 
of liberty is one of its most important ele- 
ments. Perhaps it may depend less on those 
advantages of a free government, which are 
most highly estimated by calm reason, than 
upon those parts of it which delight the ima- 
gination, and flatter the just and natural 
pride of mankind. Among these we are 
certainly not to forget the political rights 
which are not uniformly withheld from the 
lowest classes, and the continual appeal 
made to them, in public discussion, upon the 
greatest interests of the state. These are 
undoubtedly among the circumstances which 
endear to Englishmen their government and 
their country, and animate their zeal for that 
glorious institution which confers on the 
meanest of them a sort of distinction and no- 
bility unknown to the most illustrious slaves 
who tremble at the frown of a tyrant. Who- 
ever was unwarily and rashly to abolish or 
narrow these privileges (which it must be 



* The reference is probably to Cicero. Orat. ia 
Catilinam, iv. cap. 10. — Ed. 



DEFENCE OF JEAN PELTIER. 



489 



owned are liable to great abuse, and to very 
specious objections), might perhaps discover, 
too late, that he had been dismantling the 
fortifications of his country. Of whatever 
elements public spirit is composed, it is 
always and every where the chief defensive 
principle of a state (it is perfectly distinct 
from courage : — perhaps no nation — certainly 
no European nation ever perished from an 
inferiority of courage); and undoubtedly no 
considerable nation was ever subdued, in 
which the public affections were sound and 
vigorous. It is public spirit which binds to- 
gether the dispersed courage of individuals, 
and fastens it to the commonwealth : — it is 
therefore, as I have said, the chief defensive 
principle of every country. Of all the stimu- 
lants which rouse it into action, the most 
powerful among us is certainly the press: 
and the press cannot be restrained or weak- 
ened without imminent danger that the na- 
tional spirit may languish, and that the peo- 
ple may act with less zeal and affection for 
their country in the hour of its danger. 

These principles. Gentlemen, are not new : 
they are genuine old English principles. And 
though in our days they have been disgraced 
and abused by ruffians and fanatics, they are 
in themselves as just and sound as they are 
liberal ; and they are the only principles on 
which a free state can be safely governed. 
These principles I have adopted since I first 
learnt the use of reason ; and I think I shall 
abandon them only with life. 
• On these principles I am now to call your 
attention to the libel with which this unfor- 
tunate Gentleman is charged. I heartily re- 
joice that I concur with the greatest part of 
what has been said by my Learned Friend, 
who has done honour even to his character 
by the generous and liberal principles which 
he has laid down. He has told you that he 
does not mean to attack historical narrative ; 
— he has told you that he does not mean to 
attack political discussion ; — he has told you 
also that he does not consider every intempe- 
rate word into which a writer, fairly engaged 
in narration or reasoning, might be betrayed, 
as a fit subject for prosecution. The essence 
of the crime of libel consists in the malignant 
mind which the publication proves, and from 
which it Hows. A jury must be convinced, 
before they find a man guilty of libel, that 
his intention was to libel, — not to state facts 
which he believed to be true, or reasonings 
which he thought just. My Learned Friend 
has told you that the liberty of history in- 
cludes the right of publishing those observa- 
tions which occur to intelligent men when 
they consider the affairs of the world ; and I 
think he will not deny that it includes also 
the right of expressing those sentiments 
which all good men feel on the contempla- 
tion of extraordinary examples of depravity 
or excellence. 

One more privilege of the historian, which 

the Attorney-General has not named, but to 

which his principles extend, it is now my 

duty to claim on behalf of my client : — I 

62 



mean, the right of republishing, historically, 
those documents (whatever their original 
malignity may be) which display the cha- 
racter and unfold the intentions of govern- 
ments, or factions, or individuals. I think 
my Learned Friend will not deny, that an 
historical compiler may innocently republish 
in England the most insolent and outrageous 
declaration of war ever published against 
His Majesty by a foreign government. The 
intention of the original author was to vilify 
and degrade his Majesty's government : but 
the intention of the compiler is only to gratify 
curiosity, or perhaps to rouse just indignation 
against the calumniator whose production he 
republishes ; his intention is not libellous, — 
his republication is therefore not a libel. Sup- 
pose this to be the case with Mr. Peltier; — 
suppose him to have republished libels with 
a merely historical intention. In that case it 
cannot be pretended that he is more a libeller 
than my learned friend Mr. Abbott,* who 
read these supposed libels to you when he 
opened the pleadings. Mr. Abbott repub- 
lished them to you, that you might know and 
judge of them : Mr. Peltier, on the supposi- 
tion I have made, also republished them that 
the public might know and judge of them. 

You already know that the general plan of 
Mr. Peltier's publication was to give a pic- 
ture of the cabals and intrigues, — of the 
hopes and projects, of French factions. It 
is undoubtedly a natural and necessary part 
of this plan to republish all the serious and 
ludicrous pieces which these factions circu- 
late against each other. The Ode ascribed 
to Chenier or Ginguene I do really believe to 
have been written at Paris, — to have been 
circulated there, — to have been there attri- 
buted to one of these writers, — to have been 
sent to England as their work, — and as such, 
to have been republished by Mr. Peltier. 
But I am not sure that I have evidence to 
convince you of the truth of this. Suppose 
that I have not : will my Learned Friend say- 
that my client must necessarily be con- 
victed? I, on the contrary, contend, that it 
is for my Learned Friend to show that it is 
not an historical republication: — such it pro- 
fesses to be, and that profession it is for him 
to disprove. The profession may indeed be 
a ;: mask :" but it is for my Friend to pluck 
oil the mask, and expose the libeller, before 
he calls upon you for a verdict of " guilt} 7 . n 

If the general lawfulness of such republi- 
cations be denied, then I must ask Mr. At- 
torney-General to account for the long im- 
punity which English newspapers have en- 
joyed. I must request him to tell you why 
they have been suffered to republish all ihe 
atrocious, official and unofficial, libels which 
have been published against His Majesty for 
the last ten years, by the Brissots, the Marats, 
the Dantons, the Robespierres, the Barreres, 
the Talliens, the Reubells. the Merlins, the 
Barras', and all that long line of bloody ty- 

* The junior counsel for the prosecution, after- 
wards Lord Tenterden.— Ed. 



490 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



rants who oppressed their own country, and 
insulted every other which they had not the 
power to rob. What must be the answer? 
That the English publishers were either in- 
nocent if their motive was to gratify curiosity, 
or praiseworthy if their intention was to rouse 
indignation against the calumniators of their 
country, [f any other answer be made, I 
must remind my Friend of a most sacred 
part of his duty — the duty of protecting the 
honest fame of those who are absent in the 
service of their country. Within these few 
days, we have seen in every newspaper in 
England, a publication, called the Report of 
Col. Sebastiani, in which a gallant British 
officer (General Stuart) is charged with writ- 
ing letters to procure assassination. The 
publishers of that infamous Report are not 
and will not be prosecuted, because their in- 
tention is not to libel General Stuart. On any 
other principle, why have all our newspapers 
been suffered to circulate that most atrocious 
of all libels against the King and the people of 
England, which purports to be translated 
from the Moniteur of the 9th of August, 
1802 ; a libel against a Prince, who has passed 
through a factious and stormy reign of forty- 
three years without a single imputation on 
his personal character, — against a people 
who have passed through the severest trials 
of national virtue with unimpaired glory, 
who alone in the world can boast of mutinies 
without murder, of triumphant mobs without 
massacre, of bloodless revolutions and of civil 
wars unstained by a single assassination ; — 
that most impudent and malignant libel, 
which charges such a King of such a people 
not only with having hired assassins, but 
with being so shameless, — so lost to all sense 
of character, as to have bestowed on these 
assassins, if their murderous projects had 
succeeded, the highest badges of public ho- 
nour, — the rewards reserved for statesmen 
and heroes, — the Order of the Garter ; — the 
Order which was founded by the heroes of 
Crecy and Poitiers, — the Gaiter which was 
worn by Henry the Great and by Gustavus 
Adolphus, — which might now be worn by 
the Hero* who, on the shores of Syria, the 
ancient theatre of English chivalry, has re- 
vived the renown of English valour and of 
English humanity, — that unsullied Garter, 
which a detestable libeller dares to say is to 
be paid as the price of murder. 

If I had now to defend an English pub- 
lisher for the republication of that abominable 
libel, what must I have said on his defence 1 
I must have told you that it was originally 
published by the French Government in their 
official gazette, — that it was republished by 
the English editor to gratify the natural cu- 
riosity, perhaps to rouse the just resentment, 
of his English readers. I should have con- 
tended, and, I trust, with success, that his 
republication of a libel was not libellous, — 
that it was lawful, — that it was laudable. 
All that would be important, at least all that 

* Sir Sydney Smith.— Ed. 



would be essential in such a defence I now 
state to you on behalf of Mr. Peltier ; and 
if an English newspaper may safely repub- 
lish the libels of the French Government 
against His Majesty, I shall leave you to 
judge whether Mr. Peltier, in similar cir- 
cumstances, may not, with equal safety, re- 
publish the libels of Chenier against the 
First Consul. On the one hand you have the 
assurances of Mr. Peltier in the context that 
this Ode is merely a republication; — y^u 
have also the general plan of his work, with 
which such a republication is perfectly con- 
sistent. On the other hand, you have only the 
suspicions of Mr. Attorney-General that this 
Ode is an original production of the Defendant. 
But supposing that you should think it his 
production, and that you should also think it 
a libel, — even in that event, which I cannot 
anticipate, I am not left without a defence. 
The question will still be open : — is it a libel 
on Buonaparte, or is it a libel on Chenier or 
Ginguene '? This is not an information for a 
libel on Chenier : and if you should think 
that this Ode was produced by Mr. Peltier, 
and ascribed by him to Chenier for the sake 
of covering that writer with the odium of 
Jacobinism, the Defendant is entitled to your 
verdict of "not guilty." Or if you should 
believe that it is ascribed to Jacobinical wri- 
ters for the sake of satirising a French Jaco- 
binical faction, you must also in that case 
acquit him. Butler puts seditious and im- 
moral language into the mouths of rebels 
and fanatics; but Hudibras is not for that 
reason a libel on morality or government. 
Swift, in the most exquisite piece of irony in 
the world (his Argument against the Aboli- 
tion of Christianity), uses the language of 
those shallow, atheistical coxcombs whom 
his satire was intended to scourge. The 
scheme of his irony required some levity, 
and even some profaneness of language ; but 
nobody was ever so dull as to doubt whether 
Swift meant to satirise atheism or religion. 
In the same manner Mr. Peltier, when he 
wrote a satire on French Jacobinism, was 
compelled to ascribe to Jacobins a Jacobinical 
hatred of government. He was obliged, by 
dramatic propriety, to put into their mouths 
those anarchical maxims which are com- 
plained of in this Ode. But it will be said, 
these incitements to insurrection are here 
directed against the authority of Buonaparte. 
This proves nothing, because they must have 
been so directed, if the Ode was a satire on 
Jacobinism. French Jacobins must inveigh 
against Buonaparte, because he exercises 
the powers of government : the satirist who 
attacks them must transcribe their senti- 
ments, and adopt their language. 

I do not mean to say, Gentlemen, that Mr. 
Peltier feels any affection, or professes any 
allegiance to Buonaparte. If I were to say 
so, he would disown me. He would disdain 
to purchase an acquittal by the profession of 
sentiments which he disclaims and abhors. 
Not to love Buonaparte is no crime. The 
question is not whether Mr. Peltier loves or 



DEFENCE OF JEAN PELTIER. 



491 



hates the First Consul, but whether he has 
put revolutionary language into the mouth of 
Jacobins, with a view to paint their inror- 
rigible turbulence, and to exhibit the fruits 
of Jacobinical revolutions to the detestation 
of mankind. 

Now. Gentlemen, we cannot give a proba- 
ble answer to this question without previously 
examining two or three questions on which 
the answer to the first must very much de- 
pend. Is there a faction in France which 
breathes the spirit, and is likely to employ 
the language of this Ode 1 Does it perfectly 
accord with their character and views 1 Is 
it utterly irreconcilable with the feelings, 
opinions, and wishes of Mr. Peltier? If these 
questions can be answered in the affirmative, 
then I think you must agree with me, that 
Mr. Peltier does not in this Ode speak his 
own sentiments, — that he does not here vent 
his own resentment against Buonaparte, but 
that he personates a Jacobin, and adopts his 
language for the sake of satirising his prin- 
ciples. 

These questions, Gentlemen, lead me to 
those political discussions, which, generally 
speaking, are in a court of justice odious and 
disgusting. Here, however, they are neces- 
sary, and I shall consider them only as far as 
the necessities of this cause require. 

Gentlemen, the French Revolution — I must 
pause, after I have uttered words which pre- 
sent such an overwhelming idea. But I have 
not now to engage in an enterprise so far 
beyond my force as that of examining and 
judging that tremendous revolution. I have 
only to consider the character of the factions 
which it must have left behind it. The 
French Revolution began with great and 
fatal errors. These errors produced atrocious 
crimes. A mild and feeble monarchy was 
succeeded by bloody anarchy, which very 
shortly gave birth to military despotism. 
France, in a few years, described the whole 
circle of human society. All this was in the 
order of nature. When every principle of 
authority and civil discipline, — -when every 
principle which enables some men to com- 
mand, and disposes others to obey, was ex- 
tirpated from the mind by atrocious theories, 
and still more atrocious examples, — when 
every old institution was trampled down with 
contumely, and every new institution covered 
in its cradle with blood, — when the principle 
of property itself, the sheet-anchor of society, 
was annihilated, — when in the persons of the 
new possessors, whom the poverty of lan- 
guage obliges us to call proprietors, it was 
contaminated in its source by robbery and 
murder, and became separated from the 
education and the manners, from the general 
presumption of superior knowledge and more 
scrupulous probity which form its only libe- 
ral titles to respect, — when the people were 
taught to despise every thing old, and com- 
pelled to detest every thing new, there re- 
mained only one principle strong enough to 
hold society together, — a principle utterly 
incompatible, indeed, with liberty, and un- 



friendly to civilization itself, — a tyrannical 
and barbarous principle, but, in that miser- 
able condition of human affairs, a refuge 
from still more intolerable evils: — I mean 
the principle of military power, which gains 
strength from that confusion and blood shod 
in which all the other elements of society 
are dissolved, and which, in these terrible 
extremities, is the cement that preserves it 
from total destruction. Under such circum- 
stances, Buonaparte usurped the supreme 
power in France) — I say usurped, because an 
illegal assumption of power is an usurpation. 
But usurpation, in its strongest moral sense, 
is scarcely r applicable to a period of lawless 
and savage anarchy. The guil| of military 
usurpation, in truth, belongs to the authors 
of those confusions which sooner or later 
give birth to such an usurpation. Thus, to 
use the words of the historian, "by recent 
as well as all ancient example, it became 
evident, that illegal violence, with whatever 
pretences it may be covered, and whatever 
object it may pursue, must inevitably end at 
last in the arbitrary and despotic govern- 
ment of a single person."* But though the 
government of Buonaparte has silenced the 
Revolutionary factions, it has not and it can- 
not have extinguished them. No human 
power could reimpress upon the minds of 
men all those sentiments and opinions which 
the sophistry and anarchy of fourteen years 
had obliterated. A faction must exist, which 
breathes the spirit of the Ode now before 
you. 

It is, I know, not the spirit of the quiet 
and submissive majority of the French peo- 
ple. They have always rather suffered, than 
acted in, the Revolution. Completely ex- 
hausted by the calamities through which 
they have passed, they yield to any power 
which gives them repose. There is, indeed, 
a degree of oppression which rouses men to 
resistance - ; but there isanotherand a greater 
which wholly subdues and unmans them. 
It is remarkable that Robespierre himself 
was safe, till he attacked his own accom- 
plices. The spirit of men of virtue was 
broken, and there was no vigour of character 
left to destroy him, but in those daring ruf- 
fians who were the sharers of his tyranny. 

As for the wretched populace who were 
made the blind and senseless instrument of 
so many crimes. — whose frenzy can now be 
reviewed by a good mind with scarce any 
moral sentiment but that of compassion, — 
that miserable multitude of beings, scarcely 
human, have already fallen into a brutish 
forgetfulness of the very atrocities which 
they themselves perpetrated : they have al- 
ready forgotten all the acts of their drunken 
fury. If you ask one of them, who destroyed 
that magnificent monument of religion and 
art 1 or who perpetrated that massacre ? they 
stupidly answer, "The Jacobins!" — though 
he who gives the answer was probably one 
of these Jacobins himself : so that a traveller, 

* Hume, History of England, vol. vii. p. 220. 



492 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



ignorant of French history, might suppose 
the Jacobins to be the name of some Tartar 
horde, who, after laying waste France for 
ten years, were at last expelled by the native 
inhabitants. They have passed fiom sense- 
less rage to stupid quiet: their delirium is 
followed by lethargy. 

In a word, Gentlemen, the great body of 
the people of France have been severely 
trained in those convulsions and proscriptions 
which are the school of slavery. They are 
capable of no mutinous, and even of no bold 
and manly political sentiments : and if this 
Ode professed to paint their opinions, it would 
be a most, unfaithful picture. But it is other- 
wise with lJio.se who have been the actors 
and leaders in the scene of blood : it is other- 
wise with the numerous agents of the most 
indefatigable, searching, multiform, and om- 
nipresent tyranny that ever existed, which 
pervaded every class of society, — which had 
ministers and victims in every village in 
France. 

Some of them, indeed, — the basest of the 
race, — the Sophists, the Rhetors, the Poet- 
laureates of murder, — who were cruel only 
from cowardice, and calculating selfishness, 
are perfectly willing to transfer their venal 
pens to any government that does not disdain 
their infamous support. These men, repub- 
licans from servility, who published rhetorical 
panegyrics on massacre, and who reduced 
plunder to a system of ethics, as are ready 
to preach slavery as anarchy. But the more 
daring — I had almost said the more respect- 
able — ruffians cannot so easily bend their 
heads under the yoke. These fierce spirits 
have not lost 

" The unconquerable will, the study of revenge, 
immortal hate."* 

They leave the luxuries of servitude to the 
mean and dastardly hypocrites, — to the 
Belialsand Mammons of the infernal faction. 
They pursue their old end of tyranny under 
their old pretext of liberty. The recollection 
of their unbounded power renders every in- 
ferior condition irksome and vapid : and their 
former atrocities form, if I may so speak, a 
sort of moral destiny which irresistibly im- 
pels them to the perpetration of new crimes. 
They have no place left for penitence on 
earth: they labour under the most awful 
proscription of opinion that ever was pro- 
nounced against human beings : they have 
cut down every bridge by which they could 
retreat into the society of men. Awakened 
from their dreams of democracy, — the noise 
subsided that deafened their ears to the voice 
of humanity, — the film fallen from their eyes 
which hid from them the blackness of their 
own deeds, — haunted by the memory of 
their inexpiable guilt. — condemned daily to 
look on the faces of those whom their hand 
has made widows and orphans, they are 
goaded and scourged by these real furies, 
and hurried into the tumult of new crimes, 
to drown the cries of remorse, or, if they be 

* Paradise Lost, book ii. — Ed. 



too depraved for remorse, to silence the 
curses of mankind. Tyrannical power is 
their only refuge from the just vengeance of 
their fellow creatures : murder is their only 
means of usurping power. They have no> 
taste, no occupation, no pursuit, but power 
and blood. If their hands are tied, they 
m'ust at least have the luxury of murderous 
projects. They have drunk too deeply of 
human blood ever to relinquish their cannibal 
appetite. 

Such a faction exists in France : it is nu- 
merous ; it is powerful ; and it has a principle 
of fidelity stronger than any that ever held 
together a society. They are banded together 
by despair of forgiveness, — by the unanimous 
detestation of mankind. They are now con- 
tained by a severe and stern government: 
but they still meditate the renewal of insur- 
rection and massacre ; and they are prepared 
to renew the worst and most atrocious of 
their crimes, — that crime against posterity 
and against human nature itself, — that crime 
of which the latest generations of mankind 
may feel the fatal consequences, — the crime 
of degrading and prostituting the sacred 
name of liberty. I must own that, however 
paradoxical it may appear, I should almost 
think not worse, but more meanly of them 
if it were otherwise. I must then think them 
destitute of that — I will not call it courage, 
because that is the name of a virtue — but of 
that ferocious energy which alone rescues 
ruffians from contempt. If they were desti- 
tute of that which is the heroism of murder- 
ers, they would be the lowest as well as the 
most abominable of beings. It is impossible 
to conceive any thing more despicable than 
wretches who, after hectoring and bullying 
over their meek and blameless sovereign, 
and his defenceless family, — whom they 
kept so long in a dungeon trembling for their 
existence, — whom they put to death by a 
slow torture of three years, — after playing 
the republicans and the tyrannicides to wo- 
men and children. — become the supple and 
fawning slaves of the first government that 
knows how to wield the scourge with a firm 
hand. 

I have used the word " Republican," be- 
cause it is the name by which this atrocious 
faction describes itself. The assumption of 
that name is one of their crimes. They are 
no more "Republicans" than "Royalists : ;/ 
they are the common enemies of all human 
society. God forbid, that by the use of that 
word, I should be supposed to reflect on the 
members of those respectable republican 
communities which did exist in Europe be- 
fore the French Revolution. That Revolution 
has spared many monarchies, but it has 
spared no republic within the sphere of its 
destructive energy. One republic only now 
«\xists in the world — a republic of English 
blood, which was originally composed of re- 
publican societies, under the protection of a 
monarchy, which had therefore no great and 
perilous change in their internal constitution 
to effect, and of which (I speak it with plea- 



DEFENCE OF JEAN PELTIER. 



493 



sure and pride), the inhabitants, even in the 
convulsions of a most deplorable separation, 
displayed the humanity as well as valour, 
which, I trust, I may say they inherited from 
their forefathers. Nor do I mean, by the 
use of the word "Republican," to confound 
this execrable faction with all those who, in 
the liberty of private speculation, may prefer 
a republican form of government. I own. 
that after much reflection, I am not able to 
conceive an error more gross than that of 
those who believe in the possibility of erect- 
ing a republic in any of the old monarchical 
countries of Europe, — who believe that in 
such countries an elective supreme magis- 
tracy can produce anything but a succession 
of stern tyrannies and bloody civil wars. It 
is a supposition which is belied by all expe- 
rience, and which betrays the greatest igno- 
rance of the first principles of the constitution 
of society. It is an error which has a false 
appearance of superiority over vulgar preju- 
dice ; it is, therefore, too apt to be attended 
with the most criminal rashness and pre- 
sumption, and too easy to be inflamed into 
the most immoral and anti-social fanaticism. 
But as long as it remains a mere quiescent 
error, it is not the proper subject of moral 
disapprobation. 

If then, Gentlemen, such a faction, falsely 
calling itself "Republican," exists in France, 
let us consider whether this Ode speaks their 
sentiments, — describes their character, — 
agrees with their views. Trying it by the 
principle I have stated, I think you will have 
no difficulty in concluding, that it is agree- 
able to the general plan of this publication 
to give an historical and satirical view of 
the Brutus' and brutes of the Republic, — of 
those who assumed and disgraced the name 
of Brutus,* and who, under that name, sat as 
judges in their mock tribunals with pistols 
in their girdles, to anticipate the office of the 
executioner on those unfortunate men whom 
thev treated as rebels, for resistance to Ro- 
bespierre and Couthon. 

I now come to show you, that this Ode 
cannot represent the opinions of Mr. Peltier. 
He is a French Royalist ; he has devoted his 
talents to the cause of his King; for that 
cause he has sacrificed his fortune and 
hazarded his life ; — for that cause he is pro- 
scribed and exiled from his country. I could 
easily conceive powerful topics of Royalist 
invective against Buonaparte : and if Mr. Pel- 
tier had called upon Frenchmen by the 
memory of St. Louis and Henry the Great, 
— by the memory of that illustrious family 
which reigned over them for seven centuries, 
and with whom all their martial renown and 
literary glory are so closely connected, — if he 
had adjured them by the spotless name of 
that Louis XVI., the martyr of his love for 
his people, which scarce a man in France 
can now pronounce but in the tone of pity 
and veneration. — if he had thus called upon 

* A Citizen Brums was President of the Mili- 
tary Commission at Marseilles, in January, 1794. 



them to change their useless regret and their 
barren pity into generous and active indig- 
nation, — if he had reproached the conquerors 
of Europe with the disgrace of being the 
slaves of an upstart stranger, — if he had 
brought before their minds the contrast be- 
tween their country under her ancient mo- 
narchs, the source and model of refinement 
in manners and taste, and since their expul- 
sion the scourge ami opprobrium of humanity, 
— if he had exhorted them to drive out their 
ignoble tyrants, and to restore their native 
sovereign, I should then have recognised the 
voice of a Royalist, — I should have recog- 
nised language that must have flowed from 
the heart of Mr. Peltier, and I should have 
been compelled to acknowledge that it was 
pointed against Buonaparte. 

But instead of these, or similar topics, 
what have we in this Ode 1 On the suppo- 
sition that it is the invective of a Royalist, 
how is it to be reconciled to common sense ? 
What purpose is it to serve ? To whom is it 
addressed ? To what interests does it ap- 
peal ? What passions is it to rouse % If if 
be addressed to Royalists, then I request, 
Gentlemen, that you will carefully read it, 
and tell me whether, on that supposition', it 
can be any thing but the ravings of insanity, 
and whether a commission of lunacy be not 
a proceeding more fitted to the author's case, 
than a conviction for a libel. On that sup- 
position, I ask you whether it does not 
amount, in substance, to such an address as 
the following: — "Frenchmen! Royalists! I 
do not call upon you to avenge the murder 
of your innocent sovereign, the butchery of 
your relations and friends, or the disgrace 
and oppression of your country. I call upon 
you by the hereditary right of Barras, trans- 
mitted through a long series of ages, — by 
the beneficent government of Merlin and 
Reubell, those worthy successors of Charle- 
magne, whose authority was as mild as it 
was lawful, — I call upon you to revenge on 
Buonaparte the deposition of that Directory 
who condemned the far greater part of your- 
selves to beggary and exile, — who covered 
France with Bastiles and scaffolds, — who 
doomed the most respectable remaining 
members of their community, the Piche- 
grus, the Barbe-Marbois'. the Barthelemis, 
to a lingering death in the pestilential wilds 
of Guiana. I call upon you to avenge on 
Buonaparte the cause of those Councils of 
Five Hundred, or of Two Hundred, of Elders 
or of Youngsters, — those disgusting and nau- 
seous mockeries of representative assemblies, 
— those miserable councils which sycophant 
sophists had converted into machines for 
fabricating decrees of proscription and con- 
fiscation, — which not only proscribed unborn 
thousands, but, by a refinement and innova- 
tion in rapine, visited the sins of the children 
upon the fathers and beggared parents, not 
for the offences but for the misfortunes of 
their sons. I call upon you to restore this 
Directory and these Councils, and all this 
horrible profanation of the name of a repub- 
2R 



494 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



lie. and to punish those who delivered you 
from them. I exhort you to reverence the 
den of these banditti as ' the sanctuary of 
the lawe. ; and to lament the day in which 
this intolerable nuisance was abated as ' an 
unfortunate day.' Last of all, I exhort you 
once more to follow that deplorable chimera, 
— the first lure that led you to destruction, 
— the sovereignty of the people ; although I 
know, and you have bitterly felt, that you 
never were so much slaves in fact, as since 
you have been sovereigns in theory!" Let 
me ask Mr. Attorney-General, whether, upon 
his supposition, I have not given you a faith- 
ful translation of this Ode; and I think I may 
safely repeat, that, if this be the language 
of a Royalist addressed to Royalists, it must 
be the production of a lunatic. But, on my 
supposition, every thing is natural and con- 
sistent. You have the sentiments and lan- 
guage of a Jacobin : — it is therefore probable, 
if you take it as an historical republication 
of a Jacobin piece ; it is just, if you take it 
as a satirical representation of Jacobin opi- 
nions and projects. 

Perhaps it will be said, that this is the 
production of a Royalist writer, who assumes 
a Republican disguise to serve Royalist pur- 
poses. But if my Learned Friend chooses 
that supposition, I think an equal absurdity 
returns upon him in another shape. We 
must then suppose it to be intended to ex- 
cite Republican discontent and insurrection 
against Buonaparte. It must then be taken 
as addressed to Republicans. Would Mr. 
Peltier, in that case, have disclosed his name 
as the publisher ] Would he not much rather 
have circulated the Ode in the name of 
Chenier, without prefixing his own, which 
was more than sufficient to warn his Jaco- 
binical readers against all his counsels and 
exhortations. If he had circulated it under 
the name of Chenier only, he would indeed 
have hung out Republican colours ; but by 
prefixing his own. he appears without dis- 
guise. You must suppose him then to say : 
— "Republicans! I, your mortal enemy for 
fourteen years, whom you have robbed of 
his all, — whom you have forbidden to revisit 
his country under pain of death, — who, from 
the beginning of the Revolution, has unceas- 
ingly poured ridicule upon your follies, and 
exposed your crimes to detestation, — who in 
the cause of his unhappy sovereign braved 
your daggers for three years, and who es- 
caped, almost by miracle, from your assassins 
in September, — who has since been con- 
stantly employed in warning other nations 
by your example, and in collecting the evi- 
dence upon which history will pronounce 
your condemnation, — I who at this moment 
deliberately choose exile and honourable 
poverty, rather than give the slightest mark 
ot external compliance with your abomina- 
ble institutions, — I your most irreconcilable 
and indefatigable enemy, offer you counsel 
which you know can only be a snare into 
which I expect you to fall, though by the 
mere publication of my name I have suffi- 



ciently forewarned you that I can have no 
aim but that of your destruction." I ask you 
again, Gentlemen, is this common sense 1 Is 
it not as clear, from the name of the author, 
that it is not addressed to Jacobins, as, from 
the contents of the publication, that it is not 
addressed to Royalists '? It may be the genu- 
ine work of Chenier; for the topics are such 
as he would employ : it may be a satire on 
Jacobinism; for the language is well adapted 
to such a composition : but it cannot be a 
Royalist's invective against Buonaparte, in- 
tended by him to stir up either Royalists or 
Republicans to the destruction of the First 
Consul. 

I cannot conceive it to be necessary that I 
should minutely examine this Poem to con- 
firm my construction. There are one or two 
passages on which I shall make a few ob- 
servations. The first is the contrast between 
the state of England and that of France, of 
which an ingenious friend* has favoured me 
with a translation, which I shall take the 
liberty of reading to you : — 

" Her glorious fabric England rears 

On law's tix'd base alone; 
Law's guardian pow'r while each reveres, 
England ! thy people's freedom fears 

No danger from the throne. 

:< For there, before almighty law, 
High birth, high place, with pious awe, 

In reverend homage bend : 
There's man's free spirit, unconstrain'd, 
Exults, in man's best rights maintain'd,- 
Rights, which by ancient valour gain'd, 

From age to age descend. 

" Britons, by no base fear dismay'd, 

May power's worst acts arraign. 

Does tyrant force their rights invade? 

They call on law's impartial aid, 
Nor call that aid in vain. 

" Hence, of her sacred charter proud, 
With every earthly good endovv'd, 

O'er subject seas unfurl'd, 
Britannia waves her standard wide ; — 
Hence, sees her freighted navies ride, 
Up wealthy Thames' majestic tide, 
The wonder of the world." 

Here, at first sight, you may perhaps think 
that the consistency of the Jacobin character 
is not supported — that the Republican dis- 
guise is thrown off, — that the Royalist stands 
unmasked before you : — but, on more consi- 
deration, you will find that such an inference 
would be too hasty. The leaders of the 
Revolution are now reduced to envy that 
British constitution which, in the infatuation 
of their presumptuous ignorance, they once 
rejected with scorn. They are now slaves 
(as themselves confess) because twelve years 
ago they did not believe Englishmen to be 
free. They cannot but see that England is 
the only popular government in Europe; and 
they are compelled to pay a reluctant homage 
to the justice of English principles. The 
praise of England is too striking a satire on 
their own government to escape them; and 
I may accordingly venture to appeal to all 



* Mr. Canning.— Ed. 



DEFENCE OF JEAN PELTIER. 



495 



those who know any thing of the political 
circles of Paris, whether such contrasts be- 
tween France and England as that which I 
have read to you be not the most favourite 
topics of the opponents of Buonaparte. But 
in the very next stanza: — 

Cependant. encore nffligee 
Par 1'odieuse heredite, 
Londres de litres surehargec, 
Londres n'a pas VEgaliti: — 

you see that though they are forced to render 
an unwilling tribute to our liberty, they can- 
not yet renounce all their fantastic and de- 
pi jrable chimeras. They endeavour to make 
a compromise between the experience on 
which they cannot shut their eyes, and the 
wretched systems to which they still cling. 
Fanaticism is the most incurable of all men- 
tal diseases ; because in all its forms, — reli- 
gious, philosophical, or political, — it is dis- 
tinguished by a sort of mad contempt for 
experience, which alone can correct the errors 
of practical judgment. And these demo- 
cratical fanatics still speak of the odious 
principle of '• hereditary government ;" they 
still complain that we have not " equality ;" 
they know not that this odious principle of 
inheritance is our bulwark against tyranny, 
— that if we had their pretended equality 
we should soon cease to be the objects of 
their envy. These are the sentiments which 
you would naturally expect from half-cured 
lunatics : but once more I ask you, whether 
they can be the sentiments of Mr. Peltier? 
Would he complain that we have too much 
monarchy, or too much of what they call 
'•aristocracy?" If he has any prejudices 
against the English government, must they 
not be of an entirely opposite kind % 

I have only one observation more to make 
on this Poem. It relates to the passage 
which is supposed to be an incitement to 
assassination. In my way of considering the 
subject, Mr. Peltier is not answerable for 
that passage, whatever its demerits may be. 
It is put into the mouth of a Jacobin ; and it 
will not, I think, be affirmed, that if it were 
an incitement to assassinate, it would be 
very unsuitable to his character. Experi- 
ence, and very recent experience, has abun- 
dantly proved how widely the French Re- 
volution has blackened men's imaginations, 
— what a daring and desperate cast it has 
given to their characters. — how much it has 
made them regard the most extravagant pro- 
jects of guilt as easy and ordinary expe- 
dients, — and to what a horrible extent it has 
familiarised their minds to crimes which be- 
fore were only known among civilized na- 
tions by the history of barbarous times, or 
as the subject of poetical fiction. But. thank 
God ! Gentlemen, we in England have not 
learned to charge any man with inciting to 
assassination. — not even a member of that 
atrocious sect who have revived political as- 
sassination in Christendom, — except when 
we are compelled to do so by irresistible 
evidence. Where is that evidence here ? 
in seneral it is immoral. — because it is in- 



decent, — to speak with levity, still more to 
anticipate with pleasure, the destruction of 
any human being. But between this immo- 
rality and the horrible crime of inciting to 
assassination, there is a wide interval in- 
deed. The real or supposed author of this 
Ode gives you to understand that he would 
hear with no great sorrow of the destruction 
of the First Consul. But surely the publica- 
tion of that sentiment is very different from 
an exhortation to assassinate. 

But, says my Learned Friend, why is the 
example of Brutus celebrated '. Why are the 
French reproached with their baseness in 
not copying that example 1 Gentlemen, I 
have no judgment to give on the act of Mar- 
cus Brutus. I rejoice that I have not : I 
should not dare to condemn the acts of brave 
and virtuous men in extraordinary and ter- 
rible circumstances, and which have been, 
as it were, consecrated by the veneration of 
so many ages. Still less should I dare to 
weaken the authority of the most sacred 
rules of duty, by praises which would be 
immoral, even if the acts themselves were 
in some measure justified by the awful cir- 
cumstances under which they were done. I 
am not the panegyrist of u those instances 
of doubtful public spirit at which morality is 
perplexed, reason is staggered, and from 
which affrighted nature recoils.''"* But 
whatever we may think of the act of Brutus, 
surely my Learned Friend will not contend 
that every allusion to it, every panegyric on 
it, which has appeared for eighteen centu- 
ries, in prose and verse, is an incitement to 
assassination. From the :: conscience divina 
Pltilippica famce.p down to the last schoolboy 
declamation, he will find scarce a work of 
literature without such allusions, and not 
very many without such panegyrics. I must 
say that he has construed this Ode more like 
an Attorney-General than a critic in poetry. 
According to his construction, almost every 
fine writer in our language is a preacher of 
murder. 

Having said so much on the first of these 
supposed libels, I shall be very short on the 
two that remain : — the Verses ascribed to a 
Dutch Patriot, and the Parody of the Speecli 
of Lepidus. 

In the first of these, the piercing eye of Mr. 
Attorney-General has again discovered an 
incitement to assassinate, — the most learned 
incitement to assassinate that ever was ad- 
dressed to such ignorant ruffians as are most 
likely to be employed for such purposes! — 
in an obscure allusion, to an obscure, and 
perhaps fabulous, part of Roman history, — 
to the supposed murder of Romulus, about 
which none of us know any thing, and of 
which the Jacobins of Paris and Amsterdam 
probably never heard. 

But the Apotheosis : — here my Learned 
Friend has a little forgotten himself: — he 
seems to argue as if Apotheosis always pre- 
supposed death. But he must know, that 



* Burke, Works, (quarto,) vol. iv. p. 427. 



496 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



Augustus, and even Tiberias and Nero, were 
deified during their lives; and he cannot 
have forgotten the terms in which one of the 
court-poets of Augustus speaks of his mas- 
ter's divinity : — 

Prsesens divus habebitur 

Augustus, adjectis Britannia 
Imperis — * 

If any modern rival of Augustus should 
choose that path to Olympus, I think he will 
find it more steep and rugged than that by 
which Pollux and Hercules climbed to the 
etherial towers; and that he must be con- 
tent with "purpling his lips" with Burgundy 
on earth, as he has very little chance of do- 
ing so with nectar among the gods. 

The utmost that can seriously be made 
of this passage is, that it is a wish for a 
man's death. I repeat, that I do not contend 
for the decency of publicly declaring such 
wishes, or even for the propriety of enter- 
taining them. But the distance between 
such a wish and a persuasive to murder, is 
immense. Such a wish for a man's death is 
very often little more than a strong, though 
I admit not a very decent, way of expressing 
detestation of his character. 

But without pursuing this argument any 
farther, I think myself entitled to apply to 
these Verses the same reasoning which I have 
already applied to the first supposed libel on 
Buonaparte. If they be the real composi- 
tion of a pretended Dutch Patriot, Mr. Pel- 
tier may republish them innocently : if they 
be a satire on such pretended Dutch patriots. 
they are not a libel on Buonaparte. Granting, 
for the sake of argument, that they did con- 
tain a serious exhortation to assassinate, is 
there any thing in such an exhortation in- 
consistent with the character of these pre- 
tended patriots 1 They who were disaffected 
to the mild ami tolerant government of their 
flourishing country, because it did not ex- 
actly square with all their theoretical whim- 
sies, — who revolted from that administration 
as tyrannical, which made Holland one of 
the wonders of the world for protected in- 
dustry, for liberty of action and opinion, and 
for a prosperity which I may venture to call 
the greatest victory of man over hostile ele- 
ments, — who served in the armies of Robe- 
spierre, under the impudent pretext of giving 
liberty to their own country, and who have, 
finally, buried in the same grave its liberty, 
its independence, and perhaps its national ex- 
istence, — such men are not entitled to much 
tenderness from a political satirist ; and he 
will scarcely violate dramatic propriety if he 
impute to them any language, however crimi- 
nal and detestable. They who could not 
brook the authority of their old, lazy, good- 
natured government, are not likely to endure 
with patience the yoke of that stern domina- 
tion which they have brought upon them- 
selves, and which, as far as relates to them, 
is only the just punishment of their crimes. 

I know nothing more odious than their 



* Horace, lib. iii. ode 5. — Ed. 



character, unless it be that of those who 
invoked the aid of the oppressors of Switzer- 
land to be the deliverers of Ireland ! The 
latter guilt has, indeed, peculiar aggravations. 
In the name of liberty they were willing to 
surrender their country into the hands of 
tyrants, the most lawless, faithless, and 
merciless that ever scourged Europe. — who, 
at the very moment of the negotiation, were" 
covered with the blood of the unhappy 
Swiss, the martyrs of real independence and 
of real liberty. Their success would have 
been the destruction of the only free com- 
munity remaining in Europe, — of England, 
the only bulwark of the remains of Euro- 
pean independence. Their means were the 
passions of an ignorant and barbarous pea- 
santry, and a civil war, which could not fail 
to produce all the horrible crimes and horri- 
ble retaliations of the last calamity that can 
befall society, — a servile revolt. They sought 
the worst of ends by the most abominable 
of means. They laboured for the subjuga- 
tion of the world at the expense of crimes 
and miseries which men of humanity and 
conscience would have thought too great a 
price for its deliverance. 

The last of these supposed libels, Gentle- 
men, is the Parody on the Speech of Lepi- 
dus, in the Fragments of Sallust. It is 
certainly a very ingenious and happy parody 
of an original, attended with some historical 
obscurity and difficulty, which it is no part 
of our present business to examine. This 
Parody is said to have been clandestinely 
placed among the papers of one of the most 
amiable and respectable men in France, 
M. Camille Jourdan, in order to furnish a 
pretext for involving that excellent person in 
a charge of conspiracy. This is said to have 
been done by a spy of Fouche. Now, Gen- 
tlemen, I take this to be a satire of Fouche, 
— on his manufacture of plots, — on his con- 
trivances for the destruction of innocent and 
virtuous men ; and I should admit it to be a 
libel on Fouche, if it were possible to libel 
him. I own that I should like to see Fouche 
appear as a plaintiff, seeking reparation for 
his injured character, before any tribunal, 
safe from his fangs, — where he had not the 
power of sending the judges to Guiana or 
Madagascar. It happens that we know 
something of the history of M. Fouche, 
from a very credible witness against him, — 
from himself. You will perhaps excuse me 
for reading to you some passages of his let- 
ters in the year 1793, from which you will 
judge whether any satire can be so severe as 
the portrait he draws of himself: — " Convin- 
ced that there are no innocent men in this in- 
famous city," (the unhappy city of Lyons), 
"but those who are oppressed and loaded 
with irons by the assassins of the people," 
(he means the murderers who were con- 
demned to death for their crimes) u we are 
on our guard against the tears of repentance ! 
nothing can disarm our severity. They have 
not yet dared to solicit the repeal of your 
first decree for the annihilation of the city 



DEFENCE OF JEAN PELTIER. 



497 



of Lyons! but scarcely anything has yet 
been done to carry it into execution.' 1 ' (Pa- 
thetic!) "The demolitions are too slow. 
More rapid means are necessary to republi- 
can impatience. The explosion of the mine, 
and the devouring activity of the flames, can 
alone adequately represent the omnipotence 
of the people." (Unhappy populace, always 
the pretext, the instrument, and the victim 
of political crimes!) "Their will cannot be 
checked like that of tyrants — it ought to 
have the effects of thunder !"* The next 
specimen of this worthy gentleman which I 
shall give, is in a speech to the Jacobin Club 
of Paris, on the 21st of December. 1793, by 
his worthy colleague in the mission to Ly- 
ons, Collot d'Herbois: — "We are accused" 
(you. Gentlemen, will soon see how un- 
justly) "of being cannibals, men of blood; 
but it is in counter-revolutionary petitions, 
hawked about for signature by aristocrats, 
that this charge is made against us. They 
examine with the most scrupulous atten- 
tion how the counter-revolutionists are put 
to death, and they affect to say, that they 
are not killed at one stroke." (He speaks 
for himself and his colleague Fouche, and 
one would suppose that he was going to 
deny the fact, — but nothing like it.) ;: Ah, 
Jacobins, did Chalier die at the first stroke ?." 
(This Chalier was the Marat of Lyons.) "A 
drop of blood poured from generous veins 
goes to my heart" (humane creature ! ) ; " but 
I have no pity for conspirators." (He how- 
ever proceeds to state a most undeniable 
proof of his compassion.) "We caused two 
hundred to be shot at once, and it is charged 
upon us as a crime!" (Astonishing! that 
such an act of humanity should be called a 
crime ! ) " They do not know that it is a proof 
of our sensibility ! When twenty criminals 
are guillotined, the last of them dies twenty 
deaths: but those two hundred conspirators 
perished at once. They speak of sensibility; 
we also are full of sensibility ! The Jacobins 
have all the virtues ! They are compassionate, 
humane . generous .'" (This is somewhat hard 
to be understood, but it is perfectly explained 
by what follows;) "but they reserve these 
sentiments for the patriots who are their 
brethren, which the aristocrats never will 
be."t 

The only remaining document with which 
I shall trouble you, is a letter from Fouche 
to his amiable colleague Collot d'Herbois, 
which, as might be expected in a confiden- 
tial communication, breathes all the native 
tenderness of his soul : — " Let us be terrible, 
that we may run no risk of being feeble or 
cruel. Let us annihilate in our wrath, at a 
single blow, all rebels, all conspirators, all 
traitors," (comprehensive words in his voca- 
bulary) " to spare ourselves the pain, the 
long agony, of punishing like kings !" (No- 
thing but philanthropy in this worthy man's 
heart.) "Let us exercise justice after the 



* Moniteur, 24th November, 1793. 
t Moniteur, 24th December. 
63 



example of nature ; let us avenge ourselves 
like a people ; let us strike like the thunder- 
bolt ; and let even the ashes of our enemies 
disappear from the soil of liberty ! Let the 
perfidious and ferocious English be attacked 
from every side; let the whole republic 
form a volcano to pour devouring lava upon 
them; may the infamous island which pro- 
duced these monsters, who no longer belong- 
to humanity, be for ever buried under the 
waves of the ocean ! Farewell, my friend ! 
Tears of joy stream from my eyes" (we 
shall soon see for what) ; " they deluge my 
soul."* Then follows a little postscript, 
which explains the cause of this excessive 
joy, so hyperbolical in its language, and 
which fully justifies the indignation of the 
humane writer against the " ferocious Eng- 
lish," who are so stupid and so cruel as never 
to have thought of a benevolent massacre, 
by way of sparing themselves the pain of 
punishing individual criminals. " We have 
only one way r of celebrating victory. We 
send this evening two hundred and thirteen 
rebels to be shot !" 

Such, Gentlemen, is M. Fouche, who is 
said to have procured this Parody to be mix- 
ed with the papers of my excellent friend 
Camille Jourdan, to serve as a pretext for his 
destruction. Fabricated plots are among the 
most usual means of such tyrants for such 
purposes; and if Mr. Peltier intended to 
libel — shall I say ? — Fouche by this compo- 
sition, I can easily understand both the Pa- 
rody and the history of its origin But if it 
be directed against Buonaparte to serve 
Royalist purposes, I must confess myself 
wholly unable to conceive why Mr. Peltier 
should have stigmatised his work, and de- 
prived it of all authority and power of per- 
suasion, by prefixing to it the infamous name 
of Fouche. 

On the same principle I think one of the 
observations of my Learned Friend, on the 
title of this publication, may be retorted on 
him. He has called your attention to the 
title, — " L'Ambigu, ou Varietes atroces et 
amusantes." Now, Gentlemen, I must ask 
whether, had these been Mr. Peltier's own in- 
vectives against Buonaparte, he would him- 
self have branded them as "atrocious?" 
But if they be specimens of the opinions and 
invectives of a French faction, the title is 
very natural, and the epithets are perfectly 
intelligible. Indeed I scarce know a more 
appropriate title for the whole tragi-comedy 
of the Revolution than that of " atrocious 
and amusing varieties." 

My Learned Friend has made some obsei 
vations on other parts of this publication, to 
show the spirit which animates the author; 
but they do not seem to be very material to 
the question between us. It is no part of my 
case that Mr. Peltier has not spoken with 
some impoliteness, — with some flippancy, — 
with more severity than my Learned Friend 
may approve, of factions and of adminis- 

* Moniteur, 25th December. 
2r2 



498 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



trations in France. Mr. Peltier cannot love 
the Revolution; or any government that has 
grown out of it and maintains it. The Re- 
volutionists have destroyed his family ; they 
have seized his inheritance : they have beg- 
gared, exiled, and proscribed himself. If he 
did not detest them he would be unworthy 
of living; he would be a base hypocrite if he 
were to conceal his sentiments. But I must 
again remind you, that this is not an Informa- 
tion for not sufficiently honouring the French 
Revolution, — for not showing sufficient reve- 
rence for the Consular government. These 
are no crimes among us. England is not 
yet reduced to such an ignominious depend- 
ence. Our hearts and consciences are not 
yet in the bonds of so wretched a slavery. 
This is an Information for a libel on Buona- 
parte, and if you believe the principal inten- 
tion of Mr. Peltier to have been to republish 
the writings or to satirise the character of 
other individuals, you must acquit him of a 
libel on the First Consul. 

Here, Gentlemen, I think I might stop, if I 
had only to consider the defence of Mr. Pel- 
tier. I trust that you are already convinced 
of his innocence. I fear I have exhausted 
your patience, as I am sure I have very nearly 
exhausted my own strength. But so much 
seems to me to depend on your verdict, that I 
cannot forbear from laying before you some 
considerations of a more general nature. 

Believing as I do that we are on the eve 
of a great struggle, — that this is only the first 
battle between reason and power, — that you 
have now in your hands, committed to your 
trust, the only remains of free discussion in 
Europe, now confined to this kingdom ; ad- 
dressing you, therefore, as the guardians of 
the most important interests, of mankind ; 
convinced that the unfettered exercise of 
reason depends more on your present verdict 
than on any other that was ever delivered 
by a jury, I cannot conclude without bring- 
ing before you the sentiments and examples 
of our ancestors in some of those awful and 
perilous situations by which Divine Provi- 
dence has in former ages tried the virtue of 
the English nation. We are fallen upon 
times in which it behoves us to strengthen 
our spirits by the contemplation of great ex- 
amples of constancy. Let us seek for them 
in the annals of our forefathers. 

The reign of Queen Elizabeth may be 
considered as the opening of the modern 
history of England, especially in its connec- 
tion with the modern system of Europe, 
which began about that time to assume the 
form that it preserved till the French Revo- 
lution. It was a very memorable period, 
the maxims of which ought to be engraven 
on the head and heart of every Englishman. 
Philip II., at the head of the greatest empire 
then in the world, was openly aiming at uni- 
versal domination; and his project was so 
tar from being thought chimerical by the 
wisest of his contemporaries, that in the opi- 
nion of the great Due de Sully he must have 
been successful, "if, by a most singular 



combination of circumstances, he had not at 
the same time been resisted by two such 
strong heads as those of Henry IV. and 
Queen Elizabeth." To the most extensive 
and opulent dominions, the most numerous 
and disciplined armies, the most renowned 
captains, the greatest revenue, he added also 
the most formidable power over opinion. 
He was the chief of a religious faction, ani- 
mated by the most atrocious fanaticism, and 
prepared to second his ambition by rebellion, 
anarchy, and regicide, in every Protestant 
state. Elizabeth was among the first ob- 
jects of his hostility. That wise and mag- 
nanimous Princess placed herself in the front 
of the battle for the liberties of Europe. 
Though she had to contend at home with 
his fanatical faction, which almost occupied 
Ireland, which divided Scotland, and was 
not of contemplible strength in England, she 
aided the oppressed inhabitants of the Ne- 
therlands in their just and glorious resistance 
to his tyranny ; she aided Henry the Great in 
suppressing the abominable rebellion which 
anarchical principles had excited and Spanish 
arms had supported in France; and after a 
long reign of various fortune, in which she pre- 
served her unconquered spirit through great 
calamities, and still greater dangers, she at 
length broke the strength of the enemy, and 
reduced his power within such limits as to 
be compatible with the safety of England, 
and of all Europe. Her only effectual ally 
was the spirit of her people : and her policy 
flowed from that magnanimous nature which 
in the hour of peril teaches better lessons 
than those of cold reason. Her great heart 
inspired her with the higher and a nobler 
wisdom, which disdained to appeal to the 
low and sordid passions of her people even 
for the protection of their low and sordid 
interests; because she knew, or rather she 
felt, that these are effeminate, creeping, cow- 
ardly, short-sighted passions, which shrink 
from conflict even in defence of their own 
mean objects. In a righteous cause she 
roused those generous affections of her people 
which alone teach boldness, constancy, and 
foresight, and which are therefore the only 
safe guardians of the lowest as well as the 
highest interests of a nation. In her me- 
morable address to her army, when the in- 
vasion of the kingdom was threatened by 
Spain, this woman of heroic spirit disdained 
to speak to them of their ease and their 
commerce, and their wealth and their safety. 
No ! She touched another chord ; — she spoke 
of their national honour, of their dignity as 
Englishmen, of " the foul scorn that Parma 
or Spain should dare to invade the bor- 
ders of her realms!" She breathed into 
them those grand and powerful sentiments 
which exalt vulgar men into heroes, — which 
led them into the battle of their country 
aimed with holy and irresistible enthusiasm, 
which even cover with their shield all the 
ignoble interests that base calculation and 
cowardly selfishness tremble to hazard, but 
shrink from defending. A sort of prophetic 



DEFENCE OF JEAN PELTIER. 



$9 



instinct, —if I may so speak, — seems to have 
revealed to her the importance of that great 
instrument for rousing and guiding the minds 
of men, of the effects of which slie had had 
no experience, — which, since her time, has 
changed the condition of the world, — but 
which few modern statesmen have tho- 
roughly understood or wisely employed. — 
which is no doubt connected with many 
ridiculous and degrading details, — which has 
produced, and which may again produce, 
terrible mischiefs. — but the influence of 
which must after all be considered as the 
most certain effect and the most efficacious 
cause of civilization, — ami which, whether it 
be a blessing or a curse, is the most power- 
ful engine that a politician can move : — I 
mean the press. It is a curious fact, that, 
in the year of the Armada. Queen Elizabeth 
caused to be printed the first Gazettes that 
ever appeared in England ; and I own, when 
I consider that this mode of rousing a na- 
tional spirit was then absolutely unexam- 
pled, — that she could have no assurance of 
its efficacy from the precedents of former 
times, — 1 am disposed to regard her having 
recourse to it as one of the most sagacious 
experiments, — one of the greatest discove- 
ries of political genius. — one of the most 
striking anticipations of future experience, 
that we find in history. I mention it to you, 
to justify the opinion that I have ventured to 
state, of the close connection of our national 
spirit with our press, and even our periodi- 
cal press. I cannot quit the reign of Eliza- 
beth without laying before you the maxims 
of her policy, in the language of the greatest 
and wisest of men. Lord Bacon, in one part 
of his discourse on her reign, speaks thus of 
her support of Holland: — "But let me rest 
upon the honourable and continual aid and 
relief she hath given to the distressed and 
desolate people of the Low Countries ; a 
people recommended unto her by ancient 
confederacy and daily intercourse, by their 
cause so innocent, and their fortune so la- 
mentable !" — In another passage of the same 
discourse, he thus speaks of the general 
system of her foreign policy, as the protector 
of Europe, in words too remarkable to re- 
quire any commentary : — " Then it is her 
government, and her government alone, that 
hath been the sconce and fort of all Europe, 
which hath lett this proud nation from over- 
running all. If any state be yet free from 
his factions erected in the bowels thereof; if 
there be any state wherein this faction is 
erected that is not yet fired with civil trou- 
bles; if there be any state under his pro- 
tection that enjoyeth moderate liberty, upon 
whom he tyrannizeth not; it is the mercy 
of this renowned Queen that standeth be- 
tween them and their misfortunes !" 

The next great conspirator against the 
nghla of men and nations, against the secu- 
rity and independence of all European states, 
against every kind and degree of civil and 
religious liberty, was Louis XIV. In his 
time the character of the English nation was 



the more remarkably displayed, because ijj 
was counteracted by an apostate and perfi- 
dious government. During great part of his 
reign, you know that the throne of England 
was filled by princes who deserted the 
cause of their country and of Europe, — - 
who were the accomplices and the tools 0/ 
the oppressor of the world, — who were 
even so unmanly, so unprincely, so base, a-S 
to have sold themselves to his ambition.—- 
who were content that he should enslave 
the Continent, if he enabled them to enslave 
Great Britain. These princes, traitors to then 
own royal dignity and to the feelings of the 
generous people whom they ruled, preferred 
the condition of the first slave of Louis XIV. 
to the dignity of the first freeman of Eng- 
land. Yet, even under these princes, the 
feelings of the people of this kingdom were 
displayed on a most memorable occasion to- 
wards foreign sufferers and foreign oppres- 
sors. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 
threw fifty thousand French Protestants on 
our shores. They were received, as I trust 
the victims of tyranny ever will be in this 
land, which seems chosen by Providence to 
be the home of the exile, — the refuge of the 
oppressed. They were welcomed by a people 
high-spirited as well as humane, who did 
not insult them by clandestine charity,— 
who did not give alms in secret lest their 
charity should be detected by neighbouring 
tyrants! No! they were publicly and na- 
tionally welcomed and relieved. They were' 
bid to raise their voice against their oppres- 
sor, and to proclaim their wrongs to all man- 
kind. They did so. They were joined in 
the cry of just indignation by every English- 
man worth)- - of the name. It was a fruitful 
indignation, which soon produced the suc- 
cessful resistance of all Europe to the Com- 
mon enemy. Even then, when Jeffreys 
disgraced the Bench which his Lordship* 
now adorns, no refugee was deterred by 
prosecution for libel from giving vent to his 
feelings, — from arraigning the oppressor in 
the face of all Europe. 

During this ignominious period of our his- 
tory, a war arose on the Continent which 
cannot but present itself to the mind on- 
such an occasion as this, — the only war that 
was ever made on the avowed ground of at- 
tacking a free press. I speak of the invasion 
of Holland by Louis XIV. The liberties 
which the Dutch gazettes had taken in dis- 
cussing his conduct were the sole cause of 
this very extraordinary and memorable war, 
which was of short duration, unprecedented 
in its avowed principle, and most glorious in 
its event for the liberties of mankind. That 
republic, at all times so interesting to Eng- 
lishmen, — in the worst times of both coun- 
tries our brave enemies, — in their best times 
our most faithful and valuable friends, — was 
then charged with the defence of a free press 
against the oppressor of Europe, as a sacred 
trust for the benefit of all generations. They 

* Lord Ellenborough.— Ed. 



500 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



felt the sacredness of the deposit ; they felt 
the dignity of the station in which they were 
placed : and though deserted by the un- 
English Government of England, they as- 
serted their own ancient character, and drove 
out the great armies and great captains of 
the oppressor with defeat and disgrace. Such 
was the result of the only war hitherto avow- 
edly undertaken to oppress a free country 
because she allowed the free and public ex- 
ercise of reason : — and may the God of Jus- 
tice and Liberty grant that such may ever 
be the result of wars made by tyrants against 
the liuhts of mankind, especially of those 
against that right which is the guardian of 
every other. 

This war, Gentlemen, had the effect of 
raising up from obscurity the great Prince 
of Orange, afterwards King William III. — 
the deliverer of Holland, "the deliverer of 
England, the deliverer of Europe, — the only 
hero who was distinguished by such a happy 
union of fortune and virtue that the objects 
of his ambition were always the same with 
the interests of humanity, — perhaps, the only 
man who devoted the whole of his life ex- 
clusively to the service of mankind. This 
most illustrious benefactor of Europe, — this 
"hero without vanity or passion," as he has 
been justly and beautifully called by a vene- 
rable prelate,* who never made a step to- 
wards greatness without securing or advan- 
cing liberty, who had been made Stadtholder 
of Holland for the salvation of his own coun- 
try, was soon after made King of England 
for the deliverance of ours. When thepeo- 
ple of Great Britain had once more a govern- 
ment worthy of them, they returned to the 
feelings and principles of their ancestors, 
and resumed their former station and their 
former duties as protectors of the indepen- 
dence of nations. The people of England, de- 
livered from a government which disgraced, 
oppressed, and betrayed them, fought under 
William as their forefathers had fought under 
Elizabeth, and after an almost uninterrupted 
struggle of more than twenty years, in which 
they were often abandoned by fortune, but 
never by their own constancy and magna- 
nimity, they at length once more defeated 
those projects of guilty ambition, boundless 
aggrandisement, and universal domination, 
which had a second time threatened to over- 
whelm the whole civilized world. They 
rescued Europe from being swallowed up in 
the gulf of extensive empire, which the ex- 
perience of all times points out as the grave 
of civilization, — where men are driven by 
violent conquest and military oppression into 
lethargy and slavishness of heart, — where, 
after their arts have perished with the men- 
tal vigour from which they spring, they are 
plunged by the combined power of effemi- 
nacy and ferocity into irreclaimable and 
hopeless barbarism. Our ancestors esta- 
blished the safety of their own country by- 
providing for that of others, and rebuilt the 

— 

* Dr. Shipley, Bishop of St. Asaph. 



European system upon such firm founda- 
tions, that nothing less than the tempest of the 
French Revolution could have shaken it. 

This arduous struggle was suspended for 
a short time by the Peace of Ryswick. The 
interval between that Treaty "anil the War 
of the Succession enables us to judge how 
our ancestors acted in a very peculiar situa- 
tion which requires maxims of policy very 
different from those which usually govern 
states. The treaty which they had con- 
cluded was in truth and substance only a 
truce. The ambition and the power of the 
enemy were such as to render real peace 
impossible • and it was perfectly obvious that 
the disputed succession of the Spanish mon- 
archy would soon render it no Ipnger practica- 
ble to preserve even the appearance of amity. 
It was desirable, however, not to provoke 
the enemy by unseasonable hostility ; but it 
was still more desirable, — it was absolutely 
necessary, to keep up the national jealousy 
and indignation against him who was soon 
to be their open enemy. It might naturally 
have been apprehended that the press might 
have driven into premature war a prince 
who not long before had been violently ex- 
asperated by the press of another free coun- 
try. I have looked over the political publi- 
cations of that time with some care, and I 
can venture to say. that at no period were 
the system and projects of Louis XIV ani- 
madverted on with more freedom and bold- 
ness than during that interval. Our ances- 
tors, and the heroic Prince who governed 
them, did not deem it wise policy to disarm 
the national mind for the sake of prolonging 
a truce : — they were both too proud and too 
wise to pay so great a price for so small a 
benefit. 

In the course of the eighteenth century, a 
great change took place in the state of politi- 
cal discussion in this country: — I speak of 
the multiplication of newspapers. I know 
that newspapers are not very popular in this 
place, which is. indeed, not very surprising, 
because they are known here only by their 
faults. Their publishers come here only to 
receive the chastisement due to their of- 
fences. With all their faults, I own, I can- 
not help feeling some respect for whatever 
is a proof of the increased curiosity and in- 
creased knowledge of mankind ; and I can- 
not help thinking, that if somewhat more 
indulgence and consideration were shown 
for the difficulties of their situation, it might 
prove one of the best correctives of their 
faults, by teaching them that self-respect 
which is the best security for liberal conduct 
towards others. But however that may be, 
it is very certain that the multiplication of 
these channels of popular information has 
produced a great change in the state of our 
domestic and foreign politics. At home, it 
has, in truth, produced a gradual revolution 
in our government. By increasing the num- 
ber of those who exercise some sort of judg- 
ment on public affairs, it has created a sub- 
stantial democracy, infinitely more important 



DEFENCE OF JEAN PELTIER. 



50: 



than those democratical forms which have 
been the subject of so much contest. So 
that I may venture to say, England has not 
only in its forms the most democratical gov- 
ernment that ever existed in a great country, 
but, in substance, has the most democratical 
government that ever existed in any country; 
— if the most substantial democracy be that 
state in which the greatest number of men 
feel an interest and express an opinion upon 
political questions, and in which the greatest 
number of judgments and wills concur in in- 
fluencing public measures. 

The same circumstance gave great addi- 
tional importance to our discussion of conti- 
nental politics. That discussion was no 
longer, as in the preceding century, confined 
to a few pamphlets, written and read only 
by men of education and rank, which reach- 
ed the multitude very slowly and rarely. 
In newspapers an almost daily appeal was 
made, directly or indirectly, to the judgment 
and passions of almost every individual in the 
kingdom upon the measures and principles 
not only of his own country, but of every 
state in Europe. Under such circumstances, 
the tone of these publications in speaking of 
foreign governments became a matter of im- 
portance. You will excuse me, therefore, 
if, before I conclude, I remind you of the 
general nature of their language on one or two 
very remarkable occasions, and of the bold- 
ness with which they arraigned the crimes 
of powerful sovereigns, without any check 
from the laws and magistrates of their own 
country. This toleration, or rather this pro- 
tection, was too long and uniform to be acci- 
dental. I am, indeed, very much mistaken 
if it be not founded upon a policy which this 
country cannot abandon without sacrificing 
her liberty and endangering her national 
existence. 

The first remarkable instance which I 
shall choose to state of the unpunished and 
protected boldness of the English press, — of 
the freedom with which they animadverted 
on the policy of powerful sovereigns, is on 
the Partition of Poland fn 1772. — an act not 
perhaps so horrible in its means, nor so de- 
plorable in its immediate effects, as some 
other atrocious invasions of national inde- 
pendence which have followed it, but the 
most abominable in its general tendency 
and ultimate consequences of any political 
crime recorded in history, because it was the 
first practical breach in the system of Eu- 
rope. — the first example of atrocious robbery 
perpetrated on unoffending countries, which 
has been since so liberally followed, and 
which has broken down all the barriers of 
habit and principle that guarded defence- 
less states. The perpetrators of this atro- 
cious crime were the most powerful sove- 
reigns of the Continent, whose hostility it 
certainly wa? not the interest of Great Britain 
wantonly to incur. They were the most 
illustrious princes of their age ; and some of 
them were doubtless entitled to the highest 
praise for their domestic administration, as 



well as for the brilliant qualities which dis- 
tinguished their character. But none of 
these circumstances, — no dread of their re- 
sentment, — no admiration of their talents, — 
no consideration for their rank. — silenced the 
animadversion of the English press. Some 
of you remember, — all of you know, that a 
loud and unanimous cry of reprobation and 
execration broke out against them from every 
part of this kingdom. It was perfectly un- 
influenced by any considerations of our own 
mere national interest, which might perhaps 
be supposed to be rather favourably affected 
by that partition. It was not, as in some 
other countries, the indignation of rival rob- 
bers, who were excluded from their share of 
the prey : it was the moral anger of disinte- 
rested spectators against atrocious crimes, — • 
the gravest and the most dignified moral 
principle which the God of Justice has im- 
planted in the human heart, — that one, the 
dread of which is the only restraint on the 
actions of powerful criminals, and the pro- 
mulgation of which is the only punishment 
that can be inflicted on them. It is a re- 
straint which ought not to be weakened : it 
is a punishment which no good man can de- 
sire to mitigate. That great crime was 
spoken of as it deserved in England. Rob- 
bery was not described by any courtly cir- 
cumlocutions : rapine was not called "poli- 
cy:" nor was the oppression of an innocent 
people termed a " mediation " in their do- 
mestic differences. No prosecutions, — no 
Criminal Imormations followed the liberty 
and the boldness of the language then em- 
ployed. No complaints even appear to have 
been made from abroad ; — much less any 
insolent menaces against the free constitu- 
tion which protected the English press. — ■ 
The people of England were too long known 
throughout Europe for the proudest poten- 
tate to expect to silence our press by such 
means. 

I pass over the second partition of Poland 
in 1792 (you all remember what passed on 
that occasion — the universal abhorrence ex- 
pressed by every man and every writer of 
every party, — the succours that were pub- 
licly preparing by large bodies of individuals 
of all parties for the oppressed Poles); I 
hasten to the final dismemberment of that 
unhappy kingdom, which seems to me the 
most striking example in our history of the 
habitual, principled, and deeply-rooted for- 
bearance of those who administer the law 
towards political writers. We were engaged 
in the most extensive, bloody, and dangerous 
war that this country ever knew; and the 
parties to the dismemberment of Poland 
were our allies, and our only powerful and 
effective allies. We had every motive of 
policy to court their friendship: every reason 
of state seemed to require that we should 
not permit them to be abused and vilified 
by English writers. What was the fact? 
Did any Englishman consider himself at 
liberty, on account of temporary interests,- 
however urgent, to silence those feelings of 



S02 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



humanity and justice which guard the cer- 
tain and permanent interests of all coun- 
tries'? You all remember that every voice, 
and every pen, and every press in England 
were unceasingly employed to brand that 
abominable robbery. Yon remember that 
this was not confined to private writers, but 
that the same abhorrence was expressed by 
every member of both Houses of Parliament 
who was not under the restraints of ministe- 
rial reserve. No minister dared even to 
blame the language of honest indignation 
which might be very inconvenient to his 
most important political projects; and I 
hope I may venture to say, that no English 
assembly would have endured such a sacri- 
fice of eternal justice to any miserable in- 
terest of an hour. Did the Law-officers of 
the Crown venture to come into a court of 
justice to complain of the boldest of the 
publications of that time 1 They did not. 
I do not say that they felt any disposition to 
do so; — I believe that they could not. But 
I do say, that if they had, — if they had 
spoken of the necessity of confining our 
political writers to cold narrative and un- 
feeling argument, — if they had informed a 
jury, that they did not prosecute history, but 
invective, — that if private writers be at liberty 
at all to blame great princes, it must be with 
moderation and decorum, — the sound heads 
and honest hearts of an English jury would 
have confounded such sophistry, and would 
have declared, by their verdict, that mode- 
ration of language is a relative term, which 
varies with the subject to which it is ap- 
plied, — that atrocious crimes are not to be 
related as calmly and coolly as indifferent or 
trifling events, — that if there be a decorum 
due to exalted rank and authority, there is 
also a much more sacred decorum due to 
virtue and to human nature, which would be 
outraged and trampled underfoot, by speak- 
ing of guilt in a lukewarm language, falsely 
.called moderate. 

Soon after. Gentlemen, there followed an 
act, in comparison with which all the deeds 
<of rapine and blood perpetrated in the world 
•are innocence itself, — the invasion and de- 
struction of Switzerland, — that unparalleled 
scene of guilt and enormity, — that unpro- 
voked aggression against an innocent coun- 
try, which had been the sanctuary of peace 
and liberty for three centuries, — respected 
as a sort of sacred territory by the fiercest 
ambition, — raised, like its own mountains, 
beyond the region of the storms which raged 
around on every side, — the only warlike 
people that never sent forth armies to dis- 
turb their neighbours, — the only government 
that ever accumulated treasures without 
imposing taxes, — an innocent treasure, un- 
stained by the tears of the poor, the inviolate 
patrimony of the commonwealth, which at- 
tested the virtue of a long series of magis- 
trates, but which at length caught the eye 
£>f the spoiler, and became the fatal occasion 
oi their ruin ! Gentlemen, the destruction 
pi such a country, — -its cause so innocent. 



and its fortune so lamentable!" — made a 
deep impression on the people of England. 
I will ask my Learned Friend, if we had 
then been at peace with the French republic. 
whether we must have been silent specta- 
tors of the foulest crimes that ever blotted 
the name of humanity? — whether we must, 
like cowards and slaves, have repressed the 
compassion and indignation with which that 
horrible scene of tyranny had filled our 
hearts? Let me suppose, 'Gentlemen, that 
Aloys Reding, who has displayed in our 
times the simplicity, magnanimity, and piety 
of ancient heroes, had. after his glorious 
struggle, honoured this kingdom by choosing 
it as his refuge, — that, after performiug pro- 
digies of valour at the head of his handful 
of heroic peasants on the field of Morgarten 
(where his ancestor, the Landamman Reding, 
had, five hundred years before, defeated the 
first oppressors of Switzerland), he had se- 
lected this country to be his residence, as 
the chosen abode of liberty, as the ancient 
and inviolable asylum of the oppressed, 
would my Learned Friend have had the 
boldness to have said to this hero, "that he 
mast hide his tears" (the tears shed by a 
hero over the ruins of his country!) "lest 
they might provoke the resentment of Reu- 
bell or Rapinat. — that he must smother the 
sorrow and the anger with which his heart 
was loaded, — that he must breathe his mur- 
murs low, lest they might be overheard by 
the oppressor !" Would this have been the 
language of my Learned Friend ?- I know 
that it would not. I know, that by such a 
supposition, I have done wrong to his honour- 
able feelings — to his honest English heart. 
I am sure that he knows as well as I do, that 
a nation which should thus receive the op- 
pressed of other countries, wo»ld be prepa- 
ring its own neck for the yoke. He knows 
the slavery which such a nation would de- 
serve, and must speedily incur. He knows, 
that sympathy with the unmerited sufferings 
of others, and disinterested anger against 
their oppressors, are, if I may so speak, the 
masters which are appointed by Providence 
to leach us fortitude in the defence of our 
own rights, — that selfishness is a dastardly 
principle, which betrays its charge and flies 
from its post, — and that those only can de- 
fend themselves with valour, who are ani- 
mated by the moral approbation with which 
they can survey their sentiments towards 
others, — who are ennobled in their own eyes 
by a consciousness that they are fighting for 
justice as well as interest, — a consciousness 
which none can feel, but those who have 
felt for the wrongs of their brethren. These 
are the sentiments which my Learned Friend 
would have felt. He would have told the 
hero : — " Your confidence is not deceived : 
this is still that England, of which the his- 
tory may, perhaps, have contributed to fill 
your heart with the heroism of liberty. — 
Every other country of Europe is crouching 
under the bloody tyrants who destroyed your 
country : we are unchanged . We are still 



DEFENCE OF JEAN PELTIER. 



503 



the same people which received with open 
arms the victims of the tyranny of Philip II. 
and Louis XIV. We shall not exercise a 
cowardly and clandestine humanity. Here 
we are not so dastardly as to rob you of 
your greatest consolation ; — here, protected 
by a free, brave, and high-minded people, 
you may give vent to your indignation, — you 
may proclaim the crimes of your tyrants, — 
you may devote them to the execration of 
mankind. There is still one spot upon earth 
in which they are abhorred, without being 
dreaded !" 

I am aware, Gentlemen, that I have al- 
ready abused your indulgence ; but I must 
entreat you to bear with me for a short time 
longer, to allow me to suppose a case which 
might have occurred, in which you will see 
the horrible consequences of enforcing rigor- 
ously principles of law, which I cannot con- 
test, against political writers. We might 
have been at peace with France during the 
whole of that terrible period which elapsed 
between August 1792 and 1794, which has 
been usually called the " reign of Robes- 
pierre !" — the only series of crimes, perhaps, 
in history, which, in spite of the common 
disposition to exaggerate extraordinary facts, 
has been beyond measure under-rated in 
public opinion. I say this, Gentlemen, after 
an investigation, which I think entitles me 
to affirm it with confidence. Men's minds 
were oppressed by the atrocity and the mul- 
titude of crimes; their humanity and their 
indolence took refuge in scepticism from 
such an overwhelming mass of guilt : and 
the consequence was, that all these unparal- 
leled enormities, though proved, not only 
with the fullest historical, but with the strict- 
est judicial evidence, were at the time only 
half-believed, and are now scarcely half-re- 
membered. When these atrocities, — of which 
the neatest part are as little known to the 
public in general as the campaigns of Gen- 
ghis Khan, but are still protected from the 
scrutiny of men by the immensity of those 
voluminous records of guilt in which they 
are related, and under the mass of which 
they will lie buried, till some historian be 
found with patience and courage enough to 
drag them forth into light, for the shame, in- 
deed, but for the instruction of mankind, — 
which had the peculiar malignity, through 
the pretexts with which they were covered, 
of making the noblest objects of human pur- 
suit seem odious and detestable, — which had 
almost made the names of liberty, reforma- 
tion, and humanity, synonymous with anar- 
ehy, robbery, and murder, — which thus 
threatened not only to extinguish 'every prin- 
ciple of improvement, to arrest the progress 
of civilized society, and to disinherit future 
generations of that rich succession to be ex- 
pected from the knowledge and wisdom of 
the present, but to destroy the civilization 
of Europe (which never gave such a proof 
of its vigour and robustness, as in being able 
to resist their destructive power), — when all 
these horrors were acting in the srreatest em- 



pire of the Continent, I will ask my Learned 
Friend, if we had then been at peace with 
France, how English writers were to relate 
them so as to escape the charge of libelling 
a friendly government ? 

When Robespierre, in the debates in the 
National Convention on the mode of mur- 
dering their blameless sovereign, objected to 
the formal and tedious mode of murder 
called a "trial," and proposed to put him 
immediately to death without trial, " on the 
principles of insurrection/' — because to doubt 
the guilt of the King would be to doubt of 
the innocence of the Convention, and if the 
King were not a traitor, the Convention must 
be rebels, — would my Learned Friend have 
had an English writer slate all this with 
"decorum and moderation?" Would he 
have had an English writer state, that though 
this reasoning was not perfectly agreeable to 
our national laws, or perhaps to our national 
prejudices, yet it was not for him to make 
any observations on the judicial proceedings 
of foreign states? When Marat, in the same 
Convention, called for, two hundred and se- 
venty thousand heads, must our English 
writers have said, that the remedy did, in- 
deed, seem to their weak judgment rather 
severe ; but that it was not for them to judge 
the conduct of so illustrious an assembly as 
the National Convention, or the suggestions 
of so enlightened a statesman as M. Marat ? 
When that Convention resounded with ap- 
plause at the news of several hundred aged 
priests being thrown into the Loire, and par- 
ticularly at the exclamation of Carrier, who 
communicated the intelligence : — " What a 
revolutionary torrent is the Loire!'"' — when 
these suggestions and narratives of murder, 
which have hitherto been only hinted and 
whispered in the most secret cabals, in the 
darkest caverns of banditti, were triumphant- 
ly uttered, patiently endured, and even loud- 
ly applauded by an assembly of seven hun- 
dred men, acting in the sight of all Europe. 
would my Learned Friend have wished that 
there had been found in England a single 
writer so base as to deliberate upon the most 
safe, decorous, and polite manner of relating 
all these things to his countrymen? When 
Carrier ordered five hundred children under 
fourteen years to be shot, the greater part of 
whom escaped the fire from their size, — ■ 
when the poor victims ran for protection to 
the soldiers, and were bayoneted clinging 
round their knees, would my Friend — But I 
cannot pursue the strain of interrogation; it 
is too much ! It would be a violence which 
I cannot practise on my own feelings; it 
would be an outrage to my Friend ; it would 
be an affront to you ; it would be an insult to 
humanity. 

No ! better, — ten thousand times better, 
would it be that every press in the world 
were burnt. — that the very use of letters 
were abolished, — that we were returned to 
the honest ignorance of the rudest times. 
than that the results of civilization should be 
made subservient to the purposes of barbar- 



504 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



ism ; — than that literature should be employed 
to teach a toleration for cruelty. — to weaken 
moral hatred for guilt, — to deprave and 
brutalise the human mind. I know that I 
speak my Friend's feelings as well as my 
own, when I say. God forbid that the dread 
of any punishment should ever make any 
Englishman an accomplice in so corrupting 
his countrymen, — a public teacher of de- 
pravity and barbarity ! 

Mortifying and horrible as the idea is, I 
must remind you, Gentlemen, that even at 
that tune, even under the reign of Robes- 
pierre, my Learned Friend, if he had then 
been Attorney-General, might have been 
compelled by some most deplorable necessi- 
ty, to have come into this Court to ask your 
verdict against the libellers of Barrere and 
Collot d'Herbois. Mr. Peltier then employed 
his talents against the enemies of the human 
race, as he has uniformly and bravely done. 
I do not believe that any peace, any political 
considerations, any fear of punishment, would 
have silenced him. He has shown too much 
honour and constancy, and intrepidity, to be 
shaken by such circumstances as these. My 
Learned Friend might then have been com- 
pelled to have filed a Criminal Information 
against Mr. Peltier, for " wickedly and ma- 
liciously intending to vilify and degrade 
Maximilian Robespierre, President of the 
Committee of Public Safety of the French 
Republic'/' He might have been reduced 
to the sad necessity of appearing before you 
to belie his own better feelings by prose- 
cuting Mr. Peltier for publishing those sen- 
timents which my Friend himself had a thou- 
sand times felt, and a thousand times ex- 
pressed. He might have been obliged even 
to call for punishment upon Mr. Peltier, for 
language which -he and all mankind would 
for ever despise Mr. Peltier, if he were not 
to employ. Then indeed, Gentlemen, we 
should have seen the last humiliation fall on 
England ; — the tribunals, the spotless and 
venerable tribunals of this free country, re- 
duced to be the ministers of the vengeance 
of Robespierre ! What could have rescued 
us from this last disgrace ? — the honesty and 
courage of a jury. They would have de- 
livered the judges of their country from the 
dire necessity of inflicting punishment on a 
brave and virtuous man, because he spoke 
truth of a monster. They would have de- 
spised the threats of a foreign tyrant as their 
ancestors braved the power of oppressors at 
home. 

In the court where we are now met. Crom- 
well twice sent a satirist on his tyranny to 
be convicted and punished as a libeller, and 
in this court. — almost in sight of the scaffold 
streaming with the blood of his Sovereign. — 
within hearing of the clash of his bayonets 
which drove out Parliaments with scorn and 
eontumel}', — a jury twice rescued the intrepid 



satirist* from his fangs, and sent out with 
defeat and disgrace the Usurper's Attorney- 
General from what he had the impudence to 
call his court! Even theia. Gentlemen, when 
all law and liberty were trampled under the 
feet of a military banditti, — when those great 
crimes were perpetrated in a high place and 
with a high hand against those who were the 
objects of public veneration, which more 
than any thing else upon earth overwhelm 
the minds of men. break their spirits, and 
confound their moral sentiments, obliterate 
the distinctions between right and wrong in 
their understanding, and teach the multitude 
to feel no longer any reverence for that jus- 
tice which they thus see triumphantly drag- 
ged at the chariot wheels of a tyrant, — even 
then, when this unhappy country, triumphant 
indeed abroad, but enslaved at home, had no 
prospect but that of a long succession of 
tyrants "wading through slaughter to a 
throne," — even then, I say. when all seemed 
lost, the unconquerable spirit of English 
liberty survived in the hearts of English 
jurors. That spirit is, I trust in God, not 
extinct : and if any modern tyrant were, in 
the plenitude of his insolence, to hope to 
overawe an English jury, I trust and I believe 
that they would tell him : — " Our ancestors 
braved the bayonets of Cromwell ; — we bid 
defiance to yours. Contempsi Catilina? gla- 
dios ; — non pertimescam tuos !" 

What could be such a tyrant's means of 
overawing a jury? As long as their country 
exists, they are girt round with impenetrable 
armour. Till the destruction of their country, 
no danger can fall upon them for the per- 
formance of their duty. And I do trust that 
there is no Englishman so unworthy of life 
as to desire to outlive England. But if any 
of us are condemned to the cruel punishment 
of surviving our country, — if in the inscruta- 
ble counsels of Providence, this favoured 
seat of justice and liberty, — this noblest 
work of human wisdom and virtue, be des- 
tined to destruction (which I shall not be 
charged with national prejudice for saying 
would be the most dangerous wound ever 
inflicted on civilization), at least let us carry 
with us into our sad exile the consolation 
that we ourselves have not violated the 
rights of hospitality to exiles, — that we have 
not torn from the altar the suppliant who 
claimed protection as the voluntary victim 
of loyalty and conscience. 

Gentlemen, I now leave this unfortunate 
gentleman in your hands. His character and 
his situation might interest your humanity: 
but. on his behalf, I only ask justice from 
you. I only ask a favourable construction of 
what cannot be said to be more than ambigu- 
ous language ; and this you will soon be told 
from the highest authority is a part of justice. 

* Lilburne. 



A CHARGE TO THE GRAND JURY OF BOMBAY. 



505 



A CHARGE, 

DELIVERED 

TO THE GRAND JURY OF THE ISLAND OF BOMBAY, 

ON THE 20th OF JULY, 1811. 



Gentlemen of the Grand Jury. 

The present calendar is unfortunately re- 
markable for the number and enormity of 
crimes. To what cause we are to impute 
the very uncommon depravity which has, in 
various forms, during the last twelve months, 
appeared before this Court, it is difficult, and 
perhaps impossible, to determine. But the 
length of this calendar may probaby be, in a 
great measure, ascribed to the late com- 
mendable disuse of irregular punishment at 
the Office of Police : so that there may be 
not so much an increase of crimes as of regu- 
lar trials. 

To frame and maintain a system of police, 
warranted by law, vigorous enough for pro- 
tection, and with sufficient legal restraints to 
afford a security against oppression, must be 
owned to be a matter of considerable diffi- 
culty in the crowded, mixed, and shifting 
population of a great Indian sea-port. It is 
no wonder, then, that there should be defects 
in our system, both in the efficacy of its 
regulations and in the legality of its princi- 
ples. And this may be mentioned with 
more liberty, because these defects have 
originated long before the time of any one 
now in authority ; and have rather, indeed, 
arisen from the operation of time and chance 
on human institutions, than from the fault 
of any individual. The subject has of late 
occupied much of my attention. Govern- 
ment have been pleased to permit me to lay 
my thoughts before them, — a permission of 
which I shall in a few days avail myself; 
and I hope that my diligent inquiry and long 
reflection may contribute somewhat to aid 
their judgment in the establishment of a 
police which may be legal, vigorous, and un- 
oppressive. 

In reviewing the administration of law in 
this place since I have presided here, two 
circumstances present themselves, which 
appear to deserve a public explanation. 

The first relates to the principles adopted 
by the Court in cases of commercial insol- 
vency. 

In India, no law compels the equal distri- 
bution of the goods of an insolvent merchant : 
we have no system of bankrupt laws. The 
consequence is too well known. Every mer- 
cantile failure has produced a disreputable 
scramble, in which no individual could be 
64 



blamed; because, if he were to forego his 
rights, they would not be sacrificed to equita- 
ble division, but to the claims of a competitor 
no better entitled than himself. A few have 
recovered all, and the rest have lost all. Nor 
was this the worst. Opulent commercial 
houses, either present, or well served by 
vigilant agents, almost always foresaw in- 
solvency in such time as to secure them- 
selves. But old officers, widows, and orphans 
in Europe, could know nothing of the decay- 
ing credit of their Indian bankers, and they 
had no agents but those bankers themselves: 
they, therefore, were the victims of every 
failure. The rich generally saved what was 
of little consequence to them, and the poor 
almost constantly lost their all. These scenes 
have frequently been witnessed in various 
parts of India : they have formerly occurred 
here. On the death of one unfortunate gen- 
tleman, since I have been here, the evil was 
rather dreaded than felt. 

Soon after my arrival, I laid before the 
British merchants of this island a plan for the 
equal distribution of insolvent estates, of 
which accident then prevented the adoption. 
Since that time, the principle of the plan has 
been adopted in several cases of actual or of 
apprehended insolvency, by a conveyance of 
the whole estate to trustees, for the equal 
benefit of all the creditors. Some disposition 
to adopt similar arrangements appears of late 
to manifest itself in Europe. And certainly 
nothing can be better adapted to the present 
dark and unquiet condition of the commer- 
cial world. Wherever they are adopted 
early, they are likely to prevent bankruptcy. 
A very intelligent merchant justly observed 
to me, that, under such a system, the early 
disclosure of embarrassment would not be 
attended with that shame and danger which 
usually produce concealment and final ruin. 
In all cases, and at every period, such ar- 
rangements would limit the evils of bank- 
ruptcy to the least possible amount. It 
cannot, therefore, be matter of wonder that 
a court of justice should protect such a sys- 
tem with all the weight of their opinion, and 
to the utmost extent of their legal power. 

I by no means presume to blame those 
creditors who, on the first proposal of this 
experiment, withheld their consent, and pre- 
ferred the assertion of their legal rights. 
2S 



506 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



They had, I dare say, been ill used by their 
debtors, who might personally be entitled to 
no indulgence from them. It is too much to 
require of men, that, under the influence of 
cruel disappointment and very just resent- 
ment, they should estimate a plan of public 
utility in the same manner with a dispassion- 
ate and disinterested spectator. But experi- 
ence and reflection will in time teach them, 
that, in seeking to gratify a just resentment 
against a culpable insolvent, they, in fact, 
direct their hostility against the unoffending 
and helpless part of their fellow-creditors. 

One defect in this voluntary system of 
bankrupt laws must be owned to be consi- 
derable : it is protected by no penalties against 
the fraudulent concealment of property. — 
There is no substitute for such penalties, but 
the determined and vigilant integrity of trus- 
tees. I have, therefore, with pleasure, seen 
that duty undertaken by European gentle- 
men of character and station. Besides ihe 
great considerations of justice and humanity 
to the creditors, I will confess that I am gra- 
tified by the interference of English gentle- 
men to prevent the fall of eminent or ancient 
commercial families among the natives of 
India.* 

The second circumstance which I think 
myself now bound to explain, relates to the 
dispensation of penal law. 

Since my arrival here, in May, 1804, the 
punishment of death has not been inflicted 
by this Court. Now, the population subject 
to our jurisdiction, either locally or person- 
ally, cannot be estimated at less than two 
hundred thousand persons. Whether any 
evil consequence has yet arisen from so unu- 
sual, — and in the British dominions unexam- 
pled, — a circumstance as the disuse of capi- 
tal punishment, for so long a period as seven 
years, among a population so considerable, is 
a question which you are entitled to ask, and 
to which I have the means of affording you 
a satisfactory answer. 

The criminal records go back to the year 
1756. From May, 1756, to May, 1763,' ihe 
capital convictions amounted to one hundred 
and forty-one : and the executions were 
forty-seven. The annual average of persons 
who suffered death was almost seven; and 
the annual average of capital crimes ascer- 
tained to have been perpetrated was nearly 
twenty. From May, 1804, to May, 1811, 
there have been one hundred and nine capi- 

* . . . "I am persuaded that your feelings would 
have entirely accorded with mine ; convinced that, 
both as jurors and as private gentlemen, you will 
always consider yourselves as intrusted, in this re- 
mote region of the earth, with the honour of that 
beloved country, which, I trust, becomes more 
dear to you, as I am sure it does to me, during 
every new moment of absence ; that, in your in- 
tercourse with each other as well as with the na- 
tives of India, you will keep unspotted the ancient 
character of the British nation, — renowned in every 
age, and in no age more than the present, for va- 
lour, for justice, for humanity, and generosity, — 
for every virtue which supports, as well as for 
every talent and accomplishment which adorns 
human society."— Charge, 21st Julv, 1805.— Ed. 



tal convictions. The annual average, there- 
fore, of capital crimes, legally proved to have 
been perpetrated during that period, is be- 
tween fifteen and sixteen. During this period 
there has been no capital execution. But as 
the population of this island has much more 
than doubled during the last fifty years, the 
annual average of capital convictions during 
the last seven years ought to have been forty, 
in order to show the same proportion of cri- 
minality with that of the first seven years. 
Between 1756 and 1763, the military force 
was comparatively small : a few factories or 
small ports only depended on this govern- 
ment. Between 1804 and 1811, five hundred 
European officers, and probably four thousand 
European soldiers, were scattered over ex- 
tensive territories. Though honour and mo- 
rality be powerful aids of law with respect 
to the first class, and military discipline with 
respect to the second, yet it might have been 
expected, as experience has proved, that the 
more violent enormities would be perpetrated 
by the European soldiery — uneducated and 
sometimes depraved as many of them must 
originally be, — often in a state of mischiev- 
ous idleness, — commanding, in spite of all 
care, the means of intoxication, and corrupt- 
ed by contempt for the feelings and rights 
of the natives of this country. If these cir- 
cumstances be considered, it will appear that 
the capital crimes committed during the last 
seven years, with no capital execution, have, 
in proportion to the population, not been 
much more than a third of those committed 
in the first seven years, notwithstanding the 
infliction of death on forty-seven persons. 
The intermediate periods lead to the same 
results. The number of capital crimes in 
any one of these periods does not appear to 
be diminished either by the capital execu- 
tions of the same period, or of that imme- 
diately preceding: they bear no assignable 
proportion to each other. 

In the seven years immediately preceding 
the last, which were chiefly in the presidency 
of my learned predecessor, Sir William Syer, 
there was a remarkable diminution of capital 
punishments. The average fell from about 
four in each year, which was that of the 
seven years before Sir William Syer, to some- 
what less than two in each year. Yet the 
capital convictions were diminished about 
one-third. 

"The punishment of death is principally 
intended to prevent the more violent and 
atrocious crimes. From May, 1797, there 
were eighteen convictions for murder, of 
which I omit two, as of a very particular 
kind. In that period there were twelve 
capital executions. From May, 1804, to 
May, 1811, there were six convictions for 
murder.* omittinsrone which was considered 



* . . . " The truth seems to be, as I observed 
to you on a former occasion, that the natives of 
India, though incapable of the crimes which arise 
from violent passions, are, beyond every other 
people of the earth, addicted to those vices which 
proceed from the weakness of natural feeling, and 



CHARGE TO THE GRAND JURY OF BOMBAY. 



507 



by the jury as in substance a case of man- 
slaughter with some aggravation. The mur- 
ders in the former period were, therefore, 
very nearly as three to one to those in the 
latter, in which no capital punishment was 
inflicted. From the number of convictions, 
I of course exclude those cases where the 
prisoner escaped ; whether he owed his 
safety to defective proof of his guilt, or to a 
legal objection. This cannot affect the just- 
ness of a comparative estimate, because the 
proportion of criminals who escape on legal 
objections before courts of the same law, 
must, in any long period, be nearly the same. 
But if the two cases. — one where a formal 
verdict of murder, with a recommendation 
to mercy, was intended to represent an ag- 
gravated manslaughter; and the other of a 
man who escaped by a repugnancy in the 
indictment, where, however, the facts were 
more near manslaughter than murder, — be 
added, then the murders of the last seven 
years will be eight, while those of the former 
seven years will be sixteen. 

" This small experiment has. therefore, 
been made without any diminution of the 
security of the lives and properties of men. 
Two hundred thousand men have been 
governed for seven years without a capital 
punishment, and without any increase of 
crimes. If any experience has been acquired, 
it has been safely and innocently gained. It 
was, indeed, impossible thrit the trial could 
ever have done harm, It was made on no 
avowed principle of impunity or even lenity. 
It was in its nature gradual, subject to cau- 
tious reconsideration in ever)' new instance, 
and easily capable of beingaltogetherchanged 
on the least appearance of danger. Though 
the general result be rather remarkable, yet 
the usual maxims which regulate judicial 
discretion have in a very great majority of 
cases been pursued. The instances of de- 



the almost total absence of moral restraint. This 
observation may, in a great measure, account for 
that most aggravated species of child-murder which 
prevails among them. They are not actively 
cruel ; but they are utterly insensible. They have 
less ferocity, perhaps, than most other nations ; 
but they have still less compassion. Among (hem, 
therefore, infancy has lost its natural shield. The 
paltry temptation of getting possession of the few 
gold and silver ornaments, with which parents in 
this country load their infants, seems sufficient to 
lead these timid and mild beings to destroy a child 
without pity, without anger, without fear, without 
remorse, with little apprehension of punishment, 
and with no apparent shame on detection." — 
Charge, 19th April, 1806.— Ed. 



viation from those maxims scarcely amount 
to a twentieth of the whole convictions. 

I have no doubt of the right of society to 
inflict the punishment of death on enormous 
crimes, wherever an inferior punishment is 
not sufficient. I consider it as a mere modi- 
fication of the right of self-defence, which 
may as justly be exercised in deterring from 
attack, as in repelling it. I abstain from the 
discussions in which benevolent and enlight- 
ened men have, on more sober .principles, 
endeavoured to show the wisdom of, at least, 
confining the punishment of death to the 
highest class of crimes. I do not even pre- 
sume in this place to give an opinion regard- 
ing the attempt which has been made by 
one* whom I consider as among the wisest 
and most virtuous men of the present age, to 
render the letter of our penal law more con- 
formable to its practice. My only object is 
to show that no evil has hitherto resulted 
from the exercise of judicial discretion in 
this Court. I speak with the less reserve, 
because the present sessions are likely to 
afford a test which will determine whether I 
have been actuated by weakness or by firm- 
ness, — by fantastic scruples and irrational 
feelings, or by a calm and steady view to 
what appeared to me the highest interests 
of society.! 

I have been induced to make these ex- 
planations by the probability of this being 
the last time of my addressing a grand jury 
from this place. His Majesty has been gra- 
ciously pleased to approve of my return to 
Great Britain, which the state of my health 
has for some time rendered very desirable. 
It is therefore probable, though not certain, 
that I may begin my voyage before the next 
sessions. 

In that case, Gentlemen, I now have the 
honour to take my leave of you, with those 
serious thoughts that naturally arise at the 
close of every great division of human life, 
— with the most ardent and unmixed wishes 
for the welfare of the community with which 
I have been for so many years connected by 
an honourable tie, — and with thanks to you, 
Gentlemen, for the assistance which many 
of you have often afforded me in the dis- 
charge of duties, which are necessary, in- 
deed, and sacred, but which, to a single 
judge, in a recent court, and small society, 
are peculiarly arduous, invidious, and painful. 

* Sir Samuel Romilly.— Ed. 

t Alluding to the impending trial of a native ar- 
tillery-man for murder, who was eventually exe- 
cuted. — Ed. 



508 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



SPEECH 



THE ANNEXATION OF GENOA TO THE KINGDOM OF SARDINIA. 

DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 27th OF APRIL, 1815.* 



Mr. Speaker, — I now rise, pursuant to 
my notice, to discharge the most arduous, 
and certainly the most painful, public duty 
which I have ever felt myself called upon to 
perform. I have to bring before the House, 
probably for its final consideration, the case 
of Genoa, which, in various forms of pro- 
ceedings and stages of progress, has already 
occupied a considerable degree of our at- 
tention. All these previous discussions of 
this great question of faith and justice, have 
been hitherto of necessity almost confined to 
one side. When my Honourable Friendj 
moved for papers on this subject, the reason- 
ing was only on this side of the House. The 
gentlemen on the opposite side professedly 
abstained from discussion of the merits of 
the case, because they alleged that discus- 
sion was then premature, and that a disclo- 
sure of the documents necessary to form a 
right judgment, would at that period have 
been injurious to the public interest. In 
Avhat that danger consisted, or how such a 
disclosure would have been more inconve- 
nient on the 22d of February than on the 
27th of April, they will doubtless this day 

* On the general reverses that befell the arms 
of France in the spring of 1814, and the conse- 
quent withdrawal of her troops from Italy, Lord 
William Benlinck was instructed to occupy the 
territories of the republic of Genoa, " without 
committing his Court or the Allies with respect 
to their ultimate disposition." Of the proclama- 
tion which he issued upon the occasion of carrying 
these orders into effect, dated March 14th, Lord 
Castlereagh had himself observed, that " an ex- 
pression or two, taken separately, might create an 
impression that his views of Italian liberation went 
to the form of the government, as well as to the 
expulsion of the French." On the success of the 
military movement, the General reported that he 
had, "in consequence of the unanimous desire ol 
the Genoese to return to their ancient state," pro- 
claimed the old form of government. That this 
desire was unjustly thwarted, and that these ex- 
pectations, fairly raised by Lord William Ben- 
tinck's proclamation, had been wrongfully disap- 
pointed by the final territorial settlement of the 
Allies at Paris, it was the scope of this speech to 
prove. For the papers referred to, see Hansard's 
Parliamentary Debates, vol. xxx. p. 387 ; and for 
the Resolutions moved, ibid., p. 932. — Ed. 

t Mr. Lambton (afterwards Earl of Durham) 
had on the 22d of February made a motion for 
papers connected with the case of Genoa, on 
which occasion Sir James Mackintosh had sup- 
ported him. — Ed , 



explain. I have in vain examined the papers 
for an explanation of it. It was a serious as- 
sertion, made on their Ministerial responsi- 
bility, and absolutely requires to be satisfac- 
torily established. After the return of the 
Noble Lord* from Vienna, the discussion 
was again confined to one side, by the singu- 
lar course which he thought fit to adopt. 
When my Honourable Friendt gave notice 
of a motion for all papers respecting those 
arrangements at Vienna, which had been 
substantially completed, the Noble Lord did 
not intimate any intention of acceding to the 
motion. He suffered it to proceed as if it 
were to be adversely debated, and instead 
of granting the papers, so that they might be 
in the possession of every member a suffi- 
cient time for careful perusal and attentive 
consideration, he brought out upon us in the 
middle of his speech a number of documents, 
which had been familiar to him for six 
months, but of which no private member of 
the House could have known the existence. 
It was impossible for us to discuss a great 
mass of papers, of which we had heard ex- 
tracts once read in the heat and hurry of de- 
bate. For the moment we were silenced by 
this ingenious stratagem : the House was 
taken by surprise. They were betrayed into 
premature applause of that of which it was 
absolutely impossible that they should be 
competent judges. It might be thought to 
imply a very unreasonable distrust in the 
Noble Lord of his own talents, if it were 
not much more naturally imputable to his 
well-grounded doubts of the justice of his- 
cause. 

I have felt, Sir, great impatience to bring the 
question to a final hearing, as soon as every 
member possessed that full information in 
which alone 1 well knew that my strength 
must consist. The production of the papers 
has occasioned some delay ; but it has been 
attended also with some advantage to me, 
which I ought to confess. It has given me 
an opportunity of hearing in another place 
a most perspicuous and forcible statement 
of the defence of Ministers,! — a statement 
which, without disparagement to the talents 
of the Noble Lord, I may venture to consider 



* Viscount Castlereagh. — Ed. 

t Mr. Whitbread.— Ed. 

t By Earl Bathurst, in the House of Lords.— Ed. 



ON THE ANNEXATION OF GENOA. 



509 



as containing the whole strength of their 
case. After listening to that able statement, 
— after much reflection for two months, — 
after the most anxious examination of the 
papers before us, I feel myself compelled to 
adhere to my original opinion, and to bring 
before the House the forcible transfer of the 
Genoese territory to the foreign master whom 
the Genoese people most hate, — a transfer 
stipulated for by British ministers, and exe- 
cuted by British troops, — as an act by which 
the pledged faith of this nation has been 
forfeited, the rules of justice have been vio- 
lated, the fundamental principles of Euro- 
pean policy have been shaken, and the odious 
claims of conquest stretched to an extent 
unwarranted by a single precedent in the 
good times of Europe. On the examination 
of these charges, I entreat gentlemen to enter 
with a disposition which becomes a solemn 
and judicial determination of a question which 
affects the honour of their country, — certain- 
ly without forgetting that justice which is 
due to the King's Ministers, whose character 
it does most deeply import. 

I shall not introduce into this discussion 
any of the practical questions which have 
arisen out of recent and terrible events.* 
They may, like other events in history, sup- 
ply argument or illustration ; but I shall in 
substance argue the case, as if I were again 
speaking on the 22d of February, without 
any other change than a tone probably more 
subdued than would have been natural dur- 
ing that short moment of secure and almost 
triumphant tranquillity. 

For this transaction, and for our share in 
all the great measures of the Congress of 
Vienna, the Noble Lord has told that he is 
"pre-eminently responsible." I know not 
in what foreign school he may have learnt 
such principles or phrases; but however 
much his colleagues may have resigned their 
discretion to him, I trust that Parliament will 
not suffer him to relieve them from any part 
of their responsibility. I shall not now in- 
quire on what principle of constitutional law 
the whole late conduct of Continental nego- 
tiations by the Noble Lord could be justified. 
A Secretary of State has travelled over Europe 
with the crown and sceptre of Great Britain, 
exercising the royal prerogatives without the 
possibility of access to the Crown, to give 
advice, and to receive commands, and con- 
cluding his country by irrevocable acts, with- 
out communication with the other responsi- 
ble advisers of the King. I shall not now ex- 
amine into the nature of what our ancestors 
would have termed an " accroachment " of 
royal power, — an offence described indeed 
with dangerous laxity in ancient times, but, 
as an exercise of supreme power in another 
mode than by the forms, and under the re- 
sponsibility prescribed by law, undoubtedly 
tending to the subversion of the fundamental 
principles of the British monarchy. 

In all the preliminary discussions of this sub- 

* Napoleon's return from Elba. — Ed. 



ject, the Noble Lord has naturally laboured 
to excite prejudice against his opponents. 
He has made a liberal use of the common- 
places of every Administration, against every 
Opposition; and he has assailed us chiefly 
through my Honourable Friend (Mr. Whit- 
bread) with language more acrimonious and 
contumelious than is very consistent with 
his recommendations of decorum and mode- 
ration. He speaks of our "foul calumnies;" 
though calumniators do not call out as we did 
for inquiry and for trial. He tells us "that 
our discussions inflame nations more than 
they correct governments ;" — a pleasant anti- 
thesis, which I have no doubt contains the 
opinion entertained of all popular discus- 
sion by the sovereigns and ministers of abso- 
lute monarchies, under whom he has lately 
studied constitutional principles. Indeed, 
Sir, I do not wonder that, on his return to 
this House, he should have been provoked 
into some forgetfulness of his usual modera- 
tion : — after long familiarity with the smooth 
and soft manners of diplomatists, it is natural 
that he should recoil from the turbulent free- 
dom of a popular assembly. But let him re- 
member, that to the uncourtly and fearless 
turbulence of this House Great Britain owes a 
greatness and power so much above her natu- 
ral resources, and that rank among nations 
which gave him ascendency and authority 
in the deliberations of assembled Europe: — 
"Sic fortis Etruria crevit ! " By that plain- 
ness and roughness of speech which wounded 
the nerves of courtiers, this House has forced 
kings and ministers to respect public liberty 
at home and to observe public faith abroad. 
He complains that this should be the first 
place where the faith of this country is im- 
pugned : — I rejoice that it is. It is because 
the first approaches towards breach of faith 
are sure of being attacked here, that there is 
so little ground for specious attack on our 
faith in other places. It is the nature and 
essence of the House of Commons to be jeal- 
ous and suspicious, even to excess, of the 
manner in which the conduct of the Execu- 
tive Government may affect that dearest of 
national interests — the character of the nation 
for justice and faith. What is destroyed by 
the slightest speck of corruption can never 
be sincerely regarded unless it be watched 
with jealous vigilance. 

In questions of policy, where inconveni- 
ence is the worst consequence of error, and 
where much deference may be reasonably 
paid to superior information, there is much 
room for confidence beforehand and for in- 
dulgence afterwards : but confidence respect- 
ing a point of honour is a disregard of honour. 
Never, certainly, was there an occasion when 
these principles became of more urgent ap- 
plication than during the deliberations of the 
Congress of Vienna. Disposing, as they did, 
of rights and interests more momentous than 
were ever before placed at the disposal of a 
human assembly, is it fit that no channel 
should be left open by which they may learn 
the opinion of the public respecting their 
2s2 



510 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



councils, and the feelings which their mea- 
sures have excited from Norway to Anda- 
lusia? Were these princes and ministers 
really desirous, in a situation of tremendous 
responsibility, to bereave themselves of the 
guidance, and release their judgments from 
the control, which would arise from some 
knowledge of the general sentiments of man- 
kind ? Were they so infatuated by absolute 
power as to wish they might never hear the 
public judgments till their system was un- 
alterably established, and the knowledge 
could no longer be useful'? It seems so. 
There was only one assembly in Europe 
from whose free discussions they might have 
learnt the opinions of independent men, — 
only one in which the grievances of men 
and nations might have been published with 
any effect. The House of Commons was 
the only body which represented in some 
sort the public opinions of Europe ; and the 
discussions which might have conveyed that 
opinion to the Sovereigns at Vienna, seem, 
from the language of the Noble Lord, to have 
been odious and alarming to them. Even in 
that case we have one consolation: — those 
who hate advice most, always need it most. 
If our language was odious, it must in the 
very same proportion have been necessary ; 
and notwithstanding all the abuse thrown 
upon it may have been partly effectual. De- 
nial at least proves nothing; — we are very 
sure that if we had prevented any evil, we 
should only have been the more abused. 

Sir, I do not regret the obloquy with which 
we have been loaded during the present ses- 
sion : — it is a proof that we are following, 
though with unequal steps, the great men 
who have filled the same benches before us. 
It was their lot to devote themselves to a 
life of toilsome, thankless, and often unpopu- 
lar opposition, with no stronger allurement 
to ambition than a chance of a few months 
of office in half a century, and with no other 
inducement to virtue than the faint hope of 
limiting and mitigating evil, — always certain 
that the merit would never be acknowledged, 
and generally obliged to seek for the best 
proof of their services in the scurrility with 
which they were reviled. To represent 
them as partisans of a foreign nation, for 
whom they demanded justice, was always 
one of the most effectual modes of exciting 
a vulgar prejudice against them. When Mr. 
Burke and Mr. Fox exhorted Great Britain 
to be wise in relation to America, and just 
towards Ireland, they were called Ameri- 
cans and Irishmen. But they considered it 
as the greatest of all human calamities to be 
unjust ; — they thought it worse to inflict than 
to suffer wrong: and they rightly thought 
themselves then most truly Englishmen, 
when they most laboured to dissuade England 
from tyranny. Afterwards, when Mr. Burke, 
with equal disinterestedness as I firmly be- 
lieve, and certainly with sufficient zeal, sup- 
ported the administration of Mr. Pitt, and 
the war against the Revolution, he did not 
restrain the freedom which belonged to his 



generous character. Speaking of that very 
alliance on which all his hopes -were found- 
ed, he spoke of it, as I might speak (if I had 
his power of language) of the Congress at 
Vienna : — " There can be no tie of honour 
in a society for pillage." He was perhaps 
blamed for indecorum; but no one ever 
made any other conclusion from his language, 
than that it proved the ardour of his attach- 
ment to that cause which he could not en- 
dure to see dishonoured. 

The Noble Lord has charged us. Sir, with 
a more than unusual interference in the 
functions of the monarchy and with the 
course of foreign negotiations. He has not 
indeed denied the right of this House to in- 
terfere : — he will not venture to deny (< that 
this House is not only an accuser of compe- 
tence to criminate, but a council of weight 
and wisdom to advise."* He incautiously, 
indeed, Cl said that there was a necessary 
collision between the powers of this House 
and the prerogatives of the Crown." It 
would have been more constitutional to have 
said that there was a liability to collision, 
and that the deference of each for the other 
has produced mutual concession, compro- 
mise, and co-operation, instead of collision. 
It has been, in fact, by the exercise of the 
great Parliamentary function of counsel, that 
in the best times of our history the House of 
Commons has suspended the exercise of its 
extreme powers. Respect for its opinion 
has rendered the exertion of its authority 
needless. It is not true that the interpo- 
sition of its advice respecting the conduct of 
negotiations, the conduct of war, or the terms 
of peace, has been more frequent of late 
than in former times : — the contrary is the 
truth. From the earliest periods, and during 
the most glorious reigns in our history, its 
counsel has been proffered and accepted on 
the highest questions of peace and war. The 
interposition was necessarily even more fre- 
quent and more rough in these early times, — 
when the boundaries of its authority were ' 
undefined, — when its principal occupation 
was a struggle to assert and fortify its rights, 
and when it was sometimes as important to 
establish the legality of a power by exercise 
as to exercise it well, — than in these more 
fortunate periods of defined and acknowledg- 
ed right, when a mild and indirect intimation 
of its opinion ought to preclude the necessity 
of resorting to those awful powers with 
which it is wisely armed. But though these 
interpositions of Parliament were more fre- 
quent in ancient times, — partly from the ne- 
cessity of asserting contested rights, — and 
more rare in recent periods, — partly from 
the more submissive character of the House, 
— they are wanting at no time in number 
enough to establish the grand principle of 
the constitution, that Parliament is the first 
council of the King in war as well as in 
peace. This great principle has been acted 



* Burke, A Representation to His Majesty, 
&c— Ed. 



ON THE ANNEXATION OF GENOA. 



511 



on by Parliament in the best times : — it has 
been reverenced by the Crown in the worst. 
A short time before the Revolution it marked 
a struggle for the establishment of liberty: 
— a short time after the Revolution it proved 
the secure enjoyment of liberty. The House 
of Commons did not suffer Charles II. to be- 
tray his honour and his country, without 
constitutional warning to choose a better 
course;* its first aid to William III. was by 
counsels relating to war.t When, under the 
influence of other feelings, the House rather 
thwarted than aided their great Deliverer, 
even the party in'it most hostile to liberty 
carried the rights of Parliament as a political 
council to the utmost constitutional limit, 
when they censured the treaty of Partition 
as having been passed under the Great Seal 
during the session of Parliament, and "with- 
out the advice of the same."! During the 
War of the Succession, both Houses repeat- 
edly counselled the Crown on the conduct 
of the war,§ — on negotiation with our allies, 
— and even on the terms of peace with the 
enemy. Bat what needs any further enume- 
rations ? Did not the vote of this House put 
an end to the American War *? 

Even, Sir, if the right of Parliament to ad- 
vise had not been as clearly established as 
the prerogative of the Crown to make war 
or peace, — if it had not been thus constantly 
exercised. — if the wisest and best men had 
not been the first to call it forth into action, 
we might reasonably have been more for- 
ward than our ancestors to exercise this 
great right, because we contemplate a sys- 
tem of political negotiation, such as our an- 
cestors never saw. All former Congresses 
were assemblies of the ministers of bellige- 
rent Powers to terminate their differences by 
treaty, — to define the rights and decide on 
the pretensions which had given rise to war, 
or to make compensation for the injuries 
which had been suffered in the course of it. 
The firm and secure system of Europe ad- 
mitted no rapid, and few great changes of 
power and possession. A few fortresses in 
Flanders, a province on the frontiers of 
France and Germany, were generally the ut- 
most cessions earned by the most victorious 
wars, and recovered by the most important 
treaties. Those who have lately compared 
the transactions at Vienna with the Treaty 
of Westphalia, — which formed the code of 
the Empire, and an era in diplomatic history, 
— which terminated the civil wars of re- 
ligion, not only in Germany, but throughout 
Christendom, and which removed all that 
danger with which, for more than a century, 
the power of the House of Austria had threat- 
ened the liberties of Europe, — will perhaps 

* Commons' Addresses, 15th of March, 1627; 
29th of March, 1677; 25th of May, 1677; 30th 
of December, 1680. 

t 24th of April, 1689, (advising a declaration of 
war). 

t 21st of March, 1701. 

$ 27th of November. 1705 ; 22d of December, 
1707 3d of March, 1709 ; 18th of February, 1710. 



feel some surprise when they ate reminded 
that, except secularising a few Ecclesiastica 1 
principalities; that renowned and memorable 
treaty ceded only Alsace to France and part 
of Pomerania to Sweden, — that its stipula- 
tions did not change the political condition of 
half a million of men, — that it affected no pre- 
tension to dispose of any territory but that of 
those who were parties to it, — and that not 
an acre of land was ceded without the express 
and formal consent of its legal sovereign.* 
Far other were the pretensions, and indeed 
the performances, of the ministers assembled 
in congress at Vienna. They met under the 
modest pretence of carrying into effect the 
thirty-second article of the Treaty of Paris :t 
but under colour of this humble language, they 
arrogated the power of doing that, in com- 
parison with which the whole Treaty of Paris 
was a trivial convention, and which made the 
Treaty of Westphalia appear no more than 
an adjustment of parish boundaries. They 
claimed the absolute disposal of every terri- 
tory which had been occupied by France and 
her vassals, from Flanders to Livonia, and 
from the Baltic to the Po. Over these, the 
finest countries in the world, inhabited by 
twelve millions of mankind, — under pretence 
of delivering whom from a conqueror they 
had taken up arms, — they arrogated to them- 
selves the harshest rights of conquest. It is 
true that of this vast territory they restored, • 
or rather granted, a great part to its ancient 
sovereigns. But these sovereigns were always 
reminded by some new title, or by the dis- 
posal of some similarly circumstanced neigh- 
bouring territory, that they owed their resto- 
ration to the generosity, or at most to the 
prudence of the Congress, and that they 
were not entitled to require it from its jus- 
tice. They came in by a new tenure : — they 
were the feudatories of the new corporation 
of kings erected at Vienna, exercising joint 
power in effect over all Europe, consisting in 
form of eight or ten princes, but in substance 
of three great military Powers, — the spoilers* 
of Poland, the original invaders of the Eu- 
ropean constitution, — sanctioned by the sup- 
port of England, and checked, however 
feebly, by France alone. On these three 
Powers, whose reverence for national inde- 
pendence and title to public confidence were 
so firmly established by the partition of Po- 
land, the dictatorship of Europe has fallen. 
They agree that Germany shall have a fede- 
ral constitution, — that Switzerland shall go- 
vern herself, — that unhappy Italy shall, as 
they say, be composed of sovereign states : — 

* This is certainly true respecting Pomerania 
and Alsace : whether the Ecclesiastical principali- 
ties were treated with so much ceremony may be 
more doubtful, and it would require more research 
to ascertain it than can now be applied to the ob- 
ject. 

t " All the Powers engaged on either side in 
the present war, shall, within the space of two 
months, send plenipotentiaries to Vienna for the 
purpose of regulating in general congress the ar- 
rangements which are to complete the provisions 
of the present treaty." 



512 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



but it is all by grant from these lords para- 
mount. Their will is the sole title to domi- 
nion, — the universal tenure of sovereignty. 
A single acre granted on such a principle is, 
in truth, the signal of a monstrous revolu- 
tion in the system of Europe. Is the House 
of Commons to remain silent, when such a 
principle is applied in practice to a large part 
of the Continent, and proclaimed in right 
over the whole ? Is it to remain silent when 
it. has heard the King of Sardinia, at the mo- 
ment when he received possession of Genoa 
from a British garrison, and when the British 
commander stated himself to have made the 
transfer in consequence of the decision at 
Vienna, proclaim to the Genoese, that he took 
possession of their territory '; in concurrence 
with the wishes of the principal Powers of 
Europe'?" 

It is to this particular act of the Con- 
gress, Sir, that I now desire to call the atten- 
tion of the House, not only on account of its 
own atrocity, but because it seems to repre- 
sent in miniature the whole system of that 
body, — to be a perfect specimen of their 
new public law. and to exemplify every prin- 
ciple of that code of partition which they 
are about to establish on the ruins of that 
ancient system of national independence and 
balanced power, wdiich gradually raised the 
nations of Europe to the first rank of the 
human race. I contend that all the parties 
to this violent transfer, and more especially 
the British Government, have been guilty of 
perfidy, — have been guilty of injustice ; and I 
shall also contend, that the danger of these 
violations of faith and justice is much increas- 
ed, when they are considered as examples of 
those principles by which the Congress of 
Vienna arrogate to themselves the right of 
regulating a considerable portion of Europe. 

To establish the breach of faith, I must 
first ask, — What did Lord William Bentinck 
promise, as commander-in-chief of His Ma- 
jesty's troops in Italy, by his Proclamations 
of the 14th of March and 26th of April, 
1814? The first is addressed to the people 
of Italy. It offers them the assistance of 
Great Britain to rescue them from the iron 
yoke of Buonaparte. It holds out the ex- 
ample of Spain, enabled, by the aid of Great 
Britain, to rescue "her independence." — of 
the neighbouring Sicily, "which hastens to 
resume her ancient splendour among inde- 
pendent nations. . . Holland is about to obtain 
the same object. . . Warriors of Italy, you 
are invited to vindicate your own rights, and 
to be free ! Italy, by our united efforts, shall 
become what she was in her most prosperous 
periods, and what Spain now is!" 

Now, Sir, I do contend that all the powers 
of human ingenuity cannot give two senses 
to this Proclamation : I defy the wit of man 
to explain it away. Whether Lord William 
Bentinck had the power to promise is an after 
question: — what he did promise, can be no 
•question at all. He promised the aid of Eng- 
land to obtain Italian independence. He 
promised to assist the Italians in throwing off 



a yoke, — in escaping from thraldom, — in es- 
tablishing liberty, — in asserting rights. — in 
obtaining independence. Every term of 
emancipation known in human language is 
exhausted to impress his purpose on the heart 
of Italy. I do not now inquire whether the 
generous warmth of this language may not 
require in justice some understood limita- 
tion : — perhaps it may. But can independ- 
ence mean a transfer to the yoke of the 
most hated of foreign masters ? Were the 
Genoese invited to spill their blood, not 
merely for a choice of tyrants, but to earn 
the right of wearing the chains of the rival 
and the enemy of two centuries? Are the 
references to Spain, to Sicily, and to Holland 
mere frauds on the Italians, — " words full of 
sound and fury, signifying nothing?" If not, 
can they mean less than this, — that those 
countries of Italy which were independent 
before the war, shall be independent again? 
These words, therefore, were at least ad- 
dressed to the Genoese ; — suppose them to 
be limited, as to any other Italians ; — suppose 
the Lombards, or, at that time, the Neapoli- 
tans, to be tacitly excluded. Addressed to 
the Genoese, they either had no meaning, or 
they meant their ancient independence. 

Did the Genoese act upon these promises? 
What did they do in consequence of that 
first Proclamation of the 14th of March, from 
Leghorn, addressed to all the Italians, but 
applicable at least to the Genoese, and ne- 
cessarily understood by that people as com- 
prehending them ? I admit that the pro- 
mises were conditional; and to render them 
conclusive, it was necessary for the Genoese 
to fulfil the condition : — I contend that they 
did. I shall not attempt again to describe 
the march of Lord William Bentinck from 
Leghorn to Genoa, which has already been 
painted by my Honourable and Learned 
Friend* with all the chaste beauties of his 
moral and philosophical eloquence: my duty 
confines me to the dry discussion of mere 
facts. The force with which Lord William 
Bentinck left Leghorn consisted of about 
three thousand English, supported by a mot- 
ley band of perhaps five thousand Sicilians, 
Italians, and Greeks, the greater part of whom 
had scarcely ever seen a shot fired. At the 
head of this force, he undertook a long march 
through one of the most defensible countries 
of Europe, against a city garrisoned or de- 
fended by seven thousand French veterans, 
and which it would have required twenty- 
five thousand men to invest, according to the 
common rules of military prudence. Now, 
Sir, I assert, without fear of contradiction, 
that such an expedition would have been 
an act of frenzy, unless Lord William Ben- 
tinck had the fullest assurance of the good- 
will and active aid of the Genoese people. 
The fact sufficiently speaks for itself. I can- 
not here name the high military authority on 
which my assertion rests; but I defy the 
Right Honourable Gentlemen, with all their 



* Mr. Horner.— Ed. 



ON THE ANNEXATION OF GENOA. 



513 



means of commanding military information, 
to contradict me. I know they will not ven- 
ture. In the first place, then, I assume, that 
the British general would not have begun his 
advance without assurance of the friendship 
of the Genoese, and that he owes his secure 
and unmolested march to the influence of 
the same friendship — supplying his army. 
and deterring his enemies from attack. He 
therefore, in truth, owed his being before 
tfie walls of Genoa to Genoese co-operation. 
The city of Genoa, which, in 1799, had been 
defended by Massena for three months, fell 
to Lord William Bentinck in two days. In 
two days seven thousand French veterans 
laid down their arms to three thousand Bri- 
tish soldiers, encumbered rather than aided 
by the auxiliary rabble whom I have de- 
scribed. Does any man in his senses be- 
lieve, that the French garrison could have 
been driven to such a surrender by any 
cause but their fear of the Genoese people ? 
I have inquired, from the best military au- 
thorities accessible to me, what would be 
the smallest force with which the expedi- 
tion might probably have been successful, 
if the population had been — I do not say 
enthusiastically, — but commonly hostile to 
the invaders : — I have been assured, that it 
could not have been less than twenty-live 
thousand men. Here, again, I venture to 
challenge contradiction. If none can be 
given, must I not conclude that the known 
friendship of the Genoese towards the British, 
manifested after the issue of the Proclama- 
tion, and in no part created by it, was equiva- 
lent to an auxiliary force of seventeen thou- 
sand men? Were not the known wishes of 
the people, acting on the hopes of the British, 
and on the fears of the French, the chief 
cause of the expulsion of the French from 
the Genoese territory'? Can Lord William 
Bentinck's little army be considered as more 
than auxiliaries to the popular sentiment 1 If 
a body of four thousand Genoese had joined 
Lord William, on the declared ground of his 
Proclamation, all mankind would have ex- 
claimed that the condition was fulfilled, and 
the contract indissoluble. Is it not the height 
of absurdity to maintain that a manifesta- 
tion of public sentiment, which produced as 
much benefit to him as four times that force, 
is not to have the same effect. A ship which 
is in sight of a capture is entitled to her 
share of the prize, though she neither had 
nor could have fired a shot, upon the plain 
principle that apprehension of her approach 
probably contributed to produce the surren- 
der. If apprehension of Genoese hostility 
influenced the French garrison, — if assu- 
rance of Genoese friendship encouraged the 
British army, on what principle do you de- 
fraud the Genoese of their national inde- 
pendence, — the prize which you promised 
them, and which they thus helped to wrest 
from the enemy % 

In fact, I am well informed. Sir, that there 
was a revolt in the city, which produced the 
surrender, — that Buonaparte's statue had 
65 



been overthrown with every mark of indig- 
nity, — and that the French garrison was on 
the point of being expelled, even if the be- 
siegers had not appeared. But I am not 
obliged to risk the case upon the accuracy 
of that information. Be it that the Genoese 
complied with Lord Wellesley's wise instruc- 
tion, to avoid premature revolt : I affirm that 
Lord William Bentinck's advance is positive 
evidence of an understanding with the Geno- 
ese leaders; that there would have been 
such evidence in the advance of any judi- 
cious officer, but most peculiarly in his, who 
had been for three years negotiating in Upper- 
Italy, and was well acquainted with the pre- 
valent impatience of the French yoke. I 
conceive it to be self-evident, that if the 
Genoese had believed the English army to 
be advancing in order to sell them to Sar- 
dinia, they would not have favoured the ad- 
vance. I think it demonstrable, that to their 
favourable disposition the expedition owed 
its success. And it needs no proof that they 
favoured the English, because the English 
promised them the restoration of independ- 
ence. The English have, therefore, broken 
faith with them : the English have defrauded 
them of solemnly-promised independence: 
the English have requited their co-operation, 
by forcibly subjecting them to the power of 
the most odious of foreign masters. On the 
whole, I shall close this part of the question 
with challenging all the powers of human 
ingenuity to interpret the Proclamation as 
any thing but a promise of independence to 
such Italian nations as were formerly inde- 
pendent, and would now co-operate for the 
recovery of their rights. I leave to the Gen- 
tlemen on the other side the task of convin- 
cing the House that the conduct of the Ge- 
noese did not co-operate towards success, 
though without it success was impossible. 

But we have been told that Lord William 
Bentinck was not authorised to make such a 
promise. It is needless for me to repeat my 
assent to a truth so trivial, as that no political 
negotiation is naturally within the province 
of a military commander, and that for such 
negotiations he must have special authority. 
At the same time I must observe, that Lord 
William Bentinck was not solely a military 
commander, and could not be considered by 
the Italians in that light. In Sicily his po- 
litical functions had been more important 
than his military command. From 1811 to 
1814 he had, with the approbation of his 
Government, performed the highest acts of 
political authority in that island ; and he had, 
during the same period, carried on the secret 
negotiations of the British Government with 
all" Italians disaffected to France. To the 
Italians, then, he appeared as a plenipoten- 
tiary; and they had a right to expect that 
his Government would ratify his acts and 
fulfil his engagements. In fact, his special 
authority was full and explicit. "Lord Wei 
lesley's Instructions of the 21st of October 
and 27th of December, 1811, speak with the 
manly firmness which distinguishes that 



514 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



great statesman as much as his commanding 
character and splendid talents. His mean- 
ing is always precisely expressed : — he leaves 
himself no retreat from his engagements in 
the ambiguity and perplexity of an unintel- 
ligible style. The principal object of these 
masterly despatches is to instruct Lord Wil- 
liam Bentinck respecting his support of any 
eventual effort of the Italian states to rescue 
Italy. They remind him of the desire of the 
Prince Regent to afford every practicable as- 
sistance to the people of Italy in any such 
effort. They convey so large a discretion, 
that it is thought necessary to say, — "In all 
arrangements respecting the expulsion of the 
enemy, your Lordship will not fail to give 
due consideration to our engagements with 
the courts of Sicily and Sardinia." Lord Wil- 
liam Bentinck had therefore powers which 
would have extended to Naples and Pied- 
mont, unless they had been specially ex- 
cepted. On the 'l 9th of May, 1812, Lord 
Castlereagh virtually confirms the same ex- 
tensive and confidential powers. On the 4th 
of March preceding. Lord Liverpool had, 
indeed, instructed Lord William Bentinck 
to employ a part of his force in a diversion 
in favour of Lord Wellington, by a descent 
on the eastern coast of Spain. This diver- 
sion doubtless suspended the negotiations 
with the patriotic Italians, and precluded for 
a time the possibility of affording them aid. 
But so far from withdrawing Lord William 
Bentinck's political power, in Italy, they ex- 
pressly contemplate their revival : — " This 
operation would leave the question respect- 
ing Italy open for further consideration, if 
circumstances should subsequently render 
the prospect there more inviting." The 
despatches of Lord Bathurst, from March 
1812 to December 1813, treat Lord William 
Bentinck as still in possession of those ex- 
tensive powers originally vested in him by 
the despatch of Lord Wellesley. Every 
question of policy is discussed in these des- 
patches, not as with a mere general, — not 
even as with a mere ambassador, but as 
with a confidential minister for the Italian, 
Department. The last despatch is that which 
closes with the remarkable sentence, which 
is, in my opinion, decisive of this whole 
question : — " Provided it be clearly with the 
entire concurrence of the inhabitants, you 
may take possession of Genoa in the name 
of His Sardinian Majesty." Now this is, in 
effect, tantamount to an instruction not to 
transfer Genoa- to Sardinia without the con- 
currence of the inhabitants. It is a virtual in- 
struction to consider the wishes of the people 
of Genoa as the rule and measure of his con- 
duct: it is more — it is a declaration that he 
had no need of any instruction to re-establish 
Genoa, if the Genoese desired it. That re- 
establishment was provided for by his origi- 
nal instructions : only the new project of a 
transfer to a foreign sovereign required new 
ones. Under his original instructions, then, 
thus ratified by a long series of succeeding 
despatches from a succession of ministers, 



did Lord William Bentinck issue the Procla- 
mation of the 14th of March. 

Limitations there were in the original in- 
structions: — Sicily and Sardinia were ex- 
cepted. New exceptions undoubtedly arose, 
in the course of events; so plainly within the 
principle of the original exceptions as to re- 
quire no specification. Every Italian pro- 
vince of a sovereign with whom Great Britain 
had subsequently contracted an alliance was^ 
doubtless, as much to be excepted out of 
general projects of revolt for Italian inde- 
pendence as those which had been subject 
to the Allied Sovereigns in 1811. A British 
minister needed no express instructions to 
comprehend that he was to aid no revolt 
against the Austrian Government in their 
former province of Lombardy. The change 
of circumstances sufficiently instructed him. 
But in what respect were circumstances 
changed respecting Genoa 1 The circum- 
stances of Genoa were the same as at the 
time of Lord Wellesley's instructions. The 
very last despatches (those of Lord Bathurst, 
of the 28th of December, 1813,) had pointed 
to the Genoese territory as the scene of mili- 
tary operations, without any intimation that 
the original project was not still applicable 
there, unless the Genoese nation should 
agree to submit to the King of Sardinia. I 
contend, therefore, that the original instruc- 
tion of Lord Wellesley, which authorised the 
promise of independence to every part of the 
Italian peninsula except Naples and Pied- 
mont, was still in force, wherever it was not 
manifestly limited by subsequent engage- 
ments with the sovereigns of other countries, 
similar to our engagements with the sove- 
reigns of Naples and Piedmont, — that no 
such engagement existed respecting the Ge- 
noese authority, — and that to the Genoese 
people the instruction of Lord Wellesley was 
as applicable as on the day when that in- 
struction was issued. 

The Noble Lord may then talk as he 
pleases of "disentangling from the present 
question the question of Italy," to which on 
a former occasion he applied a phraseology 
so singular. He cannot " disentangle these 
questions:" — they are inseparably blended. 
The Instructions of 1811 authorised the pro- 
mise of independence to all Italians, except 
the people of Naples and Piedmont. The 
Proclamation of the 14th of March 1814 pro- 
mised independence to all Italians, with the 
manifestly implied exception of those who 
had been the subjects of Powers who were 
now become the allies of Great Britain. A 
British general, fully authorised, promised 
independence to those Italians who, like the 
Genoese, had not been previously the sub- 
jects of an ally of Britain, and by that pro- 
mise, so authorised, his Government is in- 
violably bound. 

But these direct instructions were not all. 
He was indirectly authorised by the acts and 
language of his own Government and of the 
other great Powers of Europe. He was au- 
thorised to re-establish the republic of Ge- 



ON THE ANNEXATION OF GENOA. 



515 



noa, because the British Government in the 
Treaty of Amiens had refused to acknow- 
ledge its destruction. He was authorised to 
believe that Austria desired the re-establish- 
ment of a republic whose destruction that 
Government in 1808 had represented as a 
cause of war. He was surely authorised to 
consider that re-establishment as conform- 
able to the sentiments of the Emperor Alex- 
ander, who at the same time had, on account 
of the annexation of Genoa to France, re- 
fused even at the request of Great Britain to 
continue his mediation between her and a 
Power capable of such an outrage on the 
rights of independent nations. Where was 
Lord William Bentinck to learn the latest 
opinions of the Allied Powers? If he read 
the celebrated Declaration of Frankfort, he 
there found an alliance announced of which 
the object was the restoration of Europe. 
Did restoration mean destruction 1 Perhaps 
before the 14th of March, — certainly before 
the 26th of April, — he had seen the first ar- 
ticle of the Treaty of Chaumont, concluded 
on the 1st of March, — 

" Dum curae ambisrufe, dum spes incerta futuri,"* 

in which he found the object of the war de- 
clared by the assembled majesty of confe- 
derated Europe to be " a general peace under 
which the rights and liberties of all nations 
may be secured" — words eternally honour- 
able to their authors if they were to be ob- 
served — more memorable still if they were 
to be openly and perpetually violated ! Be- 
fore the 26th of April he had certainly pe- 
rused these words, which no time will efface 
from the records of history ; for he evidently 
adverts to them in the preamble of his Pro- 
clamation, and justly considers them as a 
sufficient authority, if he had no other, to 
warrant its provisions. "Considering," says 
he, " that the general desire of the Genoese 
nation seems to be, to return to their ancient 
government, and considering that the desire 
seems to be conformable to the principles 
recognised by the High Allied Powers of re- 
storing to all their ancient rights and privi- 
leges." In the work of my celebrated friend, 
Mr. Gentz, of whom I can never speak with- 
out regard and admiration, On the Balance 
of Power, he would have found the incor- 
poration of Genoa justly reprobated as one 
of the most unprincipled acts of French 
tyranny; and he would have most reason- 
ably believed the sentiments of the Allied 
Powers to have been spoken by that emi- 
nent person — now, if I am not misinformed, 
the Secretary of that Congress, on whose 
measures his writings are the most severe 
censure. 

But that Lord William Bentinck did be- 
lieve himself to have offered independence 
to the Genoese, — that he thought himself 
directly and indirectly authorised to make 
such an offer, — and that he was satisfied 
that the Genoese had by their co-operation 



iEneid. lib. viii. — Ed. 



performed their part of the compact, are 
facts which rest upon the positive and pre- 
cise testimony of Lord William Bentinck 
himself. I call upon him as the best inter- 
preter of his own language, and the most 
unexceptionable witness to prove the co- 
operation of the Genoese. Let this Procla- 
mation of the 26th of April be examined : — 
it is the clearest commentary on that of the 
14th of March. It is the most decisive testi- 
mony to the active aid of the Genoese people. 
On the 26th of April he bestows on the peo- 
ple of Genoa that independence which he 
had promised to all the nations of Italy (with 
the implied exception, already often enough 
mentioned), on condition of their aiding to 
expel the oppressor. He, therefore, under- 
stood his own Proclamation to be such a 
promise of independence : he could not doubt 
but that he was authorised to make it: and 
he believed that the Genoese were entitled 
to claim the benefit of it by their performance 
of its condition. 

This brings me to the consideration of 
this Proclamation, on which I should have 
thought all observation unnecessary, unless 

I had heard some attempts made by the 
Noble Lord to explain it away, and to repre- 
sent it as nothing but the establishment of a 
provisional government. I call on any mem- 
ber of the House to read that Proclamation, 
and to say whether he can in common hon- 
our assent to such an interpretation. The 
Proclamation, beyond all doubt, provides for 
two perfectly distinct objects: — the establish- 
ment of a provisional government till the 1st 
of January 1815, and the re-establishment 
of the ancient constitution of the republic, 
with certain reforms and modifications, from 
and after that period. Three-fourths of the 
Proclamation have no reference whatever to 
a provisional government ; — the first sentence 
of the preamble, and the third and fourth ar- 
ticles only, refer to that object : but the larger 
paragraph of the preamble, and four articles 
of the enacting part, relate to the re-esta- 
blishment of the ancient constitution alone. 

II The desire of the Genoese nation was to 
return to their ancient government, under 
which they had enjoyed independence :" — > 
was this relating to a provisional govern- 
ment'? Did " the principles recognised by the 
High Allied Powers" contemplate only the 
establishment of provisional governments ? 
Did provisional governments imply '-'resto- 
ring to all their ancient rights and privi- 
leges?" Why should the ancient constitu- 
tion be re-established — the very constitution 
given by Andrew Doria when he delivered 
his country from a foreign yoke, — if nothing 
was meant but a provisional government, 
preparatory to foreign slavery ? Why was 
the government to be modified according to 
the general wish, the public good, and the 
spirit of Doria's constitution, if nothing was 
meant beyond a temporary administration, 
till the Allied Powers could decide on what 
vassal they were to bestow Genoa 1 But I 
may have been at first mistaken, and time 



516 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



may have rendered my mistake incorrigible. 
Let every gentleman, before he votes on this 
question, calmly peruse the Proclamation of 
the 26th of April, and determine for himself 
"whether it admits of any but one construc- 
tion. Does it not provide for a provisional 
government immediately, and for the esta- 
blishment of the ancient constitution here- 
after; — the provisional government till the 
1st of January, 1815, the constitution from 
the 1st of January, 1815? The provisional 
government is m its nature temporary, and a 
limit is iixed to it. The constitution of the 
republic is permanent, and no term or limit 
is prescribed beyond which it is not to en- 
dure. It is not the object of the Proclama- 
tion to establish the ancient constitution as 
a provisional government. On the contrary, 
the ancient constitution is not to be esta- 
blished till the provisional government ceases 
to exist. So distinct are they, that the mode 
of appointment to the supreme powers most 
materially differs. Lord William Bentinck 
nominates the two colleges, who compose 
the provisional government. The two col- 
leges who are afterwards to compose the 
permanent government of the republic, are 
to be nominated agreeably to the ancient con- 
stitution. Can it be maintained that the in- 
tention was to establish two successive pro- 
visional governments ? For what conceivable 
reason '?• Even in that case, why engage in 
the laborious and arduous task of reforming 
an ancient constitution for the sake of a 
second provisional government which might 
not last three weeks ? And what' constitu- 
tion was more unfit for a provisional govern- 
ment, — what was more likely to indispose 
the people to all farther change, and above 
all, to a sacrifice of their independence, than 
the ancient constitution of the republic, which 
revived all their feelings of national dignity, 
and seemed to be a pledge that they were 
once more to be Genoese ? In short, Sir, I 
am rather fearful that I shall be thought to 
have overlaboured a point so extremely clear. 
But if I have dwelt too long upon this Pro- 
clamation, and examined it too minutely, it 
is not because I think it difficult, but because 
I consider it is decisive of the whole ques- 
tion. If Lord William Bentinck in that Pro- 
clamation bestowed on the people of Genoa 
iheir place among nations, and the govern- 
ment of their forefathers, it must have been 
because he deemed himself authorised to 
make that establishment by the repeated 
instructions of the British Government, and 
by the avowed principles and solemn acts of 
the Allied Powers, and because he felt bound 
to make it by his own Proclamation of the 
14th of March, combined with the acts done 
by the Genoese nation, in consequence of 
that Proclamation. I think I have proved that 
he did so, — that he believed himself to have 
done so, and that the people of Genoa be- 
lieved it likewise. 

Perhaps, however, if Lord William Ben- 
tinck had mistaken his instructions, and had 
,a.eted without authority, he might have been 



disavowed, and his acts might have been. 
annulled 1 I doubt whether, in such a case, 
any disavowal would have been sufficient. 
Wherever another people, in consequence 
of the acts of our agent whom they had good 
reason to trust, have done acts which they 
cannot recall, I do not conceive the possibility 
of a just disavowal of such an agent'* acts. 
Where one party has innocently and reason- 
ably advanced too far to recede, justice cuts 
off the other also from retreat. But, at all 
events, the disavowal, to be effectual, must 
have been prompt, clear, and public. Where 
is the disavowal here ? Where is the public 
notice to the Genoese, that they were de- 
ceived ? Did their mistake deserve no cor- 
rection, even on the ground of compassion ? 
I look in vain through these Papers for any 
such act. The Noble Lord's letter of the 30th 
of March was the first intimation which Lord 
William Bentinck received of any change 
of system beyond Lombardy. It contains 
only a caution as to future conduct; and it 
does not hint an intention to cancel any act 
done on the faith of the Proclamation of the 
14th of March. The allusion to the same 
subject in the letter of the 3d of April, is 
liable to the very same observation, and 
being inserted at the instance of the Duke 
of Campochiaro, was evidently intended only 
to prevent the prevalence of such ideas of 
Italian liberty as were inconsistent with the 
accession then proposed to the territory of 
Naples. It certainly could not have been 
supposed by Lord William Bentinck to apply 
to Genoa ; for Genoa was in his possession 
on the 26th, when he issued the Proclama- 
tion, which he never could have published 
if he had understood the despatch in that 
sense. 

The Noble Lord's despatch of the 6th of 
May is, Sir, in my opinion, fatal to his argu- 
ment. It evidently betrays a feeling that 
actte had been done, to create in the Genoese 
a hope of independence : yet it does not direct 
these acts to be disavowed ; — it contains no 
order speedily to undeceive the people. It 
implies that a deception had been practised ; 
and instead of an attempt to repair it. there 
is only an injunction not to repeat the fault. 
No expressions are to be used which may pre- 
judge the fate of Genoa. Even then that fate 
remained doubtful. So far from disavowal, 
the Noble Lord proposes the re-establishment 
of Genoa, though with some curtailment of 
territory, to M. Pareto, who maintained the 
interests of his country with an ability and 
dignity worthy of happier success. 

And the Treaty of Paris itself, far from a 
disavowal, is, on every principle of rational 
construction, a ratification and adoption of 
the act of Lord William Bentinck. The 6th 
article of that Treaty provides that ''■ Italy, 
beyond the limits of the country which is to 
revert to Austria, shall be composed of sove- 
reign states." Now, Sir, I desire to know 
the meaning of this provision. I can conceive 
only three possible constructions. Either 
that every country shall have some sove- 



ON THE ANNEXATION OF GENOA. 



517" 



reign, or, in other words, some government : 
— it will not be said that so trivial a propo- 
sition required a solemn stipulation. Or that 
there is to be more than one sovereign : — 
that was absolutely unnecessary: Naples, the 
States of the Church, and Tuscany, already 
existed. Or, thirdly, that the ancient sove- 
reign states shall be re-established, except 
the country which reverts to Austria : — this, 
and this only, was an intelligible and import- 
ant object of stipulation. It is the most 
reasonable of the only three possible con- 
structions of these words. The phrase "sove- 
reign states'' seems to have been preferred 
to that of "sovereigns," because it compre- 
hended republics as well as monarchies. 
According to this article, thus understood, 
the Powers of Europe had by the Treaty of 
Paris (to speak cautiously) given new hopes 
to the Genoese that they were again to be a 
nation. 

But, according to every principle of jus- 
tice, it is unnecessary to carry the argument 
so far. The act of an agent, if not disavowed 
in reasonable time, becomes the act of the 
principal. When a pledge is made to a peo- 
ple — such as was contained in the Procla- 
mations of the 14th of March and 26th of 
April — it can be recalled only by a disavowal 
equally public. 

On the policy of annexing Genoa to Pied- 
mont, Sir, I have very little to say. That it 
was a compulsory, and therefore an unjust 
union, is, in my view of the subject, the cir- 
cumstance which renders it most impolitic. 
It seems a bad means of securing Italy 
against France, to render a considerable part 
of the garrison of the Alps so dissatisfied 
with their condition, that they must consider 
every invader as a deliverer. But even if 
the annexation had been just, I should have 
doubted whether it was desirable. In former 
times, the House of Savoy might have been 
the guardians of the Alps: — at present, to 
treat them as such, seems to be putting the 
keys of Italy into hands too weak to hold 
them. Formerly, the conquest of Genoa and 
Piedmont were two distinct operations : — 
Genoa did not necessarily follow the fate of 
Turin. In the state of things created by the 
Congress, a French army has no need of 
separately acting against the Genoese terri- 
tory : — it must fall with Piedmont. And, 
what is still more strange, it is bound to the 
destinies of Piedmont by the same Congress 
which has wantonly stripped Piedmont of its 
natural defences. The House of Sardinia is 
stripped of great part of its ancient patri- 
mony: — apart of Savoy is, for no conceivable 
reason, given to France. The French are 
put in possession of the approaches and out- 
posts of the passes of Mont Cenis : they are 
brought a campaign nearer to Italy. At this 
very moment they have assembled an army 
at C hambery, which, unless Savoy had been 
wantonly thrown to them, they must have 
assembled at Lyons. You impose on the 
House of Savoy the defence of a longer line 
of Alps with one hand, and you weaken the 



defence of that part of the line which covers 
their capital with the other. But it is per- 
fectly sufficient for me, in the present case, 
if the policy is only doubtful, or the interests- 
only slight. The laxest moralist will not, 
publicly at least, deny, that more advantage 
is lost by the loss of a character for good 
faith than can be gained by a small improve- 
ment in the distribution of territory. Perhaps, 
indeed, this annexation of Genoa is the only 
instance recorded in history of great Powers 
having (to say no more) brought their faith 
and honour into question without any of the 
higher temptations of ambition, — with no 
better inducement than a doubtful advantage 
in distributing territory more conveniently, 
— unless, indeed, it can be supposed that 
they are allured by the pleasures of a tri- 
umph over the ancient principles of justice, 
and of a parade of the new maxims of con- 
venience which are to regulate Europe in 
their stead. 

I have hitherto argued this case as if the 
immorality of the annexation had arisen 
solely from the pledge made to the Genoese 
nation. I have argued it as if the Proclama- 
tion of Lord William Bentinck had been ad- 
dressed to a French province, on which there' 
could be no obligation to confer independence, 
if there were no promise to do so. For the 
sake of distinctness, I have hitherto kept out 
of view that important circumstance, which 
would, as I contend, without any promise, 
have of itself rendered a compulsory annexa- 
tion unjust. Anterior to all promise, inde- 
pendent of all pledged faith, I conceive that 
Great Britain could not morally treat the 
Genoese territory as a mere conquest, which 
she might hold as a province, or cede to 
another power, at her pleasure. In the year 
1797, when Genoa was conquered by France 
(then at war with England), under pretence 
of being revolutionised, the Genoese republic 
was at peace with Great Britain ; and conse- 
quently, in the language of the law of nations ; 
they were "friendly states." Neither the 
substantial conquest in 1797, nor the formal 
union of 1805, had ever been recognised by 
this kingdom. When the British commander, 
therefore, entered the Genoese territory in 
1814, he entered the territory of a friend in 
the possession of an enemy. Supposing him, 
by his own unaided force, to have conquered 
it from the enemy, can it be inferred that he 
conquered it from the Genoese people ] He 
had rights of conquest against the French : 
— but what right of conquest would accrue 
from their expulsion, against the Genoese ? 
How could we be at war with the Genoese? 
— not as with the ancient republic of Genoa, 
which fell when in a state of amity with us, 
— not as subjects of France, because we had 
never legally and formally acknowledged 
their subjection to that Power. There could 
be no right of conquest against them, be- 
cause there was neither the state of war, 
nor the right of war. Perhaps the Powers 
of the Continent, which had either expressly 
or tacitly recognised the annexation of Genoa. 
2T 



518 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



in their treaties with France, might consist- 
ently treat these Genoese people as mere 
French subjects, and consequently the Ge- 
noese territory as a French province, con- 
quered from the French government, which 
as regarded them had become the sow re inn 
of Genoa. But England stood in no such 
position : — in her eye the republic of Genoa 
still of right subsisted. She had done no act 
which implied the legal destruction of a 
commonwealth, with which she had had no 
war, nor cause of war. Genoa ought to have 
been regarded by England as a friendly 
state, oppressed lor a time by the common 
enemy, and entitled to re-assume the exer- 
cise of her sovereign rights as soon as that 
enemy was driven from her territory by a 
friendly force. Voluntary, much more cheer- 
ful, union. — zealous co-operation, — even long 
submission, — might have altered the state 
of belligerent rights : — none of these are here 
pretended. In such a case, I contend, that, 
according to the law of nations, anterior to 
all promises, and independent of all pledged 
faith, the republic of Genoa was restored to 
the exercise of her sovereignty, which, in 
our eyes, she had never lost, by the expul- 
sion of the French from her soil. 

These, Sir, are no reasonings of mine : I 
read them in the most accredited works on 
public law, delivered long before any events 
of our time were in contemplation, and yet 
as applicable to this transaction, as if they 
had been contrived for it. Vattel, in the 
thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of his 
third book, has stated fully and clearly 
those principles respecting the application 
of the jus posiliminii to the case of states, 
which he had taken from his eminent prede- 
cessors, or rather which they and he had 
discovered to be agreeable to the plainest 
dictates of reason, and which they have 
transcribed from the usage of civilized na- 
tions. I shall not trouble the House with 
the passages,* unless I see some attempt to 



* " When a nation, a people, a state, has been 
eniirely subjugated, whether a revolution can give 
it the right ol Postliminium ? To which we an- 
swer, that if the conquered state has not assented 
to the new subjection, if it did not yield volun- 
tarily, if it only ceased to resist from inability, if 
the conqueror has not yet sheathed the sword to 
wield the sceptre of a pacific sovereign, — such a 
state is only conquered and oppressed, and when 
the arms of an ally deliver it, returns without 
doubt to its first state. Its ally cannot become its 
conqueror ; he is a deliverer, who can have a right 
only to compensation for his services." . ..." If 
the last conqueror, not being an ally of the state, 
claims a right to retain it under his authority as the 
prize of victory, he puts himself in the place of 
the conqueror, and becomes the enemy of the op- 
pressed state. That state may legitimately resist 
him, and avail herself of a favourable occasion to 
recover her liberty. A state unjustly oppressed 
ought to be re-established in her rights by the 
conqueror who delivers her from the oppressor." 
Whoever carefully considers the above passage 
will observe, that it is intended to be applicable to 
two very distinct cases; — that of deliverance by 
an ally, where the duty of restoration is strict and 
precise, — and that of deliverance by a state unal- 



reconcile them with the annexation of Genoa. 
I venture to predict no such attempts will be 
hazarded. It is not my disposition to over- 
rate the authority of this class of writers, or 
to consider authority in any case as a substi- 
tute for reason. But these eminent writers 
were at least necessarily impartial. Their 
weight, as bearing testimony to general sen- 
timent and civilized usage, receives a new- 
accession from every statesman who appeals 
to their writings, and from every year in 
which no contrary practice is established or 
hostile principles avowed. Their works are 
thus attested by successive generations to be 
records of the customs of the best times, and 
depositories of the deliberate and permanent 
judgments of the more enlightened part of 
mankind. Add to this, that their authority 
is usually invoked by the feeble, and despised 
by those who are strong enough to need no 
aid from moral sentiment, and to bid defiance 
to justice. I have never heard their princi- 
ples questioned, but by those whose flagitious 
policy they had by anticipation condemned. 

Here, Sir, let me for a moment lower the 
claims of my argument, and abandon some 
part of the ground which I think it practica- 
ble to maintain. If I were to admit that the 
pledge here is not so strong, nor the duty of 
re-establishing a rescued friend so imperious 
as I have represented, still it must be ad- 
mitted to me, that it was a promise, though 
perhaps not unequivocal, to perform that 
which was moral and right, whether within 
the sphere of strict duty or not. Either the 
doubtful promise, or the imperfect duty, 
might singly have been insufficient : but, 
combined, they reciprocally strengthen each 
other. The slightest promise to do what was 
before a duty, becomes as binding as much 
stronger words to do an indifferent act : — 
strong assurances that a man will do what it 
is right for him to do are not required. A 
slight declaration to such an effect is believed 
by those to whom it is addressed, and there- 
fore obligatory on those by whom it is uttered. 
Was it not natural and reasonable for the 
people of Genoa to believe, on the slenderest 
pledges, that such a country as England, 
with which they had never had a difference, 
would avail herself of a victory, due at least 
in part to their friendly sentiments, in order 
to restore them to that independence of 
which they had been robbed by her enemy 
and theirs, — by the general oppressor of 
Europe. 

I shall not presume to define on invariable 
principles the limits of the right of conquest. 



lied, but not hostile, where in the opinion of the 
writer the re-establishment of the oppressed nation 
is at least the moral duty of the conqueror, though 
arising only from our common humanity, and. 
from the amicable relation which subsists between 
all men and all communities, till dissolved by 
wrongful oppression. It is to the latter case that 
the strong language in the second part of the 
above quotation is applied. It seems very difficult, 
and it has not hitherto been attempted, to resist the 
application to the case of Genoa. 



ON THE ANNEXATION OF GENOA. 



519 



It is founded, like every right of war, on a 
regard to security, — the object of all just 
war. The modes in which national safety 
may be provided for. — by reparation for in- 
sult, — by compensation for injury, — by ces- 
sions and by indemnifications, — vary in such 
important respects, according to the circum- 
stances of various cases, that it is perhaps 
impossible to limit them by an univi'i-al 
principle. In the case of Norway.* I did 
not pretend to argue the question upon 
grounds so high as those which were taken 
by some writers on public law. These wri- 
ters, who for two centuries have been quoted 
as authorities in all the controversies of Eu- 
rope, with the moderate and pacific Grotius 
at their head, have all concurred in treating 
it as a fundamental principle, that a defeated 
sovereign may indeed cede part of his do- 
minions to the conqueror, but that he there- 
by only abdicates his own sovereignty over 
the ceded dominion. — that the consent of the 
people is necessary to make them morally 
subject to the authority of the conqueror. 
Without renouncing this limitation of the 
rights of conquest, founded on principles so 
generous, and so agreeable to the dignity of 
human nature. I was content to argue the 
cession of Norway. — as I am content to argue 
the cession of Genoa, — on lower and hum- 
bler, but perhaps safer grounds. Let me 
waive the odious term '•' rights," — let me 
waive the necessity of any consent of a peo- 
ple, express or implied, to legitimate the 
cession of their territory: at least this will 
not be denied, — that to unite a people by 
force to a nation against whom they enter- 
tain a strong antipathy, is the most probable 
means of rendering the community unhappy, 
— of making the people discontented, and 
the sovereign tyrannical. But there can be 
no right in any governor, whether he derives 
his power from conquest, or from any other 
source, to make the governed unhappy : — all 
the rights of all governors exist only to make 
the governed happy. It may be disputed 
among some, whether the rights of govern- 
ment be from the people ; but no man can 
doubt that the) r are for the people. Such a 
forcible union is an immoral and cruel exer- 
cise of the conqueror's power: and as soon 
as that concession is made, it is not worth 
while to discuss whether it be within his 
right, — in other words, whether he be forbid- 
den by any law to make it. 

But if every cession of a territory against 
the deliberate and manifest sense of its in- 
habitants be a harsh and reprehensible abuse 
of conquest, it is most of all culpable, — it be- 
comes altogether atrocious and inhuman, 
where the antipathy was not the feeling of 
the moment, or the prejudice of the day, but 
a profound sentiment of hereditary repug- 
nance and aversion, which has descended 
from generation to generation. — has mingled 



* On Mr. Charles Wyntvs motion (May 12th, 
1814,) condemnatory of its forced annexation to 
Sweden. — Ed. 



with every part of thought and action, — and 
has become part of patriotism itself. Such 
is the repugnance of the Genoese to a union 
with Piedmont: and such is commonly the 
peculiar horror which high-minded nations 
feel of the yoke of their immediate neigh- 
bours. The feelings of Norway towards 
Sweden.— of Portugal towards Spain, — and 
in former and less happy times of Scotland 
towards England, — are a few out of innu- 
merable examples. There is nothing either 
unreasonable or unnatural in this state of 
national feelings. With neighbours there 
are most occasions of quarrel; with them 
there have been most wars ; from them there 
has been most suffering: — of them there is 
most fear. The resentment of wrongs, and 
the remembrance of victory, strengthen our 
repugnance to those who are most usually 
our enemies. It is not from illiberal preju- 
dice, but from the constitution of human 
nature, that an Englishman animates his pa- 
triotic affections, and supports his national 
pride, by now looking back on victories over 
Frenchmen, — on Cressy and Agincourt, on 
Blenheim and Minden, — as our posterity will 
one day look back on Salamanca and Vitto- 
ria. The defensive principle ought to be the 
strongest where the danger is likely most 
frequently to arise. What, then, will the 
House decide concerning the morality of 
compelling Genoa to submit to the yoke of 
Piedmont, — a state which the Genoese have 
constantly dreaded and hated, and against 
which their hatted was sharpened by con- 
tinual apprehensions for their independence ? 
Whatever construction may be attempted of 
Lord William Bentinck*s Proclamations. — 

I whatever sophistry may be used successful- 
ly, to persuade you that Genoa was disposa- 

■ ble as a conquered territory, will you affirm 
that the disposal of it to Piedmont was a just 
and humane exercise of your power as a 
conqueror ? 

It is for this reason, amons others, that I 
detest and execrate the modern doctrine of 
rounding territory, and following natural 
boundaries, and melting down small states 

j into masses, and substituting lines of defence, 

J and right and left flanks, instead of justice 
and the law of nations, and ancient posses- 
sion and national feeling.— the system of 
Louis XIV. and Napoleon, of the spoilers of 
Poland, and of the spoilers of Norway and 
Genoa. — the system which the Noble Lord, 
when newlv arrived from the Congress, and 
deeply imbued with its doctrines, in the 
course of his ample and elaborate invective 
against the memory and principles of ancient 
Europe, defined in two phrases so character- 
istic of his reverence for the rights of nations, 
and his tenderness for their feelings, that 
they ought not easily to be forgotten, — when 
he told us, speaking of this very antipathy 
of Genoa to Piedmont, •■that great questions 
are not to be influenced by popular impres- 
sion-." nnd "'that a people may be happy 
without independence." The principal fea- 
ture of this new system is the incorporation 



520 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



of neighbouring, and therefore hostile com- 
munities. The system of justice reverenced 
the union of men who had long been mem- 
bers of the same commonwealth, because 
they had all the attachments and antipathies 
which giow out of that fellowship : — the sys- 
tem of rapine tears asunder those whom na- 
ture has joined, and compels those to unite 
whom the contests of ages have rendered ir- 
reconcilable. 

And if all this had been less evident, would 
no aggravation of this act have arisen from 
the peculiar nature of the general war of 
Europe against France ? It was a war in 
which not only the Italians, but every peo- 
ple in Europe, were called by their sove- 
reigns to rise for the recovery of their inde- 
pendence. It was a revolt of the people 
against Napoleon. It owed its success to the 
spirit of popular insurrection. The principle 
of a war for the restoration of independence, 
was a pledge that each people was to be re- 
stored to its ancient territory. The nations 
of Europe accepted the pledge, and shook 
off the French yoke. But was it for a change 
of masters'? Was it that three Foreign Min- 
isters at Paris might dispose of the Genoese 
territory 1 — was it for this that the youth of 
Europe had risen in arms from Moscow to 
the Rhine ? 

Ergo pari voto gessisti bella juventus? 

Tu quoque pro dominis et Pompeiana fuisti 

Non Romana manus !* 

The people of Europe were, it seems, 
roused to war, not to overthrow tyranny, but 
to shift it into new hands, — not to re-esta- 
blish the independence and restore the an- 
cient institutions of nations, but to strengthen 
the right flank of one great military power, 
and to cover the left flank of another. This, 
at least, was not the war for the success of 
which I offered my most ardent prayers. I 
prayed for the deliverance of Europe, not 
for its transfer to other lords, — for the resto- 
ration of Europe, by which all men must 
have understood at least the re-establish- 
ment of that ancient system, and of those 
wise principles, under which it had become 
great and prosperous. I expected the re- 
establishment of every people in those terri- 
tories, of which the sovereignty had been 
lost by recent usurpation, — of every people 
who had been an ancient member of the 
family of Europe, — of every people who had 
preserved the spirit and feelings which con- 
stitute a nation, — and, above all, of every 
people who had lost their territory or their 
independence under the tyranny which the 
Allies had taken up arms to overthrow. I 
expected a reverence for ancient bounda- 
ries, — a respect for ancient institutions, — '- 
certainly without excluding a prudent regard 
to the new interests and opinions which had 
taken so deep a root that they could not be 
torn up without incurring the guilt and the 
mischief of the most violent innovation. 

* Pharsalia, lib. ix. — Ed. 



The very same reasons, indeed, both of 
morality and policy (since I must comply so 
far with vulgar usage as to distinguish what 
cannot be separated) bound the Allied Sove- 
reigns to respect the ancient institutions, and 
to regard the new opinions and interests of 
nations. The art of all government, not 
tyrannical, whatever may be its form, is to 
conduct mankind by their feelings. It is 
immoral to disregard the feelings of the go- 
verned, because it renders them miserable. 
It is. and it ought to be, dangerous to disre- 
gard these feelings, because bold and intelli- 
gent men will always consider it as a mere 
question of prudence, whether they ought to 
obey governments which counteract the only 
purpose for which the)' all exist. The feel- 
ings of men are most generally wounded by 
any violence to those ancient institutions 
under which these feelings have been 
formed, the national character has been 
moulded, and to which all the habits and 
expectations of life are adapted. It was 
well said by Mr. Fox, that as ancient institu- 
tions have been sanctioned by a far greater 
concurrence of human judgments than mo- 
dern laws can be, they are, upon democratic 
principles, more respectable. But new opin- 
ions and new interests, and a new arrange- 
ment of society, which has given rise to other 
habits and hopes, also excite the strongest 
feelings, which, in proportion to their force 
and extent, claim the regard of all moral 
policy. 

As it was doubtless the policy of the Allies 
to consider the claims of ancient possession 
as sacred, as far as the irrevocable changes 
of ihe political system would allow, the con- 
siderate part of mankind did, I believe, hope 
that they would hail the long-continued and 
recently-lost sovereignty of a territory as 
generally an inviolable right, and that, as 
they could not be supposed wanting in zeal 
for restoring the sovereignty of ancient reign- 
ing families, so they would guard that re- 
establishment, and render it respectable in 
the eyes of the world, by the impartiality 
with which they re-established also those 
ancient and legitimate governments of a re- 
publican form, which had fallen in the gene- 
ral slavery of nations. We remembered that 
republics and monarchies were alike called 
to join in the war against the French Revo- 
lution, not for forms of government, but for 
the existence of social order. We hoped 
that Austria — to select a striking example — 
would not pollute her title to her ancient do- 
minion of Lombard)', by blending it with the 
faithless and lawless seizure of Venice. So 
little republican territory was to be restored, 
that the act of justice was to be performed, 
and the character of impartiality gained, at 
little expense ; — even if such expense be 
measured by the meanest calculations of 
the most vulgar politics. Other vacant terri- 
tory remained at the disposal of the Con- 
gress to satisfy the demands of policy. The 
sovereignity of the Ecclesiastical territories 
might be fairly considered as lapsed: no 



ON THE ANNEXATION OF GENOA. 



521 



reigning family could have any interest in 
it ; — no people could be attached to such a 
rule of nomination to supreme power. And 
in fact, these Principalities had lost all pride 
of independence and all consciousness of 
national existence. Several other territories 
of Europe had been reduced to a like condi- 
tion. Ceded, perhaps, at first questionably, 
they had been transferred so often from 
master to master, — they had been so long 
in a state of provincial degradation, that no 
violence could be offered to their feelings 
by any new transfer or partition. They 
were, as it were, a sort of splinters thrown 
off from nations in the shocks of warfare 
during two centuries: and they lay like stakes 
on the board, to be played for at the terrible 
game which had detachjd them, and to 
satisfy the exchanges and cessions by which 
it is usually closed. 

Perhaps the existence of such detached 
members is necessary to the European sys- 
tem; but they are in themselves great evils. 
They are amputated and lifeless members, 
which, as soon as they lose the vital princi- 
ple of national spirit, no longer contribute 
aught to the vigour and safety of the whole 
living system. From them is to be expected 
no struggle against invasion, — no resistance 
to the designs of ambition. — no defence of 
their country. Individuals, but no longer a 
nation, they are the ready prey of every 
candidate for universal monarchy, who soon 
compels their passive inhabitants to fight for 
his ambition, as they would not fight against 
it, and to employ in enslaving other nations, 
that courage which they had no noble in- 
terest to exert in defence of their own. — 
Why should I seek examples of this truth in 
former times? What opened Europe to the 
first inroads of the French armies ? — not, I 
will venture to say, the mere smallness of 
the neighbouring states: for if every one of 
them had displayed as much national spirit 
in 1794, as the smallest states of Switzerland 
did in 1798, no French army could ever have 
left the territory of France, — but the unhappy 
course of events, which had deprived Flan- 
ders, and the Electorates, and Lombardy, of 
all national spirit. Extinguished as this spirit 
was by the form of government in some of 
these countries, and crushed by a foreign 
yoke in others, — without the pride of liberty, 
which bestows the highest national spirit on 
the smallest nations, or the pride of power, 
which sometimes supplies its place in mighty 
empires, or the consciousness of self-depend- 
ence, without which there is no nationality, 
— they first became the prey of France, and 
afterwards supplied the arms with which she 
almost conquered the world. To enlarge this 
dead part of Europe, — to enrich it by the 
accession of countries renowned for their 
public feelings, — to throw Genoa into the 
same grave with Poland, with Venice, with 
Finland, and with Norway. — is not the policy 
of those who would be the preservers or re- 
storers of the European commonwealth. 

It is not the principle of the Balance of 
66 



Power, but one precisely opposite. The 
system of preserving some equilibrium of 
power, — of preventing any state from be- 
coming too great for her neighbours, is a 
system purely defensive, and directed to- 
wards the object of universal preservation. 
It is a system which provides for the secu- 
rity of all states by balancing the force and 
opposing the interests of great ones. The 
independence of nations is the end, the ba- 
lance of power is only the means. To 
destroy independent nations, in order to 
strengthen the balance of power, is a most 
extravagant sacrifice of the end to the means. 
This inversion of all the principles of the 
ancient and beautiful system of Europe, is 
the fundamental maxim of what the Noble 
Lord, enriching our language with foreign 
phrases as well as doctrines, calls "a repar- 
tition of power." In the new system, small 
states aie annihilated by a combination of 
great ones: — in the old, small states were 
secured by the mutual jealousy of the great. 

The Noble Lord very consistently treats 
the re-establishment of small states as an 
absurdity. This single tenet betrays the 
school in which he has studied. Undoubt- 
edly, small communities are an absurdity, 
or rather their permanent existence is an im- 
possibility, on his new system. They could 
have had no existence in the continual con- 
quests of Asia ; — they were soon destroyed 
amidst the turbulence of the Grecian con- 
federacy : — they must be sacrificed on the 
system of rapine established at Vienna. — 
Nations powerful enough to defend them- 
selves, may subsist securely in most tolera- 
ble conditions of society: but states too 
small to be safe by their own strength, can 
exist only where they are guarded by the 
equilibrium of force, and the vigilance which 
watches over its preservation. When the 
Noble Lord represents small states as inca- 
pable of self-defence, he in truth avows that 
he is returned in triumph from the destruc- 
tion of that system of the Balance of Power, 
of which indeed great empires were the 
guardians, but of which the perfect action was 
indicated by the security of feebler common- 
wealths. Under this system, no great viola- 
tion of national independence had occurred 
from the first civilization of the European 
states till the partition of Poland. The safety 
of the feeblest states, under the authority of 
justice, was so great, that there seemed little 
exaggeration in calling such a society the 
"commonwealth" of Europe. Principles, 
which stood in the stead of laws and magis- 
trates, provided for the security of defence- 
less communities, as perfectly as the safety 
of die humblest individual is maintained in a 
well-ordered commonwealth. Europe can 
no longer be called a commonwealth, when 
her members have no safety but in their 
strength. 

In truth, the Balancing system is itself 
only a secondary guard of national indepen- 
dence. The paramount principle — the mov- 
ing power, without which all such machinery 
2t2 



522 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



would be perfectly inert, is national spirit. 
The love of country, the attachment to laws 
and government, and even to soil and scene- 
ry, the feelings of national glory in arms and 
arts, the remembrances of common triumph 
and common suffering, with the mitigated 
but not obliterated recollection of common 
enmity, and the jealousy of dangerous neigh- 
bours, — all are instruments employed by na- 
ture to draw more closely the bands of affec- 
tion that bind us to our country and to each 
other. This is the only principle by which 
sovereigns can, in the hour of danger, rouse 
the minds of their subjects: — without it the 
policy of the Balancing system would be 
impotent. 

The Congress of Vienna seems, indeed, to 
have adopted every part of the French sys- 
tem, except that they have transferred the 
dictatorship of Europe from an individual to 
a triumvirate. One of the grand and parent 
errors of the French Revolution was the fatal 
opinion that it was possible for human skill 
to make a government. It was an error too 
generally prevalent, not to be excusable. — 
The American Revolution had given it a fal- 
lacious semblance of support; though no 
event in history more clearly showed its 
falsehood. The system of laws, and the 
frame of society in North America, remain- 
ed after the Revolution, and remain to this 
day, fundamentally the same as they ever 
were. The change in America, like the 
change in 1688, was made in defence of 
legal right, not in pursuit of political improve- 
ment ; and it was limited by the necessity 
of self-defence which produced it. The 
whole internal order remained, which had 
always been essentially republican. The 
somewhat slender tie which loosely joined 
these republics to a monarchy, was easily 
and without violence divided. But the error 
of the French Revolutionists was, in 1789, 
the error of Europe. From that error we 
have been long reclaimed by fatal experi- 
ence. We know, or rather we have seen 
and felt, that a government is not, like a 
machine or a building, the work of man ; 
that it is the work of nature, like the nobler 
productions of the vegetable and animal 
world, which man may improve, and damage. 
and even destroy, but which he cannot cre- 
ate. We have long learned to despise the 
ignorance or the hypocrisy of those who 
speak of giving a free constitution to a peo- 
ple, and to exclaim with a great living poet — 

" A gift of that which never can be given 

By all the blended powers of earth and heaven !" 

We have, perhaps, — as usual, — gone too 
near to the opposite error, and we do not 
make sufficient allowances for those dread- 
ful cases — though we must not call them 
desperate, — where, in long enslaved coun- 
tries, we must either humbly and cautiously 
labour to lay some foundations from which 
the fabric of liberty may slowly rise, or ac- 
quiesce in the doom of perpetual bondage. 

But though we no longer dream of making 



governments, the confederacy of kings seem 
to feel no doubt of their own power to make 
nations. Yet the only reason why it is im- 
possible to make a government is, because 
it is impossible to make a nation. A govern- 
ment cannot be made, because its whole 
spirit and principles arise from the character 
of the nation. There would be no difficulty 
in framing a government, if the habits of a 
people could be changed by a lawgiver; — if 
he could obliterate their recollections, trans- 
fer their attachment and reverence, extin- 
guish their animosities, and correct those 
sentiments which, being at variance with his 
opinions of public interest, he calls preju- 
dices. Now, this is precisely the power 
which our statesmen at Vienna have arro- 
gated to themselves. They not only form 
nations, but they compose them of elements 
apparently the most irreconcilable. They 
made one nation out of Norway and Sweden : 
they tried to make another out of Prussia 
and Saxony. They have, in the present 
case, forced together Piedmont and Genoa 
to form a nation which is to guard the ave- 
nues of Italy, and to be one of the main 
securities of Europe against universal mo- 
narchy. 

It was not the pretension of the ancient 
system to form states, — to divide territory 
according to speculations of military conve- 
nience, — and to unite and dissolve nations 
better than the course of events had done 
before. It was owned to be still more diffi- 
cult to give a new constitution to Europe, 
than to form a new constitution for a single 
state. The great statesmen of former times 
did not speak of their measures as the Noble 
Lord did about the incorporation of Belgium 
with Holland (against which I say nothing), 
'•'as a great improvement in the system of 
Europe.''' That is the language only of 
those who revolutionise that system by a 
partition like that of Poland, by the establish- 
ment of the Federation of the Rhine at Paris, 
or by the creation of new states at Vienna. 
The ancient principle was to preserve all 
those states which had been founded by 
time and nature, — which were animated by 
national spirit, and distinguished by the di- 
versity of character which gave scope to 
every variety of talent and virtue, — whose 
character had been often preserved, and 
whose nationality had been even created, by 
those very irregularities of frontier and in- 
equalities of strength, of which a shallow 
policy complains; — to preserve all those 
states, down to the smallest, first, by their 
own national spirit, and, secondly, by that 
mutual jealousy which made every great 
power the opponent of the dangerous ambi- 
tion of every other. Its object was to pre- 
serve nations, as living bodies produced by 
the hand of nature — not to form artificial dead 
machines, called "states," by the words and 
parchment of a diplomatic act. Under this 
ancient system, which secured the weak by 
the jealousy of the strong, provision was made 
alike for the permanency of civil institutions, 



ON THE ANNEXATION OF GENOA. 



523 



the stability of governments, the progressive 
reformation of laws and constitutions. — for 
combining the general quiet with the high- 
est activity and energy of the human mifld, 
— for uniting the benefits both of rivalship 
and of friendship between nations, — for cul- 
tivating the moral sentiments of men, by the 
noble spectacle of the long triumph of jus- 
tice in the security of the defenceless, — and, 
finally, for maintaining uniform civilization 
by the struggle as well as union of all the 
moral and intellectual combinations which 
compose that vast and various mass. It 
effected these noble purposes, not .merely by 
securing Europe against one master, but by 
securing her against any union or conspiracy 
of sovereignty, which, as long as it lasts, is 
in no respect better than the domination of 
an individual. The object of the new sys- 
tem is to crush the weak by the combination 
of the strong, — to subject Europe, in the first 
place, to an oligarchy of sovereigns, and ulti- 
mately to swallow it up in the gulf of uni- 
versal monarchy, in which civilization has 
always perished, with freedom of thought, 
with controlled power, with national cha- 
racter and spirit, with patriotism and emu- 
lation, — in a word, with all its characteristic 
attributes, and with all its guardian princi- 
ples. 

I am content, Sir, that these observations 
should be thought wholly unreasonable by 
those new masters of civil wisdom, who tell 
us that the whole policy of Europe consists 
in strengthening the right flank of Prussia, 
and the left flank of Austria, — who see in 
that wise and venerable system, long the 
boast and the safeguard of Europe, only the 
millions of souls to be given to one Power, 
or the thousands of square miles to be given 
to another, — who consider the frontier of a 
river as a better protection for a country than 
the love of its inhabitants, — and who pro- 
vide for the safety of their states by wound- 
ing the pride and mortifying the patriotic af- 
fection of a people, in order to fortify a line 
of military posts. To such statesmen I will 
apply the words of the great philosophical 
orator, who so long vainly laboured to incul- 
cate wisdom in this House : — '■' All this, I 
know well enough, will sound wild and chi- 
merical to the profane herd of those vulgar 
and mechanical politicians who have no place 
among us ; a sort of people who think that 
nothing exists but what is gross and material ; 
and who. therefore, far from being qualified 
to be directors of the great movement of em- 
pire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the ma- 
chine. But to men truly initiated and right- 
ly taught, these ruling and master principles, 
which, in the opinion of such men as I have 
mentioned, have no substantial existence, 
are in truth every thing, and all in all." 
This great man, in the latter part of his life, 
and when his opinions were less popular, 
was often justly celebrated for that spirit of 
philosophical prophecy which enabled him 
early to discern in their causes all the mis- 
fortunes which the leaders of the French 



Revolution were to bring on the world by 
their erroneous principles of reformation, — 
"quod ille pene solus Romanorum anirno 
vidit. ingenio complexus est, eloquentia illu- 
minavit :" but it has been remembered, that 
his foresight was not limited to one party or 
to one source of evil. In one of his immortal 
writings,* — of which he has somewhat con- 
cealed the durable instruction by the tempo- 
rary title, — he clearly enough points out the 
first scene of partition and rapine — the in- 
demnifications granted out of the spoils of 
Germany in 1802: — "I see, indeed, a fund 
from whence equivalents will be proposed. 
It opens another Iliad of woes to Europe." 

The policy 7 of a conqueror is to demolish, 
to erect on new foundations, to bestow new 
names on authority, and to render every 
power around him as new as his own. The 
policy of a restorer is to re-establish, to 
strengthen, cautiously to improve, and to 
seem to recognise and confirm even that 
which necessity compels him to establish 
anew. But, in our times, the policy of the 
avowed conqueror has been adopted by the 
pretended restorers. The most minute par- 
ticulars of the system of Napoleon are re- 
vived in the acts of those who overthrew 7 his 
power. Even English officers, when they 
are compelled to carry such orders into exe- 
cution, become infected by the spirit of the 
system of which they are doomed to be the 
ministers. I cannot read without pain and 
shame the language of Sir John Dalrymple's 
Despatch, — language which I lament as in- 
consistent with the feelings of a British offi- 
cer, and with the natural prejudices of a 
Scotch gentleman. I wish that he had not 
adopted the very technical language of Jaco- 
bin conquest, — " the downfall of the aristo- 
cracy/' and "the irritation of the priests." 
I do not think it very decent to talk with 
levity of the destruction of a sovereignty ex- 
ercised for six centuries by one of the most 
ancient and illustrious bodies of nobility in 
Europe. 

Italy is, perhaps, of all civilized countries, 
that which affords the most signal example 
of the debasing power of provincial depend- 
ence, and of a foreign yoke. With independ- 
ence, and with national spirit, they have lost, 
if not talent, at least the moral and dignified, 
use of talent, which constitutes its only 
worth. Italy alone seemed to derive some 
hope of independence from those convul- 
sions which had destroyed that of other 
nations. The restoration of Europe annihi- 
lated the hopes of Italy : — the emancipation 
of other countries announced her bondage. 
Stern necessity compelled us to suffer the 
re-establishment of foreign masters in the 
greater part of that renowned and humiliated 
country. But as to Genoa, our hands were 
unfettered • we were at liberty to be just, or, 
if you will, to be generous. We had in our 
hands the destiny of the last of that great 
body of republics which united the ancient 

* Second Letter on a Regicide Peace. — Ed. 



524 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



and the modern world. — the children and 
heirs of Roman civilisation, who spread com- 
merce, and with it refinement, liberty, and 
humanity over Western Europe, and whose 
history has lately been rescued from obli- 
vion, and disclosed to our times, by the 
greatest of living historians.* I hope I shall 
not be thought fanciful when I say that 
Genoa, whose greatness was founded on na- 
val power, and which, in the earliest ages, 
gave the almost solitary example of a com- 
mercial gentry, — Genoa, the remnant of 
Italian liberty, and the only remaining hope 
of Italian independence, had peculiar claims 
— to say no more — on the generosity of the 
British nation. How have these claims been 
satisfied ? She has been sacrificed to a fri- 
volous, a doubtful, perhaps an imaginary, 
speculation of convenience. The most odi- 
ous of foreign yokes has been imposed upon 
her by a free state, — by a people whom she 
never injured, — after she had been mocked 
by the re-appearance of her ancient govern- 
ment, and by all the ensigns and badges of 
her past glory. And after all this, she has 
been told to be grateful for the interest which 
the Government of England has taken in her 
fate. By this confiscation of the only Italian 
territory which was at the disposal of justice, 
the doors of hope have been barred on Italy 
for ever. No English general can ever again 
deceive Italians. 

Will the House decide that all this is right ? 
— That is the question which you have now 
lo decide. To vote with me, it is not neces- 
sary to adopt my opinions in their full extent. 
All who think that the national faith has 
been brought into question; — all who think 
that there has been an unprecedented ex- 
tension, or an ungenerous exercise of the 
rights of conquest, — are, I humbly conceive, 

* Sismondi. 



bound to express their disapprobation by 
their votes. We are on the eve of a new 
war. — perhaps only the first of a long series,,, 
— in which there must be conquests and ces- 
sions, and there may be hard and doubtful 
exertions of rights in their best state suffi- 
ciently odious: — I call upon the House to 
interpose their council for the future in the 
form of an opinion regarding the past. I 
hope that I do not yield to any illusive feel- 
ings of national vanity, when I say that 
this House is qualified to speak the senti- 
ments of mankind, and to convey them with 
authority to cabinets and thrones. Single 
among representative assemblies, this House 
is now in the seventh century of its recorded 
existence. It appeared with the first dawn 
of legal government. It exercised its high- 
est powers under the most glorious princes. 
It survived the change of a religion, and the 
extinction of a nobility, — the fall of Royal 
Houses, and an age of civil war. Depressed 
for a moment by the tyrannical power which. 
is the usual growth of civil confusions, it 
revived with the first glimpse of tranquillity, 
— gathered strength from the intrepidity of 
religious reformation, — grew with the know- 
ledge, and flourished with the progressive 
wealth of the people. After having expe- 
rienced the excesses of the spirit of liberty 
during the Civil War, and of the spirit of loy- 
alty at the Restoration, it was at length finally 
established at the glorious era of the Revolu- 
tion ; and although since that immortal event 
it has experienced little change in its formal 
constitution, and perhaps no accession of le- 
gal power, it has gradually cast its roots deep 
and wide, blending itself with every branch 
of the government, and every institution of 
society, and has, at length, become the grand- 
est example ever seen among men of a solid 
and durable representation of the people of 
a mighty empire. 



SPEECH 

ON MOVING FOR A COMMITTEE TO INQUIRE INTO 

THE STATE OF THE CRIMINAL LAW, 

DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, ON THE 2d MARCH, 1819.* 



Mr. Speaker, — I now rise, in pursuance of 
the notice which I gave, to bring before the 

* This speech marks an epoch in the progress 
of the reformation of the Criminal Law, inasmuch 
as the motion with which it concluded, though op- 
posed by Lord Castlereagh, with all the force of 
the Government, under cover of a professed en- 
largement of its principle, was carried by a ma- 
jority of nineteen in a House of two hundred and 
seventy-five members. — Ed. 



House a motion for the appointment of a Se- 
lect Committee "to consider of so much of the 
Criminal Laws as relates to Capital Punish- 
ment in Felonies, and to report their obser- 
vations and opinions thereon to the House." 
And I should have immediately proceeded 
to explain the grounds and objects of such 
a motion, which is almost verbatim the same 
as a resolution entered on the Journals in the 
year 1770, when authority was delegated to 



ON THE STATE OF THE CRIMINAL LAW. 



525 



a committee for the same purpose, — I should 
have proceeded, I say, to state at once why 
I think such an inquiry necessary, had it 
not been for some concessions made by the 
Noble Lord* last night, which tend much to 
narrow the grounds of difference betwei a 
US, and to simplify the question before the 
House. If I considered the only subject of 
discussion to be that which exists between 
the Noble Lord and myself, it would be re- 
duced to this narrow compass ; — namely, 
whether the Noble Lord's proposal or mine 
be the more convenient for the conduct of 
the same inquiry; but as every member 
in this House is a party to the question, I 
must make an observation or two on the 
Noble Lord's statements. 

If I understood him rightly, he confesses 
that the growth of crime, and the state of 
the Criminal Law in this country, call for in- 
vestigation, and proposes that these subjects 
shall be investigated by a Select Committee; 
— this I also admit to be the most expedient 
course. He expressly asserts also his dispo- 
sition to make the inquiry as extensive as I 
wish it to be. As far, therefore, as he is 
concerned, I am relieved from the necessity 
of proving that an inquiry is necessary, that 
the appointment of a Select Committee is 
the proper course of proceeding in it, and that 
such inquiry ought to be extensive. I am 
thus brought to the narrower question, Whe- 
ther the committee of the Noble Lord, or 
that which I propose, be the more conve- 
nient instrument for conducting an inquiry 
into the special subject to which my motion 
refers? I shall endeavour briefly to show, 
that the mode of proceeding proposed by 
him, although embracing another and very 
fit subject of inquiry, must be considered as 
precluding an inquiry into that part of the 
Criminal Law which forms the subject of 
my motion, for two reasons. 

In the first place, Sir, it is physically im- 
possible ; and, having stated that. I may per- 
haps dispense with the necessity of adding 
more. We have heard from an Honourable 
Friend of mine,t whose authority is the 
highest that can be resorted to on this sub- 
ject, that an inquiry into the state of two or 
three jails occupied a committee during a 
whole session. My Honourable Friend,; a 
magistrate of the city, has stated that an in- 
quiry into the state of the prisons of the 
Metropolis, occupied dining a whole session 
the assiduous committee over which he pre- 
sided. When, therefore, the Noble Lord 
refers to one committee not only the state of 
the Criminal Law, but that of the jails, of 
transportation, and of that little adjunct the 
hulks, he refers to it an inquiry which it can 
never conduct to an end ; — he proposes, as 
my Honourable Friend§ has said, to institute 
an investigation which must outlive a Parlia- 
ment. The Noble Lord has in fact acknow- 

* Viscount Castlereagh. — Ed. 

t The Honourable Henry Grey Bennet. — Ed. 

t Alderman Waiihman. — Ed. 

S Mr. Bennet.— Ed. 



ledged, by his proposed subdivision, that it 
would be impossible for one committee to 
inquire into all the subjects which he would 
refer to it. And this impossibility he would 
evade by an unconstitutional violation of the 
usages of the House; as you, Sir, with the 
authority due to your opinions, have declared 
the proposition for subdividing a committee 
to be. I, on the other hand, in accordance 
with ancient usage, propose that the House 
shall itself nominate these separate commit- 
tees. 

My second objection is, Sir, that the Noble 
Lord's notice, and the order made by the 
House j T esterday upon it, do not embrace the 
purpose which I have in view. To prove 
this, I might content myself with a reference 
to the very words of the instruction under 
which his proposed committee is to proceed. 
It is directed "to inquire into the state and 
description of jails, and other places of con- 
finement, and into the best method of pro- 
viding for the reformation, as well as for the 
safe custody and punishment of offenders." 
Now, what is the plain meaning of those ex- 
pressions 1 Are they not the same offenders, 
whose punishment as well as whose refor- 
mation and safe custody is contemplated ? 
And does not the instruction thus directly 
exclude the subject of Capital Punishment. 
The matter is too plain to be insisted on ; 
but must not the meaning, in any fair and 
liberal construction, be taken to be that the 
committee is to consider the reformation and 
safe custody of those offenders of whom im- 
prisonment forms the whole or the greatest 
part of the punishment ? It would be absurd 
to suppose that the question of Capital Pun- 
ishment should be made an inferior branch 
of the secondary question of imprisonments, 
and that the great subject of Criminal Law 
should skulk into the committee under the 
cover of one vague and equivocal word. On 
these grounds, Sir, I have a right to say that 
there is no comparison as to the convenience 
or the efficacy of the two modes of proceed- 
ing. 

Let us now see whether my proposition 
casts a greater censure on the existing laws 
than his. Every motion for inquiry assumes 
that inquiry is necessary, — that some evil 
exists, which may be remedied. The mo- 
tion of the Noble Lord assumes thus much; 
mine assumes no more : it casts no reflection 
on the law, or on the magistrates by whom 
it is administered. 

With respect to the question whether Se- 
condary Punishments should be inquired 
into before we dispose of the Primary, I 
have to say, that in proposing the Present 
investigation, I have not been guided by my 
own feelings, nor have I trusted entirely to 
my own judgment. My steps have been 
directed and assured by former examples. 

The first of these is the notable one in 
1750, when, in consequence of the alarm 
created by the increase of some species of 
crimes, a committee was appointed "to ex- 
amine into and consider the state of the laws 



526 



MACKINTOSH^ MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



relating to felonies, and to report to the House 
their opinion as to the defects of those laws, 
and as to the propriety of amending or re- 
pealing them." What does the Noble Lord 
say to this large reference, — this ample dele- 
gation, — this attack on the laws of our ances- 
tors ? Was it made in bad times, by men of 
no note, and of indifferent principles'? I will 
mention the persons of whom the committee 
was composed: — they were, Mr. Pelham, 
then Chancellor of the Exchequer; Mr. Pitt, 
afterwards Lord Chatham ; Mr. George 
Granville, afterwards Lord Granville : Mr. 
Lyttleton and Mr. Charles Townsend. after- 
wards Secretaries of State ; and Sir Dudley 
Ryder, the Attorney-General, afterwards 
Chief Justice of England. Those great 
lawyers and statesmen will, at least, not be 
accused of having been rash theorists, or, 
according to the new word, ' ultra-philoso- 
phers." But it will be thought remarkable 
that those great men, who were, in liberality, 
as superior to some statesmen of the present 
day. as in practical wisdom they were not 
inferior to them, found two sessions neces- 
sary for the inquiry into which they had en- 
tered. The first resolution to which those 
eminent and enlightened individuals agreed, 
Avas, "that it was reasonable to exchange 
the punishment of death for some other ade- 
quate punishment." Such a resolution is a 
little more general and extensive than that 
which I shall venture to propose : — such a 
resolution, however, did that committee, 
vested with the powers which I have already 
described, recommend to the adoption of 
the House. One circumstance, not neces- 
sarily connected with my present motion, I 
will take the liberty of mentioning : — to that 
committee the credit is due of having first 
denounced the Poor-laws as the nursery of 
crime. In this country pauperism and crime 
have always advanced in parallel lines, and 
with equal steps. That committee imputed 
much evil to the divisions among parishes on 
account of the maintenance of the poor. That 
committee too, composed of practical men as it 
was, made a statement which some practical 
statesmen of the present day will no doubt 
condemn as too large ; — namely, " that the 
increase of crime was in a great measure to 
be attributed to the neglect of the education 
of the children of the poor." A bill was 
brought in, founded on the resolutions of the 
committee, and passed this House. It was 
however negatived in the House of Lords, 
although not opposed by any of the great 
names of that day, — by any of the lumina- 
ries of that House. Lord Hardwicke, for in- 
stance, did not oppose a bill, the principal 
object of which was the substitution of hard 
labour and imprisonment for the punishment 
of death. 

In 1770, another alarm, occasioned by the 
increase of a certain species of crime, led to 
the appointment, on the 27th of November 
in that year, of another committee of the 
same kind, of which Sir Charles Saville, Sir 
Wdliam Meredith, Mr. Fox, Mr. Serjeant 



Glynn, Sir Charles Bunbury, and others, were 
members. To that committee the reference 
was nearly the same as that which I am now 
proposing ; though mine be the more con- 
tracted one. That committee was occupied 
for two years with the branch of the general 
inquiry which the Noble Lord proposes to 
ada to the already excessive labours of an 
existing committee. In the second session 
they brought their report to maturity ; and, 
on that report, a bill was introduced for the 
repeal of eight or ten statutes, which bill 
passed the House of Commons without op- 
position. I do not mean to enter into the 
minute history of that bill, which was thrown 
out in the House of Lords. It met with no 
hostility from the great ornaments of the 
House of Lords of that day, Lord Camden 
and Lord Mansfield ; but it was necessarily 
opposed by others, whom I will not name, and 
whose names will be unknown to posterity. 
Sir, it is upon these precedents that I have 
formed, and that I bring forward my motion. 
I have shown, that the step I proposed to 
take accords with the usage of Parliament 
in the best of times, but that if we follow the 
plan recommended by the Noble Lord, we 
cannot effect the purpose which we have in 
view without evading or violating the usage 
of Parliament. Accepting, therefore, his 
concession, that a committee ought to be 
appointed for this investigation, here I might 
take my stand, and challenge him to drive 
me from this giound, which, with all his 
talents, he would find some difficulty in 
doing. But I feel that there is a great differ- 
ence between our respective situations ; and 
that, although he last night contented him- 
self with stating the evils which exist, with- 
out adverting to the other essential part of 
my proposal for a Parliamentary inquiry, — 
namely, the probability of a remedy, — I must 
take a different course. Although I cannot 
say that I agree with my Honourable Friend, 
who says that a Select Committee is not the 
proper mode of investigating this subject, 
yet I agree with him that there are two 
things necessary to justify an investigation, 
whether by* a committee, or in any other 
manner : — the first is, the existence of an 
evil; the second is, the probability of a 
remedy. Far, therefore, from treating the 
sacred fabric reared by our ancestors more 
lightly, I approach it more reverently than 
does the Noble Lord. I should not have 
dared, merely on account of the number of 
offences, to institute an inquiry into the state 
of the Criminal Law, unless, while I saw the 
defects, I had also within view, not the cer- 
tainty of a remedy (for that would be too 
much to assert), but some strong probability, 
that the law may be rendered more effi- 
cient, and a check be given to that which 
has alarmed all good men, — the increase of 
crime. While I do what I think it was the 
bound en duty of the Noble Lord to have 
done, I trust I shall not be told that I am a 
rash speculator, — that I am holding out im- 
punity to criminals, or foreshadowing what 



ON THE STATE OF THE CRIMINAL LAW. 



527 



he is pleased to call "a golden age for 
crime." Sir Dudley Ryder, at the head of 
the criminal jurisprudence of the country, 
and Serjeant Glynn, the Recorder of Loudon, 
— an office that unhappily has the most ex- 
tensive experience of the administration of 
Criminal Law in the world. — both believed 
a remedy to the evil in question to be prac- 
ticable, and recommended it as necessary) 
and under any general reprobation which 
the Noble Lord may apply to such men, I 
shall not be ashamed to be included. 

I must now, Sir, mention what my object 
is not, in order to obviate the misapprehen- 
sions of over-zealous supporters, and the 
misrepresentations of desperate opponents. 
I do not propose to form a new criminal code. 
Altogether to abolish a system of law, admi- 
rable in its principle, interwoven with the 
habits of the English people, and under 
which they have long and happily lived, is a 
proposition very remote from my notions of 
legislation, and would be too extravagant and 
ridiculous to be for a moment listened to. 
Neither is it my intention to propose the 
abolition of the punishment of death. I hold 
the right of inflicting that punishment to be 
a part of the rights of self-defence, with 
which society as well as individuals are en- 
dowed. I hold it to be, like all other pun- 
ishments, an evil when unnecessary, but, 
like any other evil employed to remedy a 
greater evii, capable of becoming a good. 
Nor do I wish to take away the right of par- 
don from the Crown. On the contrary, my 
object is, to restore to the Crown the practical 
use of that right, of which the usage of 
modern times has nearly deprived it. 

The declaration may appear singular, but 
I do not aim at realising any universal prin- 
ciple. My object is, to bring the letter of 
the law more near to its practice, — to make 
the execution of the law form the rule, and 
the remission of its penalties the exception. 
Although I do not expect that a system of 
law can be so graduated, that it can be ap- 
plied to every case without the intervention 
of a discretionary power, I hope to see an 
effect produced on the vicious, by the steady 
manner in which the law shall be enforced. 
The main part of the reform which I should 
propose would be, to transfer to the statute 
book the improvements which the wisdom 
of modern times has introduced into the prac- 
tice of the law. But I must add, that even 
in the case of some of that practice with 
which the feelings of good men are not in uni- 
son, I should propose such a reform as would 
correct that anomaly. It is one of the greatest 
evils which can befall a country when the 
Criminal Law and the virtuous feeling of the 
community are in hostility to each other. 
They cannot be long at variance without in- 
jury to one, — perhaps to both. One of my 
objects is to approximate them ; — to make 
good men the anxious supporters of the 
Criminal Law, and to restore, if it has been 
injured, that zealous attachment to the law 
in general, which, even in the most tempes- 



tuous times of our history, has distinguished 
the people of England among the nations of 
the world. 

Having made these few general remarks, 
I will now, Sir, enter into a few illustrative 
details. It is not my intention to follow the 
Noble Lord in his inquiry into the causes of 
the increase of crimes. I think that his 
statement last night was in the main just and 
candid. I agree with him. that it is consola- 
tory to remark, that the crimes in which so 
rapid an increase has been observable, are 
not those of the blackest die, or of the most 
ferocious character; that they are not those 
which would the most deeply stain and dis- 
honour the ancient moral character of Eng- 
lishmen ; that they are crimes against pro- 
perty alone, and are to be viewed as the 
result of the distresses, rather than of the 
depravity of the community. I also firmly 
believe, that some of the causes of increased 
crime are temporary. But the Noble Lord 
and I. while we agree in this proposition, are 
thus whimsically situated : — he does not 
think that some of these causes are tempo- 
rary which I conceive to be so ; vrfiile, on 
the other hand, he sets down some as tem- 
porary, which I believe to be permanent. 
As to the increase of forgery, for example 
(which I mention only by way of illustra- 
tion), I had hoped that when cash payments 
should be restored, that crime would be di- 
minished. But the Noble Lord has taken 
pains to dissipate that delusion, by asserting 
that the withdrawal of such a mass of paper 
from circulation would be attended with no 
such beneficial consequences. According to 
him, the progress of the country in manu- 
factures and wealth, is one of the principal 
causes of crime. But is our progress in manu- 
factures and wealth to be arrested ? Does 
the Noble Lord imagine, that there exists a 
permanent and augmenting cause of crime, 
— at once increasing with our prosperity, and 
undermining it through its effects on the 
morals of the people. According to him, the 
increase of great cities would form another 
cause of crime. This cause, at least, can- 
not diminish, for great cities are the natural 
consequences of manufacturing and com- 
mercial greatness. In speaking, however, 
of the population of London, he has fallen 
into an error. Although London is positively 
larger now than it was in 1700, it is rela- 
tively smaller : — although it has since that 
time become the greatest commercial city 
in Europe, — the capital of an empire whose 
colonies extend over every quarter of the 
world, — London is not so populous now, with 
reference to the population of the whole 
kingdom, as it was in the reign of William III. 
It is principally to those causes of crime, 
which arise out of errors in policy or legisla 
tion, that I wish to draw the attention of 
Parliament. Among other subjects, it may 
be a question whether the laws for the pro 
tection of the property called "game," have 
not created a clandestine traffic highly injuri- 
ous to the morals of the labouring classes. I 



528 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



am happy to find that that subject is to be 
taken up by my Honourable Friend the 
Member for Hertfordshire,* who will draw 
to it the attention which every proposition of 
his deserves. A smuggling traffic of another 
species, although attended with nearly the 
same effects, has been fostered by some of 
the existing laws relating to the revenue. I 
would propose no diminution of revenue, for 
unfortunately we can spare none : but there 
are some taxes which produce no revenue, 
and which were never intended to produce 
any, but which are, nevertheless, very detri- 
mental. The cumbrous system of draw- 
backs, and protecting duties, is only a bounty 
on smuggling. Poachers and smugglers are 
the two bodies from which malefactors are 
principally recruited. The state which does 
not seek to remedy these diseases, is guilty 
-of its own destruction. 

Another subject I must mention : for, 
viewing it as I do, it would be unpardonable 
to omit it. On examining the summary of 
crimes which has been laid on the table, it 
appears that it was in 1808 that the great 
increase of crime took place. The number 
of crimes since that time has never fallen 
below the number of that year: although 
subsequent years have varied among one 
another. But it is extremely remarkable, 
and is, indeed, a most serious and alarming 
fact, that the year 1808 was precisely the 
period when the great issues of the Bank of 
England began. As it has been observed 
in the " Letter to the Right Honourable Mem- 
ber for the University of Oxford,"t a work 
which has been already mentioned in this 
House (the authort of which, although he 
has 1 concealed his name, cannot conceal his 
talents, and his singular union of ancient 
learning with modern science), it was at that 
time that pauperism and poor rates increased. 
Pauperism and crime, as I have before said. 
go hand in hand. Both were propelled by 
the immense issues of Bank paper in 1808. 
By those issues the value of the one-pound 
note was reduced to fourteen shillings. Every 
labourer, by he knew not what mysterious 
power, — by causes which he could not dis- 
cover or comprehend, — found his wages di- 
minished at least in the proportion of a third. 
No enemy had ravaged the country ; no in- 
clement season had blasted the produce of 
the soil ; but his comforts were curtailed, 
and his enjoyments destroyed by the opera- 
tion of the paper system, which was to him 
like the workings of a malignant fiend, that 
could be traced only in their effects. Can 
any one doubt that this diminution of the 
income of so many individuals, from the 
highest to the lowest classes of society, was 
one of the chief sources of the increase of 
crime 1 

There is one other secondary cause of 
crime, which I hope we have at length se- 

* The Honourable Thomas Brand. — Ed. 
t The Right Honourable Robert Peel.— Ed. 
J The Rev. Edward Copleston (now Bishop of 
LlandafT).— Ed. 



riously determined to remove ; — I mean the 
state of our prisons. They never were fitted 
for reformation by a wise system of disci- 
pline: but that is now become an inferior 
subject of complaint. Since the number of 
criminals have out-grown the size of our 
prisons, comparatively small offenders have 
been trained in them to the contemplation 
of atrocious crime. Happily this terrible 
source of evil is more than any other within 
our reach. Prison discipline may fail in re- 
forming offenders : but it is our own fault if 
it further corrupts them. 

But the main ground which I take is this, — 
that the Criminal Law is not so efficacious as 
it might be, if temperate and prudent altera- 
tions in it were made. It is well known that 
there are two hundred capital felonies on the 
statute book : but it may not be so familiar 
to the House, that by the Returns for London 
and Middlesex, it appears that from 1749 to 
1819, a term of seventy years, there are only 
twenty-five sorts of felonies for which any 
individuals have been executed. So that 
there are a hundred and seventy-five capital 
felonies respecting which the punishment or- 
dained by various statutes has not been in- 
flicted. In the thirteen years since 1805, it 
appears that there are only thirty descrip- 
tions of felonies on which there have been 
any capital convictions throughout England 
and Wales. So that there area hundred and 
seventy felonies created by law, on which 
not one capital conviction has taken place. 
This rapidly increasing discordance between 
the letter and the practice of the Criminal 
Law, arose in the best times of our history, 
and, in ray opinion, out of one of its most 
glorious and happy events. As I take it, the 
most important consequence of the Revolu- 
tion of 1688, was the establishment in this 
country of a Parliamentary government. 
That event, however, has been attended by 
one inconvenience — the unhappy facility af- 
forded to legislation. Every Member of Par- 
liament has had it in his power to indulge 
his whims and caprices on that subject ; and 
if he could not do any thing else, he could 
create a capital felony ! The anecdotes 
which I have heard of this shameful and 
injurious facility, I am almost ashamed to 
repeat. Mr. Burke once told me, that on a 
certain occasion, when he was leaving the 
House, one of the messengers called him 
back, and on his saying that he was going on 
urgent business, replied, " Oh ! it will not 
keep you a single moment, it is only a felony 
without benefit of clergy !" He also assured 
me, that although, as may be imagined, from 
his political career, he was not often entitled 
to ask favour from the ministry of the day, 
he was persuaded that his interest was at 
any time good enough to obtain their assent 
to the creation of a felony without benefit 
of clergy. This facility of granting an in- 
crease of the severity of the law to every 
proposer, with the most impartial disregard 
of political considerations, — this unfortunate 
facility, arose at a time when the humane 



ON THE STATE OF THE CRIMINAL LAW. 



529 



feelings of the country were only yet ripen- 
ing amidst the diffusion of knowledge. Hence 
originated the final separation between the 
letter and the practice of the law ; for both 
the government and the nation revolted from 
the execution of laws which were regarded, 
not as the results of calm deliberation or 
consummate wisdom, but rather as the fruit 
of a series of perverse and malignant acci- 
dents, impelling the adoption of temporary 
and short-sighted expedients. The reve- 
rence, therefore, generally due to old esta- 
blishments, cannot belong to such laws. 

This most singular, and most injurious op- 
position of the legislative enactments, and 
their judicial enforcement, has repeatedly 
attracted the attention of a distinguished in- 
dividual, who unites in himself every quality 
that could render him one of the greatest 
ornaments of this House, and whom, as he 
is no longer a member, I may be permitted 
to name, — I mean Sir William Grant, — a man 
who can never be mentioned by those who 
know him without the expression of their 
admiration — a man who is an honour, not 
merely to the profession which he has adorn- 
ed but to the age in which he lives — a man 
who is at once the greatest master of reason 
and of the power of enforcing it, — whose 
sound judgment is accompanied by the most 
perspicuous comprehension, — whose views, 
especially on all subjects connected with 
legislation, or the administration of the law, 
are directed by the profoundest wisdom, — 
whom no one ever approaches without feel- 
ing his superiority, — who only wants the two 
vices of ostentation and ambition (vices con- 
temned by the retiring simplicity and noble 
modesty of his nature) to render his high 
talents and attainments more popularly at- 
tractive. We have his authority for the 
assertion, that the principle of the Criminal 
Law is diametrically opposite to its practice. 
On one occasion particularly, when his atten- 
tion was called to the subject, he declared it 
to be impossible "(hat both the law and the 
practice could be right: that the toleration 
of such discord was an anomaly that ought 
to be removed ; and that, as the law might 
be brought to an accordance with the prac- 
tice, but the practice could never be brought 
to an accordance with the law, the law 
ought to be altered for a wiser and more 
humane system." At another time, the same 
eminent individual used the remarkable ex- 
pression, u that during the last century, there 
had been a general confederacy of prosecu- 
tors, witnesses, counsel, juries, judges, and 
the advisers of the Crown, to prevent the 
execution of the Criminal Law." Is it fitting 
that a system should continue which the 
whole body of the intelligent community 
combine to resist, as a disgrace to our nature 
and nation 1 

Sir, I feel that I already owe much to the 
indulgence of the House, and I assure you 
that I shall be as concise as the circum- 
stances of the case, important as it confess- 
edly is, will allow ; and more especially in 
67 



the details attendant upon it. The Noble 
Lord last night dwelt much upon the conse- 
quences of a transition from war to peace in 
the multiplication of crimes; but, upon con- 
sulting experience, I do not find that his 
position is borne out. It is not true that 
crime always diminishes during a state of 
war, or that it always increases after its con- 
clusion. In the Seven-Years' War, indeed, 
the number of crimes was augmented, — 
decreasing after its termination. They were 
more numerous in the seven years preceding 
the American War, and continued to advance, 
not only during those hostilities, but, I am 
ready to admit, after the restoration of peace. 
It is, however, quite correct to state, that 
there was no augmentation of crime which 
much outran the progress of population until 
within about the last twenty, and more es- 
pecially within the last ten years; and that 
the augmentation which has taken place is 
capable of being accounted for, without any 
disparagement to the ancient and peculiar 
probity of the British character. 

As to the variations which have taken 
place in the administration of the law, with 
respect to the proportion of the executions 
to the convictions, some of them have cer- 
tainly been remarkable. Under the various 
administrations of the supreme office of the 
law, down to the time of Lord Thurlow, the 
proportion of executions to convictions was 
for the most part uniform. Lord Rosslyn 
was the first Chancellor under whose admi- 
nistration a great diminution of executions, 
as compared with convictions, is to be re- 
marked ; and this I must impute, not only to 
the gentle disposition of that distinguished 
lawyer, but to the liberality of those princi- 
ples which, however unfashionable they may 
now have become, were dfctertained by his 
early connexions. Under Lord Rosslyn's 
administration of the law, the proportion of 
executions was diminished to one in eight, 
one in nine, and finally as low as one in 
eleven. 

But, Sir, to the Noble Lord's argument, 
grounded on the diminution in the number 
of executions, I wish to say a few words. 
[f we divide crimes into various sorts, sepa- 
rating the higher from the inferior offences, 
we shall rind, that with respect to the smaller 
felonies, the proportion of executions to con- 
victions has been one in twenty, one in thirty, 
and in one year, only one in sixty. In the 
higher felonies (with the exception of bur- 
glary and robbery, which are peculiarly cir- 
cumstanced) the law has been uniformly 
executed. The Noble Lord's statement, 
therefore, is applicable only to the first-men- 
tioned class; and a delusion would be the 
result of its being applied unqualifiedly to 
the whole criminal code. 

For the sake of clearness, I will divide 
the crimes against which our penal code 
denounces capital punishments into three 
classes. In the first of these I include mur- 
der, and murderous offences, or such offences 
as are likelv to lead to murder, such as shoot- 
2U 



530 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



ing or stabbing, with a view to the malicious 
destruction of human life : — in these cases 
the law is invariably executed. In the se- 
cond class appear arson, highway-robbery, 
piracy, and other offences, to the number of 
nine or ten. which it is not necessary, and 
which it would be painful, to specify: — on 
these, at present, the law is carried" into 
effect in a great many instances. In these 
two first divisions I will admit, for the pre- 
sent, that it would be unsafe to propose any 
alteration. Many of the crimes compre- 
hended in them ought to be punished with 
death. Whatever attacks the life or the 
dwelling of man deserves such a punish- 
ment ; and I am persuaded that a patient and 
calm investigation would remove the objec- 
tions of a number of well-meaning persons 
who are of a contrary opinion.* 

But looking from these offences at the head 
of the criminal code to the other extremity 
of it, I there find a third class of offences, — 
some connected with frauds of various kinds, 
but others of the most frivolous and fantastic 
description, — amounting in number to about 
one hundred and fifty, against which the 
punishment of death is still denounced by 
the law, although never carried into effect. 
Indeed, it would be most absurd to suppose 
that an execution would in such cases be 
now tolerated, when one or two instances 
even in former times excited the disgust and 
horror of all good men. There can be no 
doubt — even the Noble Lord, I apprehend, 
will not dispute — that such capital felonies 
should be expunged from our Statute Book 
as a disgrace to it. Can any man think, for 
instance, that such an offence as that of 
cutting down a hop vine or a young tree in a 
gentleman's pleasure ground should remain 
punishable with death'? The "Black Act," 
as it is called, alone created about twenty- 
one capital felonies, — some of them of the 
most absurd description. Bearing particular 
weapons, — having the face blackened at 
night, — and being found disguised upon the 
high road, — were some of them. So that if 
a gentleman is going to a masquerade, and 
is obliged to pass along a highway, he is 
liable, if detected, to be hanged without 
benefit of clergy ! Who, again, can endure 
the idea that- a man is exposed to the punish- 
ment of death for such an offence as cutting 
the head of a fish-pond % Sir. there are many 
more capital felonies of a similar nature, 
which are the relics of barbarous times, and 
which are disgraceful to the character of a 
thinking and enlightened people. For such 
offences punishments quite adequate and 
sufficiently numerous would remain. It is 
undoubtedly true, that for the last seventy 
years no capital punishment has been inflict- 
ed for such offences ; the statutes denouncing 
them are therefore needless. And I trust I 
shall never live to see the day when any 

* This passage is left intact on account of the 
momentous nature of its subject-matter, but the 
speaker has evidently been here too loosely re- 
ported. — Ed. 



member of this House will rise and maintain 
that a punishment avowedly needless ought 
to be continued. 

The debatable ground on this subject is 
afforded by a sort of middle class of offences, 
consisting of larcenies and frauds of a hei- 
nous kind, although not accompanied with 
violence and terror. It is no part of my pro- 
posal to take away the discretion which is 
reposed in the judicial authorities respecting 
these offences. Nothing in my mind would 
be more imprudent than to establish an un- 
deviating rule of law, — a rule that in many 
cases would have a more injurious and un- 
just operation than can easily be imagined. 
I do not, therefore, propose in any degree to 
interfere with the discretion of the judges, in 
cases in which the punishment of death 
ought, under certain aggravated circum- 
stances, to attach, but only to examine whe- 
ther or not it is fit that death should remain 
as the punishment expressly directed by the 
law for offences, which in its administration 
are never, even under circumstances of the 
greatest aggravation, more severely pun- 
ished than with various periods of trans- 
portation. 

It is impossible to advert to the necessity 
of reforming this part of the law, without 
calling to mind the efforts of that highly 
distinguished and universally lamented indi- 
vidual, by whom the attention of Parliament 
was so often roused to the subject of our 
penal code. Towards that excellent man I 
felt all the regard which a friendship of 
twenty years' duration naturally inspired, 
combined with the respect which his emi- 
nently superior understanding irresistibly 
claimed. But I need not describe his me- 
rits ; to them ample justice has been already 
done by the unanimous voice of the Empire, 
seconded by the opinion of all the good men 
of all nations, — and especially by the eulo- 
gium of the Honourable Member for Bram- 
ber,* whose kindred virtues and kindred 
eloquence enable him justly to appreciate 
the qualities of active philanthropy and pro- 
found wisdom. I trust the House will bear 
with me if, while touching on this subject, I 
cannot restrain myself from feebly express- 
ing my admiration for the individual by whose 
benevolent exertions it has been consecrated. 
There was, it is well known, an extraordinary 
degree of original sensibility belonging to the 
character of my lamented Friend, combined 
with the greatest moral purity, and inflexi- 
bility of public principle : but yet, with these 
elements, it is indisputably true, that his 
conduct as a statesman was always con- 
trolled by a sound judgment, duly and de- 
liberately weighing every consideration of 
legislative expediency and practical policy. 
This was remarkably shown in his exertions 
respecting the criminal code. In his endea- 
vours to rescue his country from the disgrace 
arising out of the character of that code, he 
never indulged in any visionary views ; — he 

* Mr. Wilberforce. — Ed. 



ON THE STATE OF THE CRIMINAL LAW. 



m 



was at once humane and just, — generous and 
wise. With all that ardour of temperament 
with which he unceasingly pursued the pub- 
lic good, never was there a reformer more 
circumspect in his means, — more prudent in 
his end; — and yet all his propositions were 
opposed. In one thing, however, he suc- 
ceeded, — he redeemed his country from a 
great disgrace, by putting a stop to that ca- 
reer of improvident and cruel legislation, 
which, from session to session was multiply- 
ing capital felonies. Sir, while private virtue 
and public worth arc distinguished among 
men, the memory of Sir Samuel Romilly will 
remain consecrated in the history of hu- 
manity. According to the views of my la- 
mented Friend, the punishment of death 
ought not to attach by law to any of those 
offences for which transportation is a sutli- 
cient punishment, and for which, in the ordi- 
nary administration of the law by the judges, 
transportation alone is inflicted. In that view 
I entirely concur. 

I will not now enter into any discussion 
of the doctrine of Dr. Paley with respect to 
the expediency of investing judges with the 
power of inflicting death even for minor 
offences, where, in consequence of the cha- 
racter of the offence and of the offender, 
some particular good may appear to be pro- 
mised from the example of such a punish- 
ment on a mischievous individual. The 
question is, whether the general good de- 
rived by society from the existence of such 
a state of the law is so great as to exceed 
the evil. And I may venture to express my 
conviction, that the result of such an inquiry 
as that which I propose will be to show, that 
the balance of advantage is decidedly against 
the continuance of the existing system. The 
late Lord Chief Justice of the Common 
Pleas,* whose authority is undoubtedly en- 
titled to great consideration in discussing 
this question, expressed an opinion, that if 
the punishment of death for certain crimes 
were inflicted only in one case out of sixty, 
yet that the chance of having to undergo 
such a punishment must serve to impose an 
additional terror on the ill-disposed, and so 
operate to prevent the commission of crime. 
But I, on the contrary, maintain that such a 
terror is not likely to arise out of this mode 
of administering the law. I am persuaded 
that a different result must ensue : because 
this difference in the punishment of the 
same offence must naturally encourage a 
calculation in the mind of a person disposed 
to commit crime, of the manifold chances 
of escaping its penalties. It must also ope- 
rate on a malefactor's mind in diminution 
of the terrors of transportation. Exulting 
at his escape from the more dreadful inflic- 
tion, joy and triumph must absorb his facul- 
ties, eclipsing and obscuring those appre- 
hensions and regrets with which he would 
otherwise have contemplated the lesser 
penalty, and inducing him, like Cicero, to 

* Sir Vicary Gibbs. — Ed. 



consider exile as a refuge rather than as A 
punishment. In support of this opinion I 
will quote the authority of one who, if I 
cannot describe him as an eminent lawyer^ 
all will agree was a man deeply skilled in 
human nature, as well as a most active and 
experienced magistrate, — I allude" to the cele- 
brated Henry Fielding. In a work of his 7 
published at the period when the first Parlia- 
mentary inquiry of this nature was in pro- 
gress, entituled u A Treatise on the Causes of 
Crime/' there is this observation : — "A single 
pardon excites a greater degree of hope ix: 
the minds of criminals than twenty execu- 
tions excite of fear." Now this argument I 
consider to be quite analagous to that which 
I have just used with reference to the opinion 
of the late Chief Justice of the Common- 
Pleas, because the chance of escape from 
death, in either case, is but too apt to dis- 
lodge all thought of the inferior punishments. 

But, Sir, another most important considera- 
tion is, the effect which the existing system 
of law has in deterring injured persons from 
commencing prosecutions, and witnesses" 
from coming forward in support of them. 
The chances of escape are thus multiplied 
by a system which, while it discourages the 
prosecutor, increases the temptations of the 
offender. The better part of mankind, m 1 
those grave and reflecting moments which, 
the prosecution for a capital offence must 
always bring with it. frequently shrink from 
the task imposed on them. The indisposi- 
tion to prosecute while the laws continue so" 
severe is matter of public notoriety. This* 
has been evinced in various cases. It is nof 
long since an act of George II., for preserving 
bleaching-grounds from depredation, was 
repealed on the proposition of Sir Samuel 
Romilly, backed by a petition from the pro- 
prietors of those grounds, who expressed 
their unwillingness to prosecute while the 
law continued so severe, and who repre- 
sented that by the impunity thus given to 
offenders, their property was left compara- 
tively unprotected. An eminent city banker 
has also been very recently heard to declare 
in this House, that bankers frequently de- 
clined to prosecute for the forgery of their 
notes in consequence of the law which de- 
nounced the punishment of death against 
such an offence. It is notorious that the 
concealment of a bankrupt's effects is very 
seldom prosecuted, because the law pro- 
nounces that to be a capital offence : it is 
undoubtedly, however, a great crime, and 
would not be allowed to enjoy such com- 
parative impunity were the law less severe. 

There is another strong fact on this sub- 
ject, to which I may refer, as illustrating 
the general impression respecting the Crimi- 
nal Law ; — I mean the Act which was passed 
in 1812, by which all previous enactments 
of capital punishments for offences against 
the revenue not specified in it were repealed. 
That Act I understand was introduced at the 
instance of certain officers of the revenue, 
And why ?— but because from the excessi?& ; 



632 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



severity of the then existing revenue laws, 
the collectors of the revenue themselves 
found that they were utterly inefficient. Bat 

I have the highest official authority to sus- 
tain my view of the criminal code. I have 
the authority of the late Chief Baron of the 
Exchequer,* Sir Archibald Macdonald, who, 
when he held.the office of Attorney-General. 
which he discharged with so much honour 
to himself, and advantage to the country, 
distinctly expressed his concurrence in the 
opinion of Lord Bacon that great penalties 
deadened the force of the laws. 

The House will still bear in mind, that I 
do not call for the entire abolition of the 
punishment of death, but only for its aboli- 
tion in those cases in which it is very rarely, 
and ought never to be, carried into effect. 
In those cases I propose to institute other, 
milder, but more invariable punishments. 
The courts of law should, in some cases, be 
armed with the awful authority of taking 
away life: but in order to render that au- 
thority fully impressive, I am convinced that 
the punishment of death should be abolished 
where inferior punishments are not only ap- 
plicable, but are usually applied. Nothing 
indeed can, in my opinion, be more injurious 
than the frequency with which the sentence 
of death is at the present time pronounced 
from the judgment-seat, with all the so- 
lemnities prescribed on such an occasion, 
when it is evident, even to those against 
whom it is denounced, that it will never be 
carried into effect. Whenever that awful 
authority, — the jurisdiction over life and 
death, is disarmed of its terrors by such a 
formality, the law is deprived of its benefi- 
cent energy, and society of its needful de- 
fence. 

Sir William Grant, in a report of one of 
his speeches which I have seen, observes, 

II that the great utility of the punishment of 
death consists in the horror which it is natu- 
rally calculated to excite against the crimi- 
nal ; and that all penal laws ought to be in 
unison with the public feeling ; for that when 
they are not so, and especially when they 
are too severe, the influence of example is 
lost, sympathy being excited towards the 
criminal, while horror prevails against the 
law." Such indeed was also the impression 
of Sir William Blackstone, of Mr. Fox, and 
of Mr. Pitt. It is also the opinion of Lord 
Grenville, expressed in a speech* as dis- 
tinguished for forcible reasoning, profound 
wisdom, and magnificent eloquence, as any 
that I have ever heard. 

It must undoubtedly happen, even in the 
best regulated conditions of society, that the 
laws will be sometimes at variance with the 
opinions and feelings of good men. But 
that, in a country like Great Britain, they 
should remain permanently in a state not 
less inconsistent with obvious polic)' than 
with the sentiments of all the enlightened 

* Since published by Mr. Basil Montagu, in his 
Collections On the Punishment of Death. — Ed. 



and respectable classes of the community, is 
indeed scarcely credible. I should not be 
an advocate for the repeal of any law be- 
cause it happened to be in opposition to 
temporary prejudices: but I object to the 
laws to which I have alluded, because they 
are inconsistent with the deliberate and per- 
manent opinion of the public. In all nations 
an agreement between the laws and the 
general feeling of those who are subject to 
tln'iu is essential to their efficacy: but this 
agreement becomes of unspeakable impor- 
tance in a country in which the charge of 
executing the laws is committed in a great 
measure to the people themselves. 

I know not how to contemplate, without 
serious apprehension, the consequences that 
may attend the prolongation of a system like 
the present. It is my anxious desire to re- 
move, before they become insuperable, the 
impediments that are already in the way of 
our civil government. My object is to make 
the laws popular, — to reconcile them with 
public opinion, and thus to redeem their 
character. It is to render the execution of 
them easy, — the terror of them overwhelm- 
ing, — the efficacy of them complete, — that I 
implore the House to give to this subject their 
most grave consideration. I beg leave to re- 
mind them, that Sir William Blackstone has 
already pointed out the indispensable neces- 
sity under which juries frequently labour of 
committing, in estimating the value of stolen 
property, what he calls "pious perjuries." 
The resort to this practice in one of the 
wisest institutions of the country, so clearly 
indicates the public feeling, that' to every 
wise statesman it must afford an instructive 
lesson. The just and faithful administration 
of the law in all its branches is the great 
bond of society, — the point at which autho- 
rity and obedience meet most nearly. If 
those who hold the reins of government, in- 
stead of attempting a remedy, content them- 
selves with vain lamentations at the growth 
of crime, — if they refuse to conform the laws 
to the opinions and dispositions of the public 
rnind, that growth must continue to spread 
among us a just alarm. 

With respect to petitions upon this sub- 
ject, I have reason to believe that, in a few 
days, many will be presented from a body 
of men intimately connected with the ad- 
ministration of the Criminal Law, — I mean 
the magistracy of the country, — praying for 
its revision. Among that body I understand 
that but little difference of opinion prevails, 
and that when their petitions shall be pre- 
sented, they will be found subscribed by 
many of the most respectable individuals 
in the empire as to moral character, enlight- 
ened talent, and general consideration. I 
did not, however, think it right to postpone 
my motion for an inquiry so important until 
those petitions should be actually laid on 
the table. I should, indeed, have felt ex- 
treme regret if the consideration of this ques- 
tion had "been preceded by petitions drawn 
up and agreed to at popular and tumultuary 



ON THE STATE OF THE CRIMINAL LAW. 



533 



assemblies. No one can be more unwilling 
than myself to see any proceeding that can 
in the slightest degree interfere with the 
calm, deliberate, and dignified consideration 
of Parliament, more especially on a subject 
of this nature. 

The Petition from the City of London, 
however, ought to be considered in another 
light, and is entitled to peculiar attention. 
It proceeds from magistrates accustomed to 
administer justice in a populous metropolis, 
and who necessarily possess very great ex- 
perience. It proceeds from a body of most 
respectable traders — men peculiarly exposed 
to those depredations against which Capital 
Punishment is denounced. An assembly so 
composed, is one of weight and dignity ; and 
its representations on this subject are enti- 
tled to the greater deference, inasmuch as 
the results of its experience appear to be in 
direct opposition to its strongest prejudices. 
The first impulse of men whose property is 
attacked, is to destroy those by whom the 
attack is made : but the enlightened traders 
of London perceive, that the weapon of 
destruction which our penal code affords, is 
ineffective for its purpose ; they therefore, 
disabusing themselves of vulgar prejudice, 
call for the revision of that code. 

Another Petition has been presented to the 
House which I cannot pass over without no- 
tice : I allude to one from that highly merito- 
rious and exemplary body of men — the Qua- 
kers. It has, I think, been rather hardly 
dealt by; and has been described as con- 
taining very extravagant recommendations ; 
although the prayer with which it concludes 
is merely for such a change in the Criminal 
Law as may be consistent with the ends of 
justice. The body of the Petition certainly 
deviates into a speculation as to the future 
existence of some happier condition of so- 
ciety, in w T hich mutual goodwill may render 
severe punishments unnecessary. But this 



is a speculation in which, however unsanc- 
tioned by experience, virtuous and philoso- 
phical men have in all ages indulged them- 
selves, and by it have felt consoled for the 
evils by which they have been surrounded. 
The hope thus expressed, has exposed these 
respectable Petitioners to be treated with 
levity : but they are much too enlightened 
not to know that with such questions states- 
men and lawyers, whose arrangements and 
regulations must be limited by the actual 
state and the necessary wants of a commu- 
nity ; have no concern. And while I make 
these remarks, I cannot but request the 
House to recollect what description of people 
it is to whom I apply them, — a people who 
alone of all the population of the kingdom 
send neither paupers to your parishes, nor 
criminals to your jails, — a people who think 
a spirit of benevolence an adequate security 
to mankind (a spirit which certainly wants 
but the possibility of its being universal to 
constitute the perfection of our nature) — a 
people who have ever been foremost in un- 
dertaking and promoting every great and 
good work, — who were among the first to 
engage in the abolition of the slave trade, 
and who, by their firm yet modest perseve- 
rance, paved the way for the accomplish- 
ment of that incalculable benefit to humanity- 
Recollecting all this, and recollecting the 
channel through which this Petition was pre-* 
sented to the House,* I consider it to be en- 
titled to anything but disrespect. The aid. 
of such a body must always be a source of 
encouragement to those who are aiming at 
any amelioration of the condition of human 
beings ; and on this occasion it inspires me, 
not only with perfect confidence in the good- 
ness of my cause, but with the greatest 
hopes of its success. 

* It had been presented by Mr. Wilberforce. — •• 
Ed. 

2u 2 



£34 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



SPEECH 

ON MR. BROUGHAM'S MOTION FOR AN ADDRESS TO THE CROWN, 

WITH REFERENCE TO THE TRIAL AND CONDEMNATION OF 

THE REV. JOHN SMITH, OF DEMERARA, 

DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, ON THE 1st OF JUNE, 1824.* 



Mr. Speaker, — Even if I had not been 
loudly called upon, and directly challenged 
-by the Honourable Gentleman,! — even if his 
•accusations, now repeated after full conside- 
ration, did not make it my duty to vindicate 
•the Petition which I had the honour to pre- 
sent from unjust reproach, I own that I should 
-have been anxious to address the House on 
this occasion ; not to strengthen a case al- 
ready invincible, but to bear my solemn tes- 
timony against the most unjust and cruel 
abuse of power, under a false pretence of 

* The Rev. John Smith, an Independent mi- 
nister, had been sent out to Demerara in the year 
1816 by the London Missionary Society. The 
exemplary discharge of his sacred functions on the 
eastern shore of that colony for six years, amid 
difficulties which are said to have distinguished 
Demerara even among all her sister slave colo- 
-iiies, had so far impaired his health, that he was, 
by medical advice, on the point of leaving the 
country for a more salubrious climate, when, in 
the month of August, 1823, a partial insurrection 
of the negroes in his neighbourhood proved the 
means of putting a period alike to his labours and 
his life. The rising was not of an extensive or 
organised character, and was, in fact, suppressed 
immediately, with little loss of life or property. 
Its suppression was, however, immediately fol- 
lowed by the establishment of martial law, and 
the arrest of Mr. Smith as privy beforehand to 
the plot. As the evidence 'in support of this 
charge had necessarily to be extracted for the most 
part from prisoners trembling for their own lives, 
incurable suspicion would seem to attach to the 
whole of it : though candour must admit, on' a 
careful consideration of the whole circumstances, 
including the sensitive feelings and ardent tempe- 
rament of the accused, that it was not impossible 
that he had been made the involuntary depositary 
of the confidence of his flock. It was not til! he 
had been in prison for nearly two months that Mr. 
Smith, on the 14th of October, was brought to 
trial before a court-martial. After proceedings 
abounding in irregularities, which lasted for six 
weeks, he was found guilty, and sentenced to 
death, but was recommended to the mercy of the 
Crown. He died in prison on the 6th of February 
■following, awaiting the result. Sir James Mack- 
intosh had presented, at an earlier period of the 
session, the appeal of the London Missionary So- 
ciety on behalf of his memory and his widow. 
The present speech was delivered in support of 
Mr. Brougham's motion for an Address to the 
Crown on the subject. — Ed. 

t Mr. Wilmot Horton, who conducted the de- 
face of the authorities at Demerara.— Ed. 



law, that has in our times dishonoured any 
portion of the British empire. I am sorry 
that the Honourable Gentleman, after so long 
an interval for reflection, should have this 
night repeated those charges against the 
London Missionary Society, which when he 
first made them I thought rash, and which I 
am now entitled to treat as utterly ground- 
less. I should regret to be detained by them 
for a moment, from the great question of hu- 
manity and justice before us, if I did not feel 
that they excite a prejudice against the case 
of Mr. Smith, and that the short discussion 
sufficient to put them aside, leads directly 
to the vindication of the memory of that op- 
pressed man. 

The Honourable Gentleman calls the Lon- 
don Missionary Society "bad philosophers," 
— by which, I presume, he means bad rea- 
soners, — because they ascribe the insurrec- 
tion partly u to the long and inexplicable 
delay of the government of Demerara in 
promulgating the instructions favourable to 
the slave population;" and because he, 
adopting one of the arguments of that speech 
by which the deputy judge-advocate dis- 
graced his office, contends that a partial re- 
volt cannot have arisen from a general cause 
of discontent, — a position belied by the 
whole course of history, and which is founded 
upon the absurd assumption, that one part 
of a people, from circumstances sometimes 
easy, sometimes very hard to be discovered, 
may not be more provoked than others by 
grievances common to all. So inconsistent, 
indeed, is the defence of the rulers of De- 
merara with itself, that in another part of the 
case they represent a project for an universal 
insurrection as having been formed, and 
ascribe its being, in fact, confined to the east 
coast, to unaccountable accidents. Paris, the 
ringleader, in what is called his "confession," 
(to be found in the Demerara Papers, No. II.. 
p. 21,) says, "The whole colony was to have 
risen on Monday ; and I cannot account for 
the reasons why only the east rose at the 
time appointed." So that, according to this 
part of their own evidence, they must aban- 
don their argument, and own the discontent 
to have been as general as the grievance. 
Another argument against the Society's 



CASE OF MISSIONARY SMITH. 



535 



Petition, is transplanted from the same nur- 
sery of weeds. It is said, that cruelty can- 
not have contributed to this insurrection, be- 
cause the leaders of the revolt were persons 
little likely to have been cruelly used, being 
among the most trusted of the slaves. Those 
who employ so gross a fallacy, must be con- 
tent to be called worse reasoners than the 
London Missionary Society. It is, indeed, 
one of the usual common-places in all cases 
of discontent and tumult ; but it is one of the 
most futile. The moving cause of most in- 
surrections, and in the opinion of two great 
men (Sully and Burke) of all, is the distress 
of the great body of insurgents ; but the ring- 
leaders are generally, and almost necessa- 
rily, individuals who, being more highly en- 
dowed or more happily situated, are raised 
above the distress which is suffered by those 
of whom they take the command. 

But the Honourable Gentleman's principal 
charge against the Petition, is the allegation 
contained in it, '-'that the life of no white 
man was voluntarily taken away by the 
slaves." When I heard the confidence with 
which a confutation .of this averment was 
announced, I own I trembled for the accu- 
racy of the Petition. But what was my as- 
tonishment, when I heard the attempt at 
confutation made ! In the Demerara Papers. 
No. II., there is an elaborate narrative of an 
attack on the house of Mrs. Walrand, by the 
insurgents, made by that lady, or for her — a 
caution in statements which the subsequent 
parts of these proceedings prove to be neces- 
sary in Demerara. The Honourable Gentle- 
man has read the narrative, to show that two 
lives were unhappily lost in this skirmish ; 
and this he seriously quotes as proving the 
inaccuracy of the Petition. Does he believe, 
; — can he hope to persuade the House, that 
the Petitioners meant to say, that there was 
an insurrection without fighting, orskirmishes 
without death 1 The attack and defence of 
houses and posts are a necessary part of all 
revolts^ and deaths are the natural conse- 
quences of that, as well as of every species 
of warfare. The revolt in this case was. 
doubtless, an offence ; the attack on the 
house was a part of that offence : the de- 
fence was brave and praiseworthy. The loss 
of lives is deeply to be deplored ; but it was 
inseparable from all such unhappy scenes : 
it could not be the " voluntary killing," in- 
tended to be denied in the Petition. The 
Governor of Demerara, in a despatch to Lord 
Bathurst, makes the same statement with 
the Petition : — " I have not," he says, " heard 
of one white who was deliberately murder- 
ed :" yet he was perfectly aware of the fact 
which has been so triumphantly displayed 
to the House. "At plantation Nabaclis, 
where the whites were on their guard, two 
out of three were killed in the defence of 
their habitations." The defence was legiti- 
mate, and the deaths lamentable : but as the 
Governor distinguishes them from murder, 
so do the Society. They deny that there 
was any killing in cold blood. They did not 



mean to deny, — any more than to affirm — 
(for the Papers which mention the fact were 
printed since their Petition was drawn up), 
that there was killing in battle, when each 
party were openly struggling to destroy their 
antagonists and to preserve themselves. The 
Society only denies that this insurrection was 
dishonoured by those murders of the unof- 
fending or of the vanquished, which too fre- 
quently attend the revolts of slaves. The 
Governor of Demerara agrees with them : 
the whole facts of the case support them ; 
and the quotation of the Honourable Gentle- 
man leaves their denial untouched. The re- 
volt was absolutely unstained by excess. 
The killing of whites, even in action, was so 
small as not to appear in the trial of Mr. 
Smith, or in the first accounts laid before us. 
I will not stop to inquire whether "killing in 
action" may not, in a strictly philosophical 
sense, be called "voluntary." It is enough 
for me, that no man will call it calm, need- 
less, or deliberate. 

This is quite sufficient to justify even the 
words of the Petition. The substance of it 
is now more than abundantly justified by the 
general spirit of humanity which pervaded 
the unhappy* insurgents, — by the unparal- 
leled forbearance and moderation which 
characterised the insurrection. On this part 
of the subject, so important to the general 
question, as well as to the character of the 
Petition for accuracy, the London Missionary 
Society appeal to the highest authority, that 
of the Reverend Mr. Austin, not a missionary 
or a Methodist, but the chaplain of the colo- 
ny, a minister of the Church of England, 
who has done honour even to that Church, 
so illustrious through the genius and learn- 
ing and virtue of many of her clergy, by his 
Christian charity, — by his inflexible princi- 
ples of justice, — by his intrepid defence of 
innocence against all the power of a govern- 
ment, and against the still more formidable 
prejudices of an alarmed and incensed com- 
munity. No man ever did himself more 
honour by the admirable combination of 
strength of character with sense of duty; 
which needed nothing but a larger and more 
elevated theatre to place him among those 
who will be in all ages regarded by mankind 
as models for imitation and objects of reve- 
rence. That excellent person, — speaking of 
Mr. Smith, a person with whom he was pre- 
viously unacquainted, a minister of a differ- 
ent persuasion, a missionary, considered by 
many of the established clergy as a rival, if 
not an enemy, a man then odious to the body 
of the colonists, whose good-will must have 
been so important to Mr. Austin's comfort, — 
after declaring his conviction of the perfect 
innocence and extraordinary merit of the 
persecuted missionary, proceeds to bear tes- 
timony to the moderation of the insurgents, 
and to the beneficent influence of Mr. Smith, 
in producing that moderation, in language, 
far warmer and bolder than that of the Peti- 
tion. "I feel no hesitation in declaring," 
says he, " from the intimate knowledge which 



536 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



my most anxious inquiries have obtained, 
that in the late scourge which the hand of 
an all-wise Creator has inflicted on this ill- 
fated country, nothing but those religious 
impressions which, under Providence, Mr. 
Smith has been instrumental in fixing, — no- 
thing but those principles of the Gospel of 
Peace, which he had been proclaiming, could 
have prevented a dreadful effusion of blood 
here, and saved the lives of those very per- 
sons who are now, I shudder 1o write it, 
seeking his life." 

And here I beg the House to weigh this 
testimony. It is not only valuable from the 
integrity, impartiality, and understanding of 
the witness, but from his opportunities of 
acquiring that intimate knowledge of facts 
on which he rests his opinion. He was a 
member of the Secret Commission of Inquiry 
established on this occasion, which was 
armed with all the authority of government, 
and which received much evidence relating 
to this insurrection not produced on the trial 
of Mr. Smith. 

This circumstance immediately brings me 
to the consideration of the hearsay evidence 
illegally received against Mr. Smith. I do 
not merely or chiefly object to' it on grounds 
purely technical, or as being inadmissible 
by the law of England. I abstain from taking 
any part in the discussions of lawyers or phi- 
losophers, with respect to the wisdom of our 
rules of evidence; though I think that there 
is more to be said for them than the inge- 
nious objectors are aware of. What I com- 
plain of is, the admission of hearsay, of the 
vaguest sort, under circumstances where 
such an admission was utterly abomina- 
ble. In what I am about to say, I shall not 
quote from the Society's edition of the Trial, 
but from that which is officially before the 
House : so that I may lay aside all that has 
been said on the superior authority of the 
latter. Mr. Austin, when examined in 
chief, stated, that though originally prepos- 
sessed against Mr. Smith, yet. in the course 
of numerous inquiries, he could not see any 
circumstances which led to a belief that Mr. 
Smith had been, in any degree, instrumental 
in the insurrection ; but that, on the contrary, 
when he (Mr. Austin) said to the slaves, that 
bloodshed had not marked the progress of 
their insurrection, their answer was : — " It is 
contrary to the religion we profess" (which 
had been taught to them by Mr. Smith) ; — 
"we cannot give life, and therefore w r e will 
not take it." This evidence of the innocence 
of Mr. Smith, and of the humanity of the 
slaves, appears to have alarmed the impartial 
judge-advocate ; and he proceeded, in his 
cross-examination, to ask Mr. Austin whether 
any of the negroes had ever insinuated, that 
their misfortunes were occasioned by the 
prisoner's influence over them, or by the 
doctrines he taught them? Mr. Austin, 
understanding this question to refer to what 
passed before the Committee, appears to 
have respectfully hesitated about the pro- 
priety of disclosing these proceedings; upon 



which the Court, in a tone of discourtesy 
and displeasure, which a reputable advocate 
for a prisoner would not have used towards 
such a witness in this country, addressed 
the following illegal and indecent question 
to Mr. Austin : — " Can you take it upon 
yourself to swear thai; you do not recollect 
any insinuations of that sort at the Board of 
Evidence'?" How that question came to be 
waived, does not appear in the official copy. 
It is almost certain, however, from the pur- 
port of the next question, that the Society's 
Report is correct in supplying this defect, 
and that Mr. Austin still doubted its sub- 
stantial propriety, and continued to resent 
its insolent form. He was actually asked, 
u whether he heard, before the Board of Evi- 
dence, any negro imputing the cause of re- 
volt to the prisoner ?" He answered, " Yes :" 
— and the inquiry is pursued no further. I 
again request the House to bear in mind, that 
this question and answer rest on the autho- 
rity of the official copy ; and I repeat, that I 
disdain to press the legal objection of its 
being hearsay evidence, and to contend, that 
to put such a question and receive such an 
answer, were acts of mere usurpation in any 
English tribunal. 

Much higher matter arises on this part of 
the evidence. Fortunately for the interests 
of truth, we are now in possession of the 
testimony of the negroes before the Board 
of Inquiry which is adverted to in this ques- 
tion, and which, be it observed, was wholly 
unknown to the unfortunate Mr. Smith. We 
naturally ask, why these negroes themselves 
were not produced as witnesses, if they were 
alive ; or, if they were executed, how it hap- 
pened that none of the men who gave such 
important evidence before the Board of In- 
quiry were preserved to bear testimony 
against him before the Court-martial 1 Why 
were they content with the much weaker- 
evidence actually produced % Why were 
they driven to "the necessitj r of illegally 
obtaining, through Mr. Austin, what they 
might have obtained from his informants 1 
The reason is plain : — they disbelieved the 
evidence of the negroes, who threw out the 
u insinuations," or " imputations." That 
might have been nothing; but they knew 
that all mankind would have rejected that 
pretended evidence with lion or. They knew 
that the negroes, to whom their question 
adverted, had told a tale to the Board of 
Evidence, in comparison with which the 
story of Titus Oates was a model of proba- 
bility, candour, and truth. One of them 
(Sandy) said, that Mr. Smith told him, though 
not a member of his congregation, nor even 
a Christian, "lhat a good thing was come 
for the negroes, and that if they did not seek 
for it now, the whites would trample upon 
them, and upon their sons and daughters, to 
eternity."* Another (Paris) says, " that all 
the male w r hites (except the doctors and 
missionaries) were to be murdered, and all 

* Demerara Papers, No. II. p. 26. 



CASE OF MISSIONARY SMITH. 



537 



the females distributed among the insur- 
gents; that one of their leaders was to be a 
king, another to be a governor, and Mr. 
Smith to be emperor ;* that on Sunday, the 
17th of August, Mr. Smith administered the 
sacrament to several leading negroes, and to 
Mr. Hamilton, the European overseer of the 
estate Le Ressouvenir ; that he swore the 
former on the Bible to do him no harm when 
they had conquered the country, and after- 
wards blessed their revolt, saying, '•' Go : as 
you have begun in Christ, you must end in 
Christ !" ; f All this the prosecutor concealed, 
with the knowledge of the Court. While 
they asked, whether Mr. Austin had heard 
statements made against Mr. Smith before 
the Board of Evidence, they studiously con- 
cealed all those incredible, monstrous, im- 
possible fictions which accompanied these 
statements, and which would have annihi- 
lated their credit- Whether the question 
was intended to discredit Mr. Austin, or to 
prejudice Mr. Smith, it was, in either case, 
an atrocious attempt to take advantage of 
the stories told by the negroes, and at the 
same time to screen them from scrutiny, 
contradiction, disbelief, and abhorrence. If 
these men could have been believed, would 
they not have been produced on the trial 1 
Paris, indeed, the author of this horrible fa- 
brication, charges Biistol, Manuel, and Azor, 
three of the witnesses afterwards examined 
on the trial of Mr. Smith, with having been 
parties to the dire and execrable oath : not 
one of them alludes to such horrors ; all 
virtually contradict them. Yet this Court- 
martial sought to injure Mr. Austin, or to 
contribute to the destruction of Mr. Smith, 
by receiving as evidence a general state- 
ment of what was said by those whom they 
could not believe, whom they durst not pro- 
duce, and who were contradicted by their 
own principal witnesses. — who, if their 
whole tale had been brought into view, would 
have been driven out of any court with shouts 
of execration. 

I cannot yet leave this part of the subject. 
It deeply affects the character of the whole 
transaction. It shows the general terror, 
which was so powerful as to stimulate the 
slaves to the invention of such monstrous 
falsehoods. It throws light on that species 
of skill with which the prosecutors kept 
back the absolutely incredible witnesses, and 
brought forward only those who were dis- 
creet enough to tell a more plausible story, 
and on the effect which the circulation of 
the fictions, which were too absurd to be 
avowed, must have had in exciting the body 
of the colonists to the most relentless ani- 
mosity against the unfortunate Mr. Smith. 
It teaches us to view with the utmost jea- 
lousy the more guarded testimony actually 
produced against him, which could not be 
exempt from the influence of the same fears 
and prejudices. It authorises me to lay a 



* Demarara Papers, No. II. p. 30. 
1" Ibid. p. 41. 

68 



much more than ordinary stress on every 
defect of the evidence; because, in such 
circumstances, I am warranted in affirming 
that whatever was not proved, could not have 
been proved. 

But in answer to all this, we are asked by 
the Honourable Gentleman, "Would Presi- 
dent Wray have been a party to the admission 
of improper evidence ?" Now, Sir, I wish 
to say nothing disrespectful of Mr. Wray ; 
and the rather, because he is well spoken 
of by those whose good opinion is to be re- 
spected. We do not know that he may not 
have dissented from every act of this Court- 
martial. I should heartily rejoice to hear 
that it was so : but I am aware we can 
never know whether he did or not. The 
Honourable Gentleman unwarily asks, — 
;: Would not Mr. Wray have publicly pro- 
tested against illegal questions?" Does he 
not know, or has he forgotten, that every 
member of a court-martial is bound by oath 
not to disclose its proceedings'? But really, 
Sir, I must say that the character of no man 
can avail against facts : — " Tolle e causa 
nomen Catonis." Let character protect ac- 
cused men, when there is any defect in the 
evidence of their guilt : let it continue to 
yield to them that protection which Mr. 
Smith, in his hour of danger, did not receive 
from the tenor of his blameless and virtu- 
ous life : let it be used for mercy, not for 
severity. Let it never be allowed to aid a 
prosecutor, or to strengthen the case of an 
accuser. Let it be a shield to cover the 
accused : but let it never be converted into 
a dagger, by which he is to be stabbed to 
the heart. Above all, let it not be used to 
destroy his good name, after his life has been 
taken away. 

The question is, as has been stated by the 
Honourable Gentleman, whether, on a review 
of the whole evidence, Mr. Smith can be 
pronounced to be guilty of the crimes charg- 
ed against him, and for which he was con- 
demned to death. That is the fact on which 
issue is to be joined. In trying it, I can lay 
my hand on my heart, and solemnly declare, 
upon my honour, or whatever more sacred 
sanction there be, that I believe him to have 
been an innocent and virtuous man, — ille- 
gally tried, unjustly condemned to death, 
and treated in a manner which would be 
disgraceful to a civilized government in the 
case of the worst criminal. I heartily rejoice 
that the Honourable Gentleman has been 
manly enough directly to dissent from my 
Honourable Friend's motion, — that the case 
is to be fairly brought to a decision, — and 
that no attempt is to be made to evade a de- 
termination, by moving the previous question. 
That, of all modes of proceeding, I should 
most lament. Some may think Mr. Smith 
guilty; others will agree with me in thinking 
him innocent ; but no one can doubt that it 
would be dishonourable to the Grand Jury 
of the Empire, to declare that they will not 
decide, when a grave case is brought before 
them, whether a British subject has been 



'538 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



■lawfully or unlawfully condemned to death. 
We still observe that usage of our forefathers, 
according to which the House of Commons, 
at the commencement of every Session of 
Parliament, nominates a grand committee of 
justice ; and if, in ordinary cases, other modes 
of proceeding have been substituted in prac- 
tice for this ancient institution, we may at 
least respect it as a remembrancer of our 
duty, which points out one of the chief ob- 
jects of the original establishment. All eva- 
sion is here refusal ; and a denial of justice 
in Parliament, more especially in an inquest 
for blood, would be a fatal and irreparable 
breach in the English constitution. 

The question before us resolves itself into 
several questions, relating to every branch 
and stage of the proceedings against Mr. 
Smith : — Whether the Court-martial had 
jurisdiction ? whether the evidence against 
him was warranted by law, or sufficient in 
fact? whether the sentence was just, or the 
punishment legal? These questions are so 
extensive and important, that I cannot help 
wishing they had not been still further en- 
larged and embroiled by the introduction of 
matter wholly impertinent to any of them. 

To what purpose has the Honourable Gen- 
tleman so often told us that Mr. Smith was 
an "enthusiast?" It would have been well 
if he had given us some explanation of the 
sense in which he uses so vague a term. If 
he meant by it to denote the prevalence of 
those disorderly passions, which, whatever 
be their source or their object, always dis- 
turb the understanding, and often pervert the 
moral sentiments, we have clear proof that 
it did not exist in Mr. Smith, so far as to 
produce the first of these unfortunate effects: 
and it is begging the whole question in dis- 
pute, to assert that it manifested itself in him 
by the second and still more fatal symptom. 
There is, indeed, another temper of mind 
called enthusiasm, which, though rejecting 
the authority neither of reason nor of virtue, 
triumphs over ali the vulgar infirmities of 
men, contemns their ordinary pursuits, braves 
danger, ami despises obloquy, — -which is the 
parent of heroic acts and apostolical sacri- 
fices, — which devotes the ease, the pleasure, 
the interest, the ambition, the life of the 
generous enthusiast, to the service of his fel- 
low-men. If Mr. Smith had not been sup- 
ported by an ardent zeal for the cause of God 
and man, he would have been ill qualified 
for a task so surrounded by disgust, by ca- 
lumny, by peril, as that of attempting to 
pour instruction into the minds of unhappy- 
slaves. Much of this excellent quality was 
doubtless necessary for so long%nduring the 
climate and the government of Demerara. 

I am sorry that the Honourable Gentleman 
should have deigned to notice any part of 
the impertinent absurdities with which the 
Court have suffered their minutes to be en- 
cumbered, and which have no more to do 
with this insurrection than with the Popish 
Plot. What is it to us that a misunderstand- 
ing occurred, three or four y r ears ago. between 



Mr. Smith and a person called Captain or 
Doctor Macturk, whom he had the misfor- 
tune to have for a neighbour, — a misunder- 
standing long antecedent to this revolt, and 
utterly unconnected with any part of it ! It 
was inadmissible evidence; and if it had been 
otherwise, it proved nothing but the character 
of the witness, — of the generous Macturk ; 
who, having had a trifling difference with 
his neighbour five years ago, called it to 
mind at the moment when that neighbour's 
life was in danger. Such is the chivalrous 
magnanimity of Dr. Macturk ! If I were 
infected by classical superstition, I should 
forbid such a man to embark in the same 
vessel with me. I leave him to those from 
whom, if we may trust his name or his man- 
ners, he may be descended ; and I cannot 
help thinking that he deserves, as well as 
they, to be excluded from the territory of 
Christians. 

I very sincerely regret, Sir, that the Ho- 
nourable Gentleman, by quotations from Mr. 
Smith's manuscript journal, should appear to 
give any countenance or sanction to the de- 
testable violation of all law, humanity, and 
decency, by which that manuscript was pro- 
duced in evidence against the writer. I am 
sure that, when his official zeal has some- 
what subsided, he will himself regret that 
he appealed to such a document. That 
which is unlawfully obtained cannot be fairly 
quoted. The production of a paper in evi- 
dence, containing general reflections and 
reasonings, or narratives of fact, not relating 
to any design, or composed to compass any 
end, is precisely the iniquity perpetrated by 
Jeffreys, in the case of Sidney, which has 
since been reprobated by all lawyers, and 
which has been solemnly condemned by the 
legislature itself. I deny, without fear of 
contradiction from any one of the learned 
lawyers who differ from me in this debate, 
that such a paper has been received in evi- 
dence, since that abominable trial, by any- 
body of men calling themselves a court of 
justice. Is there a single line in the extracts 
produced which could have been written to 
forward the insurrection? I defy any man 
to point it out ? Could it be admissible evi- 
dence on any other ground? I defy any 
lawyer to maintain it; for, if it were to be 
said that it manifests opinions and feelings 
favourable to negro insurrection, and which 
rendered probable the participation of Mr. 
Smith in this revolt, (having first denied the 
fact,) I should point to the statute reversing 
the attainder of Sidney, against whom the 
like evidence was produced precisely under 
the same pretence. Nothing can be more 
decisive on this point than the authority of a 
great judge and an excellent writer. "Had 
the papers found in Sidney's closets," says 
Mr. Justice Foster, "been plainly relative to 
the other treasonable practices charged in 
the indictment, they might have been lead 
in evidence against him, though not publish- 
ed. The papers found on Lord Preston were 
written in prosecution of certain determined 



CASE OF MISSIONARY SMITH. 



539 



purposes which were treasonable, and then 
(namely, at the time of writing) in the con- 
templation of the offenders." But the iniquity 
in the case of Sidney vanishes, in comparison 
with that of this trial. Sidney's manuscript 
was intended for publication : it could not be 
said that its tendency, when published, was 
not to excite dispositions hostile to the bad 
government which then existed ; it was per- 
haps in strictness indictable as a seditious 
libel. The journal of Mr. Smith was meant 
for no human eyes : it was seen by none ; 
only extracts of it had been sent to his em- 
ployers in England, — as inoffensive, doubt- 
less, as their excellent instructions required. 
In the midst of conjugal affection and confi- 
dence, it was withheld even from his wife. 
It consisted of his communings with his 
own mind, or the breathings of his thoughts 
towards his Creator; it was neither addressed 
nor communicated to any created being. 
That such a journal should have been drag- 
ged from its sacred secrecy is an atrocity — I 
repeat it — to which I know no parallel in the 
annals of any court that has professed to ob- 
serve a semblance of justice. 

I dwell on this circumstance, because the 
Honourable Gentleman, by his quotation, has 
compelled me to do so, and because the ad- 
mission of this evidence shows the temper 
of the Court. For I think the extracts pro- 
duced are, in truth, favourable to Mr. Smith ; 
and I am entitled to presume that the whole 
journal, withheld as it is from us, — withheld 
from the Colonial Office, though circulated 
through the Court to excite West Indian pre- 
judices against Mr. Smith, — would, in the 
eyes of impartial men, have been still more 
decisively advantageous to his cause. How. 
indeed, can I think otherwise? What, in 
the opinion of the judge-advocate, is the 
capital crime of this journal ?• It is, that in 
it the prisoner " avows he feels an aversion 
to slavery ! !" He was so depraved, as to be 
an enemy of that admirable institution ! He 
was so lost to all sense of morality, as to be 
dissatisfied wnththe perpetual and unlimited 
subjection of millions of reasonable creatures 
to the will, and caprice, and passions of other 
men ! This opinion, it is true, Mr. Smith 
shared with the King, Parliament, and peo- 
ple of Great Britain, — with all wise and good 
men, in all ages and nations : still, it is stated 
by the judge-advocate as if it were some im- 
moral paradox, which it required the utmost 
effrontery to "avow." One of the passages 
produced in evidence, and therefore thought 
either to be criminal in itself, or a proof of 
criminal intention, well deserves attention : 
— " While writing this, my very heart flut- 
ters at the almost incessant cracking of the 
whip !" As the date of this part of the jour- 
nal is the 22d of March 1819, more than four 
years before the insurrection, it cannot be 
so distorted by human ingenuity as to be 
brought to bear on the specific charges which 
the Court had to try. What, therefore, is 
the purpose for which it is produced ? They 
overheard, as it were, a man secretly com- 



plaining to himself of the agitation produced 
in his bodily frame by the horrible noise of 
a whip constantly resounding on the torn and 
bloody backs of his fellow-creatures. As he 
does not dare to utter them to any other, thej 
must have been unaffected, undesigning. 
almost involuntary ejaculations of feeling 
The discovery of them might have recalled 
unhardened men from practices of which 
they had thus casually perceived the impres- 
sion upon an uncorrupted heart. It could 
hardly have been supposed that the most 
practised negro-driver could have blamed 
them more severely than by calling them 
effusions of weak and womanish feelings. 
But it seemed good to the prosecutors of Mr. 
Smith to view these complaints in another 
light. They regard "the fluttering of his 
heart at the incessant cracking of the whip," 
as an overt act of the treason of " abhorring 
slavery." They treat natural compassion, 
and even its involuntary effects on the bodily 
frame, as an offence. Such is the system of 
their society, that they consider every man 
who feels pity for sufferings, or indignation 
against cruelty, as their irreconcilable enemy. 
Nay, they receive a secret expression of 
those feelings as evidence against a man on 
trial for his life, in what they call a court of 
justice. My Right Honourable Friend* has, 
on a former occasion, happily characterised 
the resistance, which has not been obscurely 
threatened, against all measures for mitiga- 
ting the evils of slavery, as a " rebellion for 
the whip." In the present instance we see 
how sacred that instrument is held, — how 
the right to use it is prized as one of the 
dearest of privileges, — and in what manner 
the most private murmur against its severest 
inflictions is brought. forward as a proof, that 
he who breathes it must be prepared to 
plunge into violence and blood. 

In the same spirit, conversations are given 
in evidence, long before the revolt, wholly 
unconnected with it. and held with ignorant 
men, who might easily misunderstand or 
misremember them ; in which Mr. Smith is 
supposed to have expressed a general and 
speculative opinion, that slavery never could 
be mitigated, and that it must die a violent 
death. These opinions the Honourable Gen- 
tleman calls " fanatical." Does he think Dr. 
Johnson a fanatic, or a sectary, or a Metho- 
dist, or an enemy of established authority ? 
But he must know from the most amusing 
of books, that Johnson, when on a visit to 
Oxford, perhaps when enjoying lettered hos- 
pitality at the table of the Master of Univer- 
sity College,! proposed as a toast, " Success 
to the first revolt of negroes in the West In- 
dies !" He neither meant to make a jest of 
such matters, nor to express a deliberate 
wish for an event so full of horror, but merely 
to express in the strongest manner his honest 
hatred of slavery. For no man ever more de- 
tested actual oppression ; though his Tory 



* Mr. Canning. — Ed. 

X Dr. Wetherell, father of the Solicitor- General. 



540 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



prejudices hindered him from seeing the 
value of those liberal institutions which alone 
secure society from oppression. This justice 
will be universally done to the aged moralist, 
who knew slavery only as a distant evil, — 
whose ears were never wounded by the 
cracking of the whip. Yet all the casual 
expressions of the unfortunate Mr. Smith, in 
the midst of dispute, or when he was fresh 
from the sight of suffering, rise up against 
him as legal proof of settled purposes and 
deliberate designs. 

On the legality of the trial, Sir, the im- 
pregnable speech of my Learned Friend* has 
left me little if any thing to say. The only 
principle on which the law of England tole- 
rates what is called "martial law," is neces- 
sity; its introduction can be justified only by 
necessity ; its continuance requires precisely 
the same justification of necessity; and if 
it survives the necessity, in which alone it 
rests, for a single minute, it becomes in- 
stantly a mere exercise of lawless violence. 
When foreign invasion or civil war renders 
it impossible for courts of law to sit, or to 
enforce the execution of their judgments, it 
becomes necessary to find some rude sub- 
stitute for them, and to employ for that pur- 
pose the military, which is the only remain- 
ing force in the community. While the laws 
are silenced by the noise of arms, the rulers 
of the armed force must punish, as equitably 
as they can, those crimes which threaten 
their own safety and that of society ; but no 
longer; — every moment beyond is usurpa- 
tion. As soon as the laws can act, every 
other mode of punishing supposed crimes is 
itself an enormous crime. If argument be 
not enough on this subject, — if, indeed, the 
mere statement be not the evidence of its own 
truth, I appeal to the highest and most vene- 
rable authority known to our law. " Martial 
law," says Sir Matthew Hale, "'is not a law, 
but something indulged rather than allowed, 
as a law. The necessity of government, 
order, and discipline in an army, is that only 
which can give it countenance. { Necessitas 
enim, quod cogit, defendit.' Secondly, this 
indulged law is only to extend to members 
of the army, or to those of the opposite army, 
and never may be so much indulged as to be 
exercised or executed upon others. Thirdly, 
the exercise of martial law may not be per- 
mitted in time of peace, when the king's 
courts are" (or may be) " open."t The illus- 
trious Jaflge on this occasion appeals to the 
Petition of Right, which, fifty years before, 
had declared all proceedings by martial law, 
in time of peace, to be illegal. He carries 
the principle back to the cradle of English 
liberty, and quotes ihe famous reversal of 
the attainder of the Earl of Kent, in the first 
year of Edward III., as decisive of the prin- 
ciple, that nothing but the necessity arising 
from the absolute interruption of civil judi- 
cature by arms, can warrant the exercise of 

* Mr. Brougham.— Ed. 

t History of the Common Law, chap. xi. 



what is called martial law. Wherever, and 
whenever, they are so interrupted, and as 
long as the interruption continues, necessity 
justifies it. 

No other doctrine has ever been maintain- 
ed in this country, since the solemn Parlia- 
mentary condemnation of the usurpations of 
Charles I., which he was himself compelled 
to sanction in the Petition of Right. In none 
of the revolutions or rebellions which have 
since occurred has martial law been exer- 
cised, however much, in some of them, the 
necessity might seem to exist. Even in 
those most deplorable of all commotions, 
which tore Ireland in pieces, in the last years- 
of the eighteenth century, — in the midst of 
ferocious revolt and cruel punishment, — at 
the very moment of legalising these martial 
jurisdictions in 1799, the very Irish statute, 
which was passed for that purpose, did 
homage to the ancient and fundamental 
principles of the law, in the very act of de- 
parting from them. The Irish statute 39 
Geo. III. c. 2, after reciting " that martial law 
had been successfully exercised to the restora- 
tion of peace, so far as to permit the course of 
the common law partially to take place, but 
that the rebellion continued to rage in con- 
siderable parts of the kingdom, whereby it 
has become necessary for Parliament to in- 
terpose," goes on to enable the Lord Lieu- 
tenant "to punish rebels by courts-martial." 
This statute is the most positive declaration, 
that where the common law can be exer- 
cised in some parts of the country, martial 
law cannot be established in others, though 
rebellion actually prevails in those others, 
without an extraordinary interposition of the 
supreme legislative authority itself. 

I have already quoted from Sir Matthew 
Hale his position respecting the two-fold 
operation of martial law ; — as it affects the 
army of the power which exercises it, and 
as it acts against the army of the enemy. 
That great Judge, happily unused to stand- 
ing armies, and reasonably prejudiced against 
military jurisdiction, does not pursue his dis- 
tinction through all its consequences, and 
assigns a ground for the whole, which will 
support only one of its parts. " The neces- 
sity of order and discipline in an army," is, 
according to him, the reason why the law 
tolerates this departure from its most valu- 
able rules; but this necessity only justifies 
the exercise of martial law over the army 
of our own state. One part of it has since 
been annually taken out of the common law, 
and provided for by the Mutiny Act, which 
subjects the military offences of soldiers 
only to punishment by military courts, even 
in time of peace. Hence we may now be 
said annually to legalise military law ; which, 
however, differs essentially from martial law, 
in beurg confined to offences against military 
discipline, and in not extending to any per- 
sons but those who are members of the 
army. 

Martial law exercised against enemies or 
rebels cannot depend on the same principle ; 



CASE OF MISSIONARY SMITH. 



541 



for it is certainly not intended to enforce or 
preserve discipline among them. It seems 
to me to be only a more regular and conve- 
nient mode of exercising the right to kill in 
war, — a right originating in self-defence. 
and limited to those cases where such kill- 
ing is necessary, as the means of insuring 
that end. Martial law put in force against 
rebels, can only be excused as a mode of 
more deliberately and equitably selecting 
the persons from whom quarter ought to be 
withheld, in a case where all have forfeited 
their claim to it. It is nothing more than a 
sort of better regulated decimation, founded 
upon choice, instead of chance, in order to 
provide for the safety of the conquerors, with- 
out the horrors of undistinguished slaughter : 
it is 'justifiable only where it is an act of 
mercy. Thus the matter stands by the law 
of nations. But by the law of England, it 
cannot be exercised except where the juris- 
diction of courts of justice is interrupted by 
violence. Did this necessity exist at Deme- 
rara on the 13th of October, 1823. Was it 
on that day impossible for the courts of law 
to try offences ? It is clear that, if the case 
be tried by the law of England, and unless 
an affirmative answer can be given to these 
questions of fact, the Court-martial had no 
legal power to try Mr. Smith. 

Now, Sir, I must in the first place remark, 
that General Murray has himself expressly 
waived the plea of necessity, and takes merit 
to himself for having brought Mr. Smith to 
trial before a court-martial, as the most pro- 
bable mode of seeming impartial justice, — 
a statement which would be clearly an at- 
tempt to obtain commendation under false 
pretences, if he had no choice, and was 
compelled by absolute necessity to recur to 
martial law: — "In bringing this man (Mr. 
Smith) to trial, under present circumstances, 
I have endeavoured to secure to him the 
advantage of the most cool and dispassionate 
consideration, by framing a court entirely of 
officers of the army, who. having no interests 
in the country, are without the bias of pub- 
lic opinion, which is at present so violent 
against Mr. Smith.''* This paragraph I con- 
ceive to be an admission, and almost a boast, 
that the trial by court-martial was a matter 
of choice, and therefore not of necessity ; 
and I shall at present say nothing more on 
it, than earnestly to beseech the House to 
remark the evidence which it affords of the 
temper of the colonists, and to bear in mind 
the inevitable influence of that furious tem- 
per on the prosecutors who conducted the 
accusation, — on the witnesses who supported 
it by their testimony, — on the officers of the 
Court-martial, who could have no other asso- 
ciates or friends but among these prejudiced 
and exasperated colonists. With what sus- 
picion and jealousy ought we not to regard 
such proceedings % What deductions ought 
to be made from the evidence ? How little 

* General Murray (Governor of Demerara) to 
Earl Bathurst, 21st of October, 1823. 



can we trust the fairness of the prosecutors, 
or the impartiality of the judges ? What 
hope of acquittal could the most innocent 
prisoner entertain ? Such, says in substance 
Governor Murray, was the rage ol the in- 
habitants of Demerara against the unfortu- 
nate Mr. Smith, that his only chance of im- 
partial trial required him to be deprived of 
all the safeguards which are the birthright 
of British subjects, and to be tried by a judi- 
cature which the laws and feelings of his 
country alike abhor. 

But the admission of Governor Murray, 
though conclusive against him, is not ne- 
cessary to the argument ; for my Learned 
Friend has already demonstrated that, in 
fact, there was no necessity for a court-mar- 
tial on the 13th of October. From the 31st 
of August, it appears by General Murray's 
letters, that no impediment existed to the or- 
dinary course of law ; " no negroes were in 
arms; no war or battle's sound was heard" 
through the colony. There remained, in- 
deed, a few runaways in the forests behind ; 
but we know, from the best authorities,* 
that the forests were never free from bodies 
of these wretched and desperate men in 
those unhappy settlements in Guiana, — 
where, under every government, rebellion 
has as uniformly sprung from cruelty, as 
pestilence has arisen from the marshes. Be- 
fore the 4th of September, even the detach- 
ment which pursued the deserters into the 
forest had returned into the colony. For 
six weeks, then, before the Court-martial 
was assembled, and for twelve weeks before 
that Court pronounced sentence of death on 
Mr. Smith, all hostility had ceased, no ne- 
cessity for their existence can be pretended, 
and every act which they did was an open 
and deliberate defiance of the law of Eng- 
land. 

Where, then, are we to look for any colour 
of law in these proceedings'? Do they de- 
rive it from the Dutch law ? I have dili- 
gently examined the Roman law, which is 
the foundation of that system, and the writ- 
ings of those most eminent jurists who have 
contributed so much to the reputation of 
Holland : — I can find in them no trace of any 
such principle as martial law. Military law, 
indeed, is clearly defined ; and provision is 
made for the punishment by military judges 
of the purely military offences of soldiers. 
But to any power of extending military juris- 
diction over those who are not soldiers, there 
is not an allusion. I will not furnish a sub- 
ject for the pleasantries of my Right Honour- 
able Friend, or tempt him into a repetition 
of his former innumerable blunders, by 
naming the greatest of these jurists ;t lest his 
date, his occupation, and his rank might be 
again mistaken ; and the venerable President 
of the Supreme Court of Holland might be 
once more called a " clerk of the States- 



* See Stedman, Bolingbroke, &c. 
t Bynkershoek, — of whose professional rank 
Mr. Canning had professed ignorance. — Ed. 
2V 



546 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



General." "Persecutio militis," says that 
J earned person, "pertinet ad judicemmilita- 
rem quando delictum sit militare, et ad judi- 
cem communem quando delictum sit com- 
mune." Far from supposing it to be pos- 
sible, that those who were not soldiers could 
ever be triable by military courts for crimes 
not military, he expressly declares the law 
and practice of the United Provinces to be, 
that even soldiers are amenable, for ordi- 
nary offences against society, to the court of 
Holland and Friesland, of which he was long 
the chief. The law of Holland, therefore, 
does not justify this trial by martial law. 

Nothing remains but some law of the 
colony itself. Where is it? It is not al- 
leged or alluded to in any part of this trial. 
We have heard nothing of it this evening. 
So unwilling was I to believe that this Court- 
martial would dare to act without some pre- 
tence of legal authority, that I suspected an 
authority for martial law would be dug out 
of some dark corner of a Guiana ordinance. 
I knew it was neither in the law of England, 
nor in that of Holland ; and I now believe 
that it does not exist even in the law of De- 
merara. The silence of those who are in- 
terested in producing it, is not my only rea- 
son for this belief. I happen to have seen 
the instructions of the States-General to their 
Governor of Demerara, in November, 1792, — 
probably the last ever issued to such an offi- 
cer by that illustrious and memorable as- 
sembly. They speak at large of councils of 
war, both for consultation and for judicature. 
They authorise these councils to try the mili- 
tary offences of soldiers ; and therefore, by 
an inference which is stronger than silence, 
authorise us to conclude that the governor 
had no power to subject those who were not 
soldiers to their authority. 

The result, then. is. that the law of Hol- 
land does not allow what is called "martial 
law " in any case ; and that the law of Eng- 
land does not allow it without a necessity, 
which did not exist in the case of Mr. Smith. 
If, then, martial law, is not to be justified by 
the law of England, or by the law of Holland, 
or by the law of Demerara, what is there to 
hinder me from affirming, that the members 
of this pretended court had no more right to 
try Mr. Smith than any other fifteen men on 
the face of the earth, — that their acts were 
nullities, and their meeting a conspiracy, — 
that their sentence was a direction to com- 
mit a crime, — that, if it had been obeyed, it 
would not have been an execution, but a 
murder, — and that they, and all other parties 
engaged in it, must have answered for it with 
their lives. 

I hope, Sir, no man will, in this House, un- 
dervalue that part of the case which relates 
to the illegality of the trial. I should be 
sorry to hear any man represent it as an in- 
ferior question, whether we are to be go- 
verned by law or by will. Every breach of 
law, under pretence of attaining what is cal- 
led "substantial justice," is a step towards 
reducing society under the authority of arbi- 



trary caprice and lawless force. As in many 
other cases of evil-doing, it is not the imme- 
diate effect, but the example (which is the 
larger part of the consequences of every act), 
which is most mischievous. If we listen to 
any language of this sort, we shall do our 
utmost to encourage governors of colonies to 
discover some specious pretexts of present 
convenience for relieving themselves alto- 
gether, and as often as they wish, from the 
restraints of law. In spite of every legal 
check, colonial administrators are already 
daring enough, from the physical impedi- 
ments which render it nearly impossible to 
reduce their responsibility to practice. If 
we encourage them to proclaim martial law 
without necessity, we shall take away all 
limitations from their power in this depart- 
ment ; for pretences of convenience can sel- 
dom be wanting in a state of society which 
presents any temptation to abuse of power. 

But I am aware, Sir, that I have under- 
taken to maintain the innocence of Mr. Smith, 
as well as to show the unlawfulness and nulli- 
ty of the proceedings against him. I am 
relieved from the necessity of entering at 
large into the facts of his conduct, by the ad- 
mirable and irresistible speech of my Learned 
Friend, who has already demonstrated the 
virtue and innocence of this unfortunate 
Gentleman, who died the martyr of his zeal 
for the diffusion of religion, humanity, and 
civilization, among the slaves of Demerara. 
The Honourable Gentleman charges him 
with a want of discretion. Perhaps it may 
be so. That useful quality, which Swift 
somewhere calls "an alderman-like virtue," 
is deservedly much in esteem among those 
who are "'wise in their generation," and to 
whom the prosperity of this world belongs; 
but it is rarely the attribute of heroes and of 
martyrs, — of those who voluntarily suffer for 
faith or freedom, — Mho perish on the scaffold 
in attestation of their principles; — it does not 
animate men to encounter that honourable 
death which the colonists of Demerara were 
so eager to bestow on Mr. Smith. 

On the question of actual innocence, the 
Honourable Gentleman has either bewildered 
himself, or found it necessary to attempt to 
bewilder his audience, by involving the case 
in a labyrinth of words, from which I shall 
be able to extricate it by a very few and 
short remarks. The question is, not whether 
Mr. Smith was wanting in the highest vigi- 
lance and foresight, but whether he was 
guilty of certain crimes laid to his charge I 
The first charge is, that he promoted discon- 
tent and dissatisfaction among the slaves, 
"intending thereby to excite revolt." The 
Court-martial found him guilty of the fact, 
but not of the intention ; thereby, in com- 
mon sense and justice, acquitting him. The 
second charge is, that, on the 17th of August, 
he consulted Avith Quamina concerning the 
intended rebellion; and, on the 19th and 
20th, during its progress, he aided and as- 
sisted it by consulting and corresponding 
with Quamina, an insurgent. The Court-- 



CASE OF MISSIONARY SMITH. 



543 



martial found him guilty of the acts charged 
on the 17th and 20th ; but acquitted him of 
that charged on the 19th. But this charge 
is abandoned by the Honourable Gentleman, 
and, as far as I can learn, will not be sup- 
ported by any one likely to take a part in 
this debate. On the fourth charge, which. 
in substance, is, that Mr. Smith did not en- 
deavour to make Quamina prisoner on the 
the 20th of August, — the Court-martial have 
found him guilty. But I will not waste the 
time of the House, by throwing away a single 
word upon an accusation which I am per- 
suaded no man here will so insult his own 
reputation as to vindicate. 

The third charge, therefore, is the only one 
which requires a moment's discussion. It 
imputes to Mr. Smith, that he previously 
knew of the intended revolt, and did not 
communicate his knowledge to the proper 
authorities. It depends entirely on the same 
evidence which was produced in support of 
the second. It is an offence analogous to 
what, in our law, is denominated "mis- 
prision" of treason ; and it bears the same re- 
lation to an intended revolt of slaves against 
their owners, which misprision in England 
bears to high treason . To support this charge, 
there should be sufficient evidence of such 
a concealment as would have amounted 
to misprision, if a revolt of slaves against 
their private masters had been high treason. 
Now, it had been positively laid down by 
all the judges of England, that •' one who is 
told only, in general, that there will be a 
rising, without persons or particulars, is not 
bound to disclose."* Concealment of the 
avowal of an intention is not misprision, be- 
cause such an avowal is not an overt act of 
high treason. Misprision of treason is a con- 
cealment of an overt act of treason. A con- 
sultation about the means of revolt is un- 
doubtedly an overt act, because it is one of 
the ordinary and necessary means of accom- 
plishing the object : but it is perfectly other- 
wise with a conversation, even though in the 
course of it improper declarations of a gene- 
ral nature should be made. I need not quote 
Hale or Foster in support of positions which 
I believe will not be controverted. Content- 
ing myself with having laid them down, I 
proceed to apply them to the evidence on 
this charge. 

I think myself entitled to lay aside — and, 
indeed, in that I only follow the example of 
the Honourable Gentleman — the testimony 
of the coachman and the groom, which, if 
understood in one sense is incredible, and in 
the other is insignificant. It evidently 
amounts to no more than a remark by Mr. 
Smith, after the insurrection broke out, that 
he had long foreseen danger. The conceal- 
ment of such a general misapprehension, if 
he had concealed it, was no crime ; for it 
would be indeed most inconvenient to magis- 
trates and rulers, and most destructive of the 
quiet of society, if men were bound to com- 
municate to the public authorities every 

* Kelynge, p. 22. 



alarm that might seize the minds of any of 
them. 

•But he did not conceal that general appre- 
hension : on the contrary, he did much more 
than strict legal duty required. Divide the 
facts into two parts, those which preceded 
Sunday the 17th of August, and those which 
occurred then and afterwards. I fix on this 
day, because it will not be said, by any one 
whose arguments I should be at the trouble 
of answering, that there is any evidence of 
the existence of a specific plan of revolt pre- 
vious to the 17th of August. What did not 
exist could neither be concealed nor dis- 
closed. But the conduct of Mr. Smith re- 
specting the general apprehensions which he 
entertained before that day is evidence of 
great importance as to what would have 
been his probable conduct, if any specific 
plan had afterwards been communicated to 
him. If he made every effort to disclose a 
general apprehension, it is not likely that he 
should have deliberately concealed a specific 
plan. It is in that light that I desire the at- 
tention of the House to it. 

It is quite clear that considerable agitation 
had prevailed among the negroes from the 
arrival of Lord Bathurst's Dispatch in the 
beginning of July. They had heard from 
seamen arrived from England, and by ser- 
vants in the Governor's house, and by the 
angry conversations of their masters, that 
some projects for improving their condition 
had been favourably received in this country. 
They naturally entertained sanguine and ex- 
aggerated hopes of the extent of the refor- 
mation. The delay in making the Instruc- 
tions known naturally led the slaves to 
greater exaggerations of the plan, and gra- 
dually filled their minds with angry suspi- 
cions that it was concealed on account of the 
extensive benefits it was to confer. Liberty 
seemed to be offered from England, and 
pushed aside by their masters and rulers at 
Demerara. This irritation could not escape 
the observation of Mr. Smith, and instead of 
concealing it, he early imparted it to a neigh- 
bouring manager and attorney. How comes 
the Honourable Gentleman to have entirely 
omitted the evidence of Mr. Stewart?* It 
appears from his testimony, that Mr. Smith, 
several weeks before the revolt, communi- 
cated to him, (Stewart) the manager of plan- 
tation Success, that alarming rumours about 
the Instructions prevailed among the negroes. 
It appears that Mr. Smith went publicly with 
his friend Mr. Elliott, another missionary, to 
Mr. Stewart, to repeat the information at a 
subsequent period ; and that, in consequence, 
Mr. Stewart, with Mr. Cort, the attorney of 
plantation Success, went on the 8th of August 
to Mr. Smith, who confirmed his previous 
statements, — said that Quamina and other 
negroes had asked whether their freedom 
had come out, — and mentioned that he had 
some thoughts of disabusing them, by telling 
them from the pulpit that their expectations 
of freedom were erroneous. Mr. Cort dis- 

* Trial, &c, p. 47. 



544 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



suaded him from taking so much upon him- 
self. Is it not evident from this testimony, 
that Mr. Smith had the reverse of an inten* 
tion to conceal the dangerous agitation on or 
before the 8th of August I It is certain that 
all evidence of his privity or participation 
before that day must be false. He then told 
all that he knew, and offered to do much 
more than he was bound to do. His dis- 
closures were of a nature to defeat a project 
of revolt, or to prevent it from being formed : 
— he enabled Cort or Stewart to put the Go- 
vernment on their guard. He told no parti- 
culars, because he knew none ; but he put 
it into the power of others to discover them 
if thej T existed. He made these discoveries 
on the 8th of August : what could have 
changed his previous system of conduct in 
the remaining ten days? Nay, more, he put it 
out ef his own power to change his conduct 
effectually: it no longer depended on himself 
whether what he knew should not be so per- 
fectly made known to the Government as to 
render all subsequent concealment ineffec- 
tual. He could not even know on the 17th 
whether his conversations with Stewart and 
Cort had not been communicated to the Go- 
vernor, and whether measures had not been 
taken, which had either ascertained that the 
agitation no longer generally prevailed, or 
had led to such precautions as could not fail 
to end in the destruction of those who should 
deliberately and criminally conceal the de- 
signs of the insurgents. The crime of mis- 
prision consists in a design to deceive, — 
which, after such a disclosure, it was im- 
possible to harbour. If this had related to 
the communication of a formed plan, it might 
be said, that the disclosure to private per- 
sons was not sufficient, and that he was 
bound to make it to the higher authorities. 
I believe Mr. Cort was a member of the 
Court of Policy. [Here Mr. Gladstone inti- 
mated by a shake of his head that Mr. Cort 
was not.] I yield to the local knowledge of 
my Honourable Friend — if I may venture to 
call him so in our present belligerent rela- 
tions. If Mr. Cort be not a member of the 
Court of Policy, he must have had access to 
its members : — he stated to Mr. Smith the 
reason of their delay to promulgate the In- 
structions; and in a communication which 
related merely to general agitation, Mr. 
Smith could not have chosen two persons 
more likely to be on the alert about a revolt 
of slaves than the manager and attorney of 
a neighbouring plantation. Stewart and Cort 
were also officers of militia. 

A very extraordinary part of this case ap- 
pears" in the Demerara Papers (No. II.) to 
which I have already adverted. Hamilton, 
the manager of plantation Ressouvenir, had, 
it seems, a negro mistress, from whom few 
of his secrets were hid. This lady had the 
singularly inappropriate name of Susannah. 
I am now told that she had been the wife of 
Jack, one of the leaders of the revolt — I have 
no wish to penetrate into his domestic mis- 
fortunes; — at all events, Jack kept up a con- 



stant and confidential intercourse with his 
former friend, even in the elevated station 
which she had attained. She told him (if 
we may believe both him and her) of all 
Hamilton's conversations. By the account 
of Paris, it seems that Hamilton had instruct- 
ed them to destroy the bridges. Susannah 
said that he entreated them to delay the re- 
volt for two weeks, till he could remove his 
things. They told Hamilton not only of 'the 
intention to rise three weeks before, but of 
the particular time. On Monday morning 
Hamilton told her, that it was useless for 
him to manumit her and her children, as 
she wished, for that all would soon be free ; 
and that the Governor kept back the Instruc- 
tions because he was himself a slave-owner. 
Paris and Jack agree in laying to Hamilton's 
charge the deepest participation in their 
criminal designs. If this evidence was be- 
lieved, why was not Hamilton brought to 
trial rather than Smith l If it was disbe- 
lieved, as the far greater part of it must 
have been, why was it concealed from Smith 
that such wicked falsehoods had been con- 
trived against another man, — a circumstance 
which so deeply affects the credit of all the 
negro accomplices, who swore to save their 
own lives. If, as I am inclined to believe, 
some communications were made through 
Susannah, how hard was the fate of Mr. 
Smith, who suffers for not promulgating 
some general notions of danger, which, from 
this instance, must have entered through 
many channels into the minds of the greater 
number of whites. But, up to the 17th of 
August, it appears that Mr. Smith did not 
content himself with bare disclosure, but 
proffered his services to allay discontent, 
and showed more solicitude than any other 
person known to us, to preserve the peace 
of the community. 

The question now T presents itself, which I 
allow constitutes the vital part of this case, 
— Whether any communication was made to 
Mr. Smith on the evening of Sunday the 
17th, of which the concealment from his 
superiors was equivalent to what we call 
misprision of treason? No man can consci- 
entiously vote against the motion who does 
not consider the affirmative as proved. I do 
not say that this would be of itself sufficient 
to negative the motion; I only say, that it is 
indispensably necessary. There would still 
remain behind the illegality of the jurisdic- 
tion, as well as the injustice of the punish- 
ment. And on this latter most important 
part of the case I must here remark, that it 
would not be sufficient to tell us, that the 
Roman and Dutch law ranked misprision as a 
species of treason, and made it punishable 
by death. It must be shown, not only that 
the Court were by this law entitled to con- 
demn Mr. Smith to death, but that they were 
also bound to pronounce such a sentence. 
For if they had any N discretion, it will not be 
said that an English court-martial ought not 
to regulate the exercise of it by the more 
humane and reasonable principles of their 



CASE OF MISSIONARY SMITH. 



545 



own law, which does not treat misprision as 
a capital offence. 

. I am sorry to see that the Honour- 
able Agent for Demerara* has quitted his 
usual place, and has taken a very important 
position. I feel no ill-will ; but I dread the 
sight of him when pouring poison into the 
ears of the powerful. He is but too formid- 
able in his ordinary station, at the head of 
those troops whom his magical wand brings 
into battle in such numbers as no eloquence 
can match, and no influence but his own can 
command 

Let us now consider the evidence of what 
passed on the 17th of August. And here, 
once more, let me conjure the House to con- 
sider the condition of the witnesses who gave 
that evidence. They were accomplices in 
the revolt, who had no chance of life but 
what acceptable testimony might afford. — 
They knew the fierce, furious hatred, which 
the ruling party had vowed against Mr. Smith. 
They were surrounded by the skeletons of 
their brethren : — they could perhaps hear 
the lash resounding on the bloody backs of 
others, who were condemned to suffer a 
thousand lashes, and to work for life in irons 
under the burning sun of Guiana. They 
lived in a colony where such unexampled 
barbarities were inflicted as a mitigated 
punishment, and held out as acts of mercy. 
Such were the dreadful terrors which acted 
on their minds, and under the mental torture 
of which every syllable of their testimony 
was uttered. There was still another deduc- 
tion to be made from their evidence: — they 
spoke to no palpable facts : they gave evi- 
dence only of conversation. -''Words," says 
Mr. Justice Foster, "are transient and fleet- 
ing as the wind ; frequently the effects of a 
sudden transport easily misunderstood, anil 
often misreported." If he spoke thus of 
words used in the presence of witnesses in- 
telligent, enlightened, and accustomed to ap- 
preciate the force and distinctions of terms, 
what would he have said of the evidence of 
negro slaves, accomplices in the crime, trem- 
bling for their lives, reporting conversations 
of which the whole effect might depend on 
the shades and gradations of words in a lan- 
guage very grossly known to them, — of Eng- 
lish words, uttered in a few hurried moments, 
and in the presence of no other witnesses 
from whom they could dread an exposure of 
their falsehood ? It may be safely affirmed, 
that it is difficult for imagination to conceive 
admissible evidence of lower credit, and 
more near the verge of utter rejection. 

But what, after all, is the sum of the evi- 
dence 1 It is, that the negroes who followed 
Mr. Smith from church on Sunday the 17th, 
spoke to him of some design which they en- 
tertained for the next day. It is not pre- 
tended that time, or place, or persons, were 
mentioned : — the contrary is sworn. Mr. 



* Mr. William Holmes, who was also the Trea- 
sury " whipper-in," was for the moment seated 
next, and whispering to, Mr. Canning. — Ed, 
69 



Smith, who was accustomed for six weeks 
to their murmurs, and had before been suc- 
cessful in dissuading them from violence, 
contents himself with repeating the same 
dissuasives. — believes he has again succeed- 
ed in persuading them to remain quiet. — and 
abstains fur twenty-four hours from any new 
communication of designs altogether vague 
and undigested, which he hoped would eva- 
porate, as others of the same kind had done, 
without any serious effects. The very utmost 
that he seems to have apprehended was, a 
plan for obliging, or '■'■ driving/'' as they called 
it, their managers to join in an application to 
the Governor on the subject of the new law, 
— a kind of proceeding which had more than 
once occurred, both under the Dutch and 
English governments. It appears from the 
witnesses for the prosecution, that they had 
more than once gone to Mr. Smith before on 
the same subject, and that his answer was 
always the same : and that some of the more 
exasperated negroes were so dissatisfied with 
his exhortations to submission; that they 
cried out, '-'Mr. Smith was making them 
fools, — that he would not deny his own colour 
for the sake of black people/' Quaniina 
appears to have shown at all times a more 
than ordinary deference towards his pastor. 
He renewed these conversations on the even- 
ing of Sunday the 17th, and told Mr. Smith, 
who again exhorted them to patience, that 
two of the more violent negroes, Jack and 
Joseph, spoke of taking their liberty by force. 
1 desire it to be particularly observed, that 
this intention, or even violent language, ap- 
pears to have been attributed only to two, 
and that in such a manner as naturally to 
exclude the rest. Mr. Smith again repeated 
the advice which had hitherto proved effica- 
cious. " He told them to wait, and not to be 
so foolish. How do you mean that they 
should take it by force ? You cannot do any 
thing with the white people, because the 
soldiers will be more strong than you ; there- 
fore you had better wait. You had better 
go and tell the people, and Christians parti- 
cularly, that they had better have nothing to 
do with it." When Mr. Smith spoke of the 
resistance of the soldiers, Quamina, with an 
evident view to persuade Mr. Smith that no- 
thing was intended which would induce the 
military to proceed to the last extremity, 
observed, that they would drive the mana- 
gers to town ; which, by means of the ex- 
pedient of a general "strike" or refusal to 
work, appears to have been the project spoken 
of by most of the slaves. To this observation 
Mr. Smith justly answered, that even if they 
did "drive" the managers to town, they 
" would not be able to go against the sol- 
diers," who would very properly resist such 
tumultuary and dangerous movements. Re 
it again observed, that Bristol, the chief wit- 
ness for the prosecution, clearly distinguishes 
this plan from that of Jack and Joseph, " who 
intended to fight with the white people." I 
do not undertake to determine whether the 
more desperate measure was at that time 
2v2 



546 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



confined to these two men : it is sufficient 
for me that such was the representation made 
to Mr. Smith. Whoever fairly compares the 
evidence of Bristol with that of Seaton will, 
I think, find the general result to be such as 
I have now stated. It is true, that there are 
contradictions between them, which, in the 
case of witnesses of another caste, might be 
considered as altogether subversive of their 
credit. But I make allowance for their fears, 
— for their confusion, — for their habitual in- 
accuracy, — for their ignorance of the lan- 
guage, — for their own incorrectness, if they 
gave evidence in English. — for that of the 
interpreters, if they employed any other lan- 
guage. In return, I expect that no fair op- 
ponent will rely on minute circumstances, — 
that he will also allow the benefit of all 
chances of inaccuracy to the accused, — and 
that he will not rely on the manner, where 
a single word, mistaken or misremembered. 
might make the whole difference between 
the most earnest and the faintest dissuasive. 

I do not know what other topics Mr. Smith 
could have used. He appeals to their pru- 
dence: '-'the soldiers," says he, "will over- 
come your vain revolt/' He appeals to their 
sense of religion : — " as Christians you ought 
not to use violence." What argument re- 
mained, if both these failed ? What part of 
human nature could he have addressed, 
where neither danger could deter, nor duty 
restrain 1 He spoke to the' . conscience and 
to their fears : — surely admonition could go 
no further. ' There is not the least appear- 
ance that these topics were not urged with 
as perfect good faith, as they must have been 
in those former instances where he demon- 
strated his sincerity by the communications 
which he made to Stewart and Cort. His 
temper of mind on this subject continued, 
then, to be the same on the evening of the 
17th that it had been before. And, if so, 
how absolutely incredible it is, that he shou Id, 
on that night, and on the succeeding morn- 
ing, advisedly, coolly, and malignantly, form 
the design of hiding a treasonable plot con- 
fidentially imparted to him by the conspira- 
tors, in order to lull the vigilance of the 
Government, and commit himself and his 
countrymen to the mercy of exasperated and 
triumphant slaves ! 

I have already stated the reasons which 
might have induced him to believe that he 
had once more succeeded in dissuading the 
negroes from violence. Was he inexcusable 
in overrating his own ascendant, — in over- 
estimating the docility of his converts, — in 
relying more on the efficacy of his religious 
instructions than men of more experience 
and colder temper would deem reasonable ? 
I entreat the House to consider whether this 
self-deception be improbable ; for if he be- 
lieved that he had been successful, and that 
the plan of tumult or revolt was abandoned, 
would it not have been the basest and most 
atrocious treachery to have given such in- 
formation as might have exposed the de- 
fenceless slaves to punishments of unparal- 



leled cruelty, for offences which they had 
meditated, but from which he believed that 
he had reclaimed them ? Let me for a mo- 
ment again remind the House of the facts 
which give such weight to this considera- 
tion, fie lived in a colony where, for an in- 
surrection in which no white man was wan- 
tonly or deliberately put to death, and no 
propefty was intentionally destroyed or even 
damaged. I know not how many negroes 
perished on the gibbet, and others, — under 
the insolent, atrocious, detestable pretext of 
mercy! — suffered a thousand lashes, and 
were doomed to hard labour in irons for life, 
under the burning sun, and among the pes- 
tilential marshes of Guiana? These dread- 
ful cruellies, miscalled punishments, did in- 
deed occur after the 17lh of August. But 
he, whose " heart had fluttered from the in- 
cessant cracking of the whip," must have 
strongly felt the horrors to which he was ex- 
posing his unhappy flock by a hasty or need- 
less disclosure of projects excited by the 
impolitic delay of their rulers. Every good 
man must have wished to find the informa- 
tion unnecessary. Would not Mr. Smith 
have been the most unworthy of pastors, if 
he had not desired that such a cup might 
pass from him ? And if he felt these be- 
nevolent desires, — if he recoiled with horror 
from putting these poor men into th.e hands 
of what in Demerara is ealled justice, there 
was nothing in the circumstances which 
might not have seemed to him to accord with 
his wishes. Even without the influence of 
warm feeling, I do not think that it would 
have been unreasonable for any man ta 
believe that the negroes had fully agreed to 
wait. Nay, I am convinced that with Qua- 
mina Mr. Smith was successful. Quamina, 
I believe, used his influence to prevent the 
revolt ; and it was not till after he was ap- 
prehended on Monday, on unjust suspicions, 
and was rescued, that he took refuge among 
the revolters, and was at last shot by the 
soldiery when he was a runaway in the 
forest, — a fact which was accepted by the 
Court-martial as the sufficient, though sole, 
evidence of his being a ringleader in the 
rebellion. 

The whole period during which it is ne- 
cessary to account for Mr. Smith's not com- 
municating to the Government an immature 
project, of which he knew no particulars, 
and which he might well believe to be aban- 
doned, is a few hours in the morning of Mon- 
day ; for it is proved by the evidence of 
Hamilton, that he was informed of the in- 
tended revolt by a Captain Simson, at one 
o'clock of that day. in George-Town, the 
seat of government, at some miles distant 
from the scene of action. It was then so 
notorious, that Hamilton never dreamt of 
troubling the Governor with such needless 
intelligence; yet this was only r four or five 
hours later than the time when Mr. Smith 
was held to be bound, under pain of death, 
to make such a communication ! The Go- 
vernor himself, in his dispatches, said that 



CASE OF MISSIONARY SMITH. 



S4f 



he had received the information, but did not 
believe it.* This disbelief, however, could 
not have been of long duration; for active 
measures were taken, and Mr. Stewart ap- 
prehended Quamina and his son Jack a little 
after three o'clock on Monday ; which, con- 
sidering the distance, necessarily implies 
that some general order of that nature had 
been issued by the Government at George- 
Town not long after noon on that day.t As 
all these proceedings occurred before Mr. 
Smith received the note from Jack of Doch- 
four about half an hour before the revolt, I 
lay that fact out of the case, as wholly im- 
material. The interview of Mr. Smith with 
Quamina, on the 19th of August, is nega- 
tived by the finding of the Court-martial : — 
that on the 20th will be relied on*by no man 
in this House, because there is not the slight- 
est proof, nor, indeed, probability, that the 
conversation at that interview was not per- 
fectly innocent. Nothing, then, called for 
explanation but the conversation of Sunday 
evening, and the silence of Monday morning, 
which I think I have satisfactorily explained, 
as fully as my present strength will allow, 
and much more so than the speech of my 
Learned Friend left it necessary to do. 

There is one other circumstance which 
occurred on Sunday, and which I cannot pass 
over in silence : — it is the cruel perversion 
of the beautiful text from the Gospel on 
which Mr. Smith preached his last sermon. 
That circumstance alone evinces the incura- 
ble prejudice against this unfortunate man, 
which so far blinded his prosecutors, that 
they actually represent him as choosing that 
most affecting lamentation over the fall of 
Jerusalem, in order to excite the slaves to 
accomplish the destruction of Demerara. The 
lamentation of one who loved a country was 
by them thought to be selected to stimulate 
those who were to destroy a country; — as if 
tragical reprehensions of the horrors of an 
assault were likely to be exhibited in the 
camp of the assailants the night before they 
were to storm a city. It is wonderful that 
these prosecutors should not have perceived 
that such a choice of a text would have been 
very natural for Mr. Smith, only on the sup- 
position that he had been full of love and 
compassion and alarm for the European in- 
habitants of Demerara. The simple truth 
was, that the estate was about to be sold, 
the negroes to be scattered over the colony 
by auction, and that, — by one of those some- 
what forced analogies, which may appear to 
me unreasonable, but which men of the 
most sublime genius as well as fervent piety 
have often applied to the interpretation of 
Scripture, — he likened their sad dispersion, 
in connection with their past neglect of the 
means of improvement, and the chance of 
their now losing all religious consolation and 
instruction, to the punishment inflicted on 
the Jews by the conquest and destruction of 
Jerusalem. 



* Demerara Papers, No. II. p. 1. t Ibid., p. 70. 



In what I have now addressed to the 
House. I have studiously abstained from all 
discussions of those awful questions which 
relate to the general structure of colonial so- 
ciety. I am as adverse as any one to the 
sudden emancipation of slaves, — much out 
of regard to the masters, but still more, as 
affecting a far larger portion of mankind, out 
of regard to the unhappy slaves themselves. 
Emancipation by violence and revolt I con- 
sider as the greatest calamity that can visit 
a community, except perpetual slavery, I 
should not have so deep an abhorrence of 
that wretched state, if I did not regard it as 
unfitting slaves for the safe exercise of the 
common rights of mankind. I should be 
grossly inconsistent with myself, if, believing 
this corrupt and degrading power of slavery 
over the mind to be the worst of all its evils, 
I were not very fearful of changes which 
would set free those beings, whom a cruel 
yoke had transformed into wild beasts, only 
that they might tear and devour each other, 
I acknowledge that the pacific emancipation 
of great multitudes thus wretchedly circum- 
stanced is a problem so arduous as to per- 
plex and almost silence the reason of man. 
Time is undoubtedly necessary; and I shall 
never object to time if it be asked in good 
faith. If I be convinced of the sincerity of 
the reformer, I will not object to the reforma- 
tion merely on account of the time which it 
requires. But I have a right to be jealous 
of every attempt which, under pretence of 
asking time for reformation, may only aim at 
evading urgent demands, and indefinitely 
procrastinating the deliverance of men from 
bondage. 

And here. Sir, I should naturally close: 
but I must be permitted to relate the subse- 
quent treatment of Mr. Smith, because it 
reflects back the strongest light on the inten- 
tions and dispositions of those who prose- 
cuted him. and of those who ratified the sen- 
tence of death. They who can cruelly-treat 
the condemned, are not in general scrupu- 
lous about convicting the innocent. I have 
seen the widow of this unhappy sufferer, — 
a pious and amiable woman, worthy to be 
the helpmate of her martyred husband, dis- 
tinguished by a calm and clear understand- 
ing, and, as far as I could discover, of great 
accuracy, anxious rather to understate facts, 
and to counteract every lurking disposition 
to exaggerate, of which her judgment and 
humility might lead her to suspect herself. 
She told me her story with temper and sim- 
plicity ; and, though I ventured more near to 
cross examination in my inquiries than de- 
licacy would, perhaps, in any less importanl 
case have warranted, I saw not the least rea 
son to distrust the exactness, any more than 
the honesty, of her narrative. Within a few 
days of his apprehension, Mr. Smith and his 
wife were closely confined in two small rooms 
at the top of a building, with only the out- 
ward roof between them and the sun, when 
the thermometer in the shade at their resi- 
dence in the country stood at an average of 



548 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



eighty-three degrees of Fahrenheit. There 
they were confined from August to October, 
with two sentries at the door, which was 
kept open day and night. These sentries, 
who were relieved every two hours, had 
orders at every relief to call on the prisoner, 
to ascertain by his answer that he had not 
escaped. The generality, of course, executed 
their orders: "a few, more humane," said 
Mrs. Smith, "contented themselves during 
the night with quietly looking into the bed." 
Thus was he, under a mortal disease, and 
his wife, with all the delicacy of her sex, 
confined for two months, without seeing a 
human face except those of the sentries, and 
of the absolutely necessary attendants: — no 
physician, no friends to console, no legal ad- 
viser to guide the prisoner to the means of 
proving his innocence, no mitigation, no 
solace ! The first human face which she 
saw, was that of the man who came to bear 
tidings of accusation, and trial, and death, to 
her husband. I asked her, "whether it was 
possible that the Governor knew that they 
• were in this state of desolation?" She an- 
swered, " that she did not know, for nobody 
came to inquire after them !" He was after- 
wards removed to apartments on the ground 
floor, the damp of which seems to have has- 
tened his fate. Mrs. Smith was set at large, 
but obliged to ask a daily permission to see 
her husband for a limited time, and if I re- 
member right, before witnesses ! After the 
packet had sailed, and when there was no 
longer cause to dread their communication 
with England, she was permitted to have un- 
restricted access to him, as long as his inter- 
course with earthly things endured. At 
length he was mercifully released from his 
woes. The funeral was ordered to take place 
at two o'clock in the morning, that no sor- 
rowing negroes might follow the good man's 
corpse. The widow desired to accompany 
the remains of her husband to the grave : — 
even this sad luxury was prohibited. The 
■officer declared that his instructions were 
peremptory: Mrs. Smith bowed with the 
silent submission of a broken heart. Mrs. 
Elliot, her friend and companion, not so 
\iome down by sorrow, remonstrated. "Is 
it possible," she said, " That General Murray 
can have forbidden a poor widow from fol- 
lowing the coffin of her husband." The 
officer again answered that his orders were 
peremptory. "At all events," said Mrs. 
Elliot, " he cannot hinder us from meeting 
the coffin at the grave." Two negroes bore 
the coffin, with a single lantern going before ; 
and at four o'clock in the morning, the two 
women met it in silent anguish at the grave, 
and poured over the remains of the perse- 
cuted man that tribute which nature pays to 
the memory of those whom we love. Two 
neg>o workmen, a carpenter and a brick- 
layer, — who had been members of his con- 
gregation, — were desirous of being permitted 
to protect and distinguish the spot where 
♦heir benefactor reposed : — 



" That ev'n his bones from insult to protect, 
Some frail memorial, still erected nigh, 
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture 

deckt, 
Might claim the passing tribute of a sigh."* 

They began to rail in and to brick over the 
grave : but as soot! as this intelligence reach- 
ed the First Fiscal, his Honour was pleased 
to forbid the work ; he ordered the bricks to 
be taken up, the railing to be torn down, and 
the whole frail memorial of gratitude and 
piety to be destroyed ! 

" Engliah vengeance wars not with the 
dead :" — it is not so in Guiana. As they 
began, so they concluded : and at least it 
must be owned that they were consistent in 
their treatment of the living and of the dead. 
They did n6t stop here : a few days after the 
death of Mr. Smith, they passed a vote of 
thanks to Mr. President Wray, for his ser- 
vices during the insurrection, which, I fear, 
consisted entirely in his judicial acts as a 
member of the Court-martial. It is the 
single instance. I believe, in the history of 
the world, where a popular meeting thanked 
a judge for his share in a trial which closed 
with a sentence of death ! I must add, with 
sincere regret, that Mr. Wray, in an unad- 
vised moment, accepted these tainted thanks, 
and expressed his gratitude for them. Shortly 
after they did their utmost to make him re- 
pent, and be ashamed of his rashness. I 
hold in my hand a Demerara newspaper, 
containing an account of a meeting, which 
must have been held with the knowledge of 
the Governor, and among whom I see nine 
names, which from the prefix " Honourable," 
belong, I presume, to persons who were 
members either of the Court of Justice or 
of the Court of Policy. It was an assembly 
which must be taken to represent the co- 
lony. Their first proceeding was a Declara- 
tion of Independence : — they resolved, that 
the King and Parliament of Great Britain 
had no right to change their laws without 
the consent of their Court of Policy. They 
founded this pretension, — which would be 
so extravagant and insolent, if it were not 
so ridiculous, — on the first article of the 
Capitulation now lying before me, bearing 
date on the 19lh of September, 1803, by 
which it was stipulated that no new esta- 
blishments should be introduced without the 
consent of the Court of Policy, — as if a mili- 
tary commander had any power to perpetuate 
the civil constitution of a conquered country, 
and as if the subsequent treaty had not ceded 
Demerara in full sovereignty to his Majesty. 
I should have disdained to notice such a de- 
claration if it were not for what followed. 
This meeting took place eighteen days after 
the death of Mr. Smith. It might be hoped, 
that, if their hearts were not touched by his 
fate, at least their hatred might have been 
buried in his grave ; but they showed how 
little chance of justice he had when living 



Gray's Elegy. — Ed. 



ON THE RECOGNITION OF THE SPANISH-AMERICAN STATES. 



within the sphere of their influence, by their 
rancorous persecution of his memory after 
death. Eighteen days after he had expired in 
a dungeon, they passed a resolution of strong 
condemnation against two names not often 
joined, — the London Missionary Society and 
Lord Bathurst ; — the Society, because they 
petitioned for mercy (for that is a crime in 
their eyes),— Lord Bathurst, because he ad- 
vised His Majesty to dispense it to Mr. Smith. 
With an ignorance suitable to their other 
qualities, they consider the exercise of mercy 
as a violation of justice. They are not con- 



549 

tent with persecuting their victim to death ; 
—they arraign nature, which released him, 
and justice, in the form of mercy, which 
would have delivered him out of their hands. 
Not satisfied with his life, they are incensed 
at not being able to brand his memory, — to 
put an ignominious end to his miseries, and 
to hang up "his skeleton on a gibbet, which, 
as often as it waved in the winds, should 
warn every future missionary to fly from 
such a shore, and not dare to enter that colony 
to preach the doctrines of peace, of justice, 
and of mercy ! 



SPEECH 

ON PRESENTING A PETITION FROM THE MERCHANTS OF LONDON FOR THE RECOGNITION OF 

THE INDEPENDENT STATES 

ESTABLISHED IN THE COUNTRIES OF AMERICA FORMERLY SUBJECT TO SPAIN. 
DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, ON THE 15tH OF JUNE, 1824. 



Scit 

Unde petat Romam, libertas ultima mundi 
Quo stetent tenenda loco.— Pharsalia, lib. vii. 579. 
null Hni°n r in WarS ancien, 'y made u °" behalf of a parity or tacit conformity of estate.-to set up or 



Mr. Speaker,— I hold in my hand a Peti- 
tion from the Merchants of the City of London 
who are engaged in trade with the countries 
of America formerly subject to the crown of 
Spain, praying that the House would adopt 
such measures as to them may seem meet 
to induce His Majesty's Government to re- 
cognise the independence of the states in 
those countries which have, in fact, esta- 
blished independent governments. 

In presenting this Petition, I think it right 
to give the House such information as I pos- 
sess relating to the number and character of 
the Petitioners, that it may be seen how far 
they are what they profess to be,— what are 
their means of knowledge,— what are likely 
to be the motives of their application,— what 
faith is due to their testimony, and what 
weight ought to be allowed to their judg- 
ment. Their number is one hundred and 
seventeen. Each of them is a member of a 
considerable commercial house interested in 
the trade to America; the Petition, therefore, 
conveys the sentiments of three or four hun- 
dred merchants. The signatures were col- 
lected in two days, without a public meeting-, 
or even an advertisement. It was confined 
to the American merchants, but the Petition- 
ers have no reason to believe that any mer- 
chant in London would have declined to put 



his name to it. I am but imperfectly quali- 
fied to estimate the importance and station 
of the Petitioners. Judging from common 
information, I should consider many of them 
as in the first rank of the mercantile com- 
munity. I see among them the firm of 
Baring and Company, which, without dis- 
paragement to any others, may be placed at 
the head of the commercial establishments 
of the world. I see also the firms of Herring, 
Powles, and Company; of Richardson and 
Company; Goldsmid and Company; Monte- 
fiore and Company ; of Mr. Benjamin Shaw, 
who, as Chairman of Lloyd's Coifee-house, 
represents the most numerous and diversified 
interests of traffic; together with many others 
not equally known to me, but whom," if I did 
know, I have no doubt that I might with 
truth describe as persons of the highest mer- 
cantile respectability. I perceive among 
them the name of Ricardo, which I shail 
ever honour, and which I cannot now pro- 
nounce without emotion.* In a word the 
Petitioners are the City of London. They 
contain individuals of all political parties; 
they are deeply interested in the subject, — 
perfectly conversant with all its commercial 

* Mr. Ricardo had died on the 11th of Septem- 
ber preceding. — Ed. 



£50 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



bearings; and they could not fill the high 
place where they stand, if they were not 
as much distinguished by intelligence and 
probity, as by those inferior advantages of 
wealth which with them are not fortunate 
accidents, but proofs of personal worth and 
professional merit. 

If, Sir, it had been my intention to enter 
fully on this subject, and especially to dis- 
cuss it adversely to the King's Government, 
I might have chosen a different form of pre- 
senting it to the House. But though I am 
and ever shall be a member of a party asso- 
ciated, as I conceive, for preserving the liber- 
ties of the kingdom, I present this Petition 
in the spirit of those by whom it is sub- 
scribed, in the hope of relieving that anxious 
desire which pervades the commercial world, 
— and which is also shared by the people of 
England, — that the present session may not 
close without some discussion or some expla- 
nation on this important subject, as far as 
that explanation can be given without incon- 
venience to the public service. For such a 
purpose, the presentation of a petition affords 
a convenient opportunity, both because it 
implies the absence of any intention to blame 
the past measures of Government as foreign 
from the wishes of the Petitioners, and be- 
cause it does not naturally require to be fol- 
lowed by any motion which might be repre- 
sented as an invasion of the prerogative of 
the Crown, or as a restraint on the discretion 
of its constitutional advisers. 

At the same time I must add, that in what- 
ever form or at whatever period of the ses- 
sion I had brought this subject forward, I do 
not think that I should have felt myself call- 
ed upon to discuss it in a tone very different 
from that which the nature of the present 
occasion appears to me to require. On a 
question of policy, where various opinions 
may be formed about the past, and where 
the only important part is necessarily pros- 
pective, I should naturally have wished to 
speak in a deliberative temper. However 
much I might lament the delays which had 
occurred in the recognition of the American 
States, I could hardly have gone further than 
strongly to urge that the time was now at 
least come for more decisive measures. 

Willi respect, indeed, to the State Papers 
laid before us, I see nothing in them to blame 
or to regret, unless it be that excess of ten- 
derness and forbearance towards the feelings 
and pretensions of European Spain which the 
Despatches themselves acknowledge. In all 
other respects, I can only describe them as 
containing a body of liberal maxims of policy 
and just principles of public law, expressed 
with a precision, a circumspection, and a dig- 
nity which will always render them models 
and master-pieces of diplomatic composi- 
tion.* Far from assailing these valuable 

* They were among the first papers issued from 
the Foreign Office, alter the accession to office of 
Mr. Canning, and represented the spirit of his — 
as distinguished from the preceding Castlereagh 
^ojicy. — Ed. 



documents, it is my object to uphold their 
doctrines, to reason from their principles, and 
to contend for nothing more than that the 
future policy of England on this subject may 
be governed by them. On them I rest : from 
them seems to me to flow every consequence 
respecting the future, which I think most 
desirable. I should naturally have had no 
other task than that of quoting them, of 
showing the stage to which they had con- 
ducted the question, of unfolding their import 
where they are too short for the generality 
of readers, and of enforcing their application 
to all that yet remains undone. But some- 
thing more is made necessary by the confu- 
sion and misconception which prevail on one 
part of this subject. I have observed with 
astonishment, that persons otherwise well 
informed should here betray a forgetfulness 
of the most celebrated events in history, and 
an unacquaintance with the plainest princi- 
ples of international law, which I should not 
have thought possible if I had not known it 
to be real. I am therefore obliged to justify 
these State Papers before I appeal to them. 
I must go back for a moment to those ele- 
mentary principles which are so grossly mis- 
understood. 

And first, Sir, with respect to the term 
"recognition," the introduction of which 
into these discussions has proved the princi- 
pal occasion of darkness and error. It is a 
term which is used in two senses so different 
from each other as to have nothing very im- 
portant in common. The first, which is the 
true and legitimate sense of the word '•' re- 
cognition," as a technical term of interna- 
tional law, is that in which it denotes the 
explicit acknowledgment of the independ- 
ence of a country by a state which formerly 
exercised sovereignty over it. Spain has 
been doomed lo exhibit more examples of 
this species of recognition than any other 
European state ; of which the most memora- 
ble cases are her acknowledgment of the 
independence of Portugal and Holland. This 
country also paid the penalty of evil councils 
in that hour of folly and infatuation which 
led to a hostile separation between the 
American Colonies and their mother country. 
Such recognitions are renunciations of sove- 
reignty, — surrenders of the power or of the 
claim to govern. 

But we, who are as foreign to the Spanish 
states in America as we are to Spain herself, 
— who never had any more authority over 
them than over her, — have in this case no 
claims to renounce, no power to abdicate, no 
sovereignty to resign, no legal rights to con- 
fer. What we have to do is therefore not 
recognition in its first and most strictly proper 
sense. It is not by formal stipulations or 
solemn declarations that we are to recognise 
the American states, but by measures of 
practical policy, which imply that we ac- 
knowledge their independence. Our recog- 
nition is virtual. The most conspicuous part 
of such a recognition, is the act of sending 
and receiving diplomatic agents. It implies 



ON THE RECOGNITION OF THE SPANISH-AMERICAN STATES. 



551 



no guarantee, no alliance, no aid, no appro- 
bation of the successful revolt, — no intimation 
of an opinion concerning the justice or injus- 
tice of the means by which it has been ac- 
complished. These are matters beyond our 
jurisdiction. It would be an usurpation in 
us to sit in judgment upon them. As a stale, 
we can neither condemn nor justify revolu- 
tions which do not affect our safety, and are 
not amenable to our laws. We deal with 
the authorities of new states on the same 
principles and for the same object as with 
those of old. We consider them as govern- 
ments actually exercising authority over the 
people of a country, with whom we are 
called upon to maintain a regular intercourse 
by diplomatic agents for the interests of 
Great Britain, and for the security of British 
subjects. Antiquity affords a presumption 
of stability, which, like all other presump- 
tions, may and does fail in particular in- 
stances • but in itself it is nothing, and when 
it ceases to indicate stability, it ought to be 
regarded by a foreign country as of no ac- 
count. The tacit recognition of a new state, 
with which alone I am now concerned, not 
being a judgment for the new government, 
or against the old, is not a deviation from 
perfect neutrality, or a cause of just offence 
to the dispossessed ruler.* When Great 
Britain recognised the United States, it was 



* These doctrines are so indisputable, that they 
are not controverted even by the jurists of the 
Holy Alliance, whose writings in every other re- 
spect bear the most ignominious marks of the 
servitude of the human understanding under the 
empire of that confederacy. Martens, who in the 
last edition of his Summary of International Law 
has sacrificed even the principle of national inde- 
pendence (liv. iii. e. ii. s. 74), without which no 
such law could be conceived, yet speaks as follows 
on recognitions: — " Quant a la simple reconnais- 
sance, il semble qu'une nation etrangere. n'eiant 
pas obligee a juger de la legitimite, pent toutes 
les fois qu'elle est douteuse se permettre de s'at- 
tacher au seul fait de la possession, et traiter 
comme independant de son ancien gouvernement, 
1'etat ou la province qui jouit dans le fait de I'inde- 
pendance, sans blesser par la les devoirs d'une 
rigoureuse neutralite." — Precis du Droit des Gens, 
liv. iii. c. ii. s. 80. Gottingen, 1821. Yet a com- 
parison of the above sentence with the parallel 
passage of the same book in the edition of 1789 is 
a mortifying specimen of the decline of liberty of 
opinion in Europe. Even Kluber, the publisher 
of the proceedings of the Congress of Vienna, 
assents to the same doctrine, though he insidiously 
contrives the means of evading it by the insertion 
of one or two ambiguous words: — "La souve- 
rainete est acquise par un etat, ou lors de sa fon- 
dation ou bien lorsqu'il se degage legitimement de 
la dependance dans laquelle il se trouvait. Pour 
■etre valide, elle n'a pas besoin d'etre reconnue ou 
garantie par une puissance quelconque : pourvu 
que la possession ne soit pas vicieuse." — Droit des 
Gens, part i. c. i. s. 23. Mr. Kluber would find it 
difficult to answer the question, " Who is to judge 
whether the acquisition of independence be legiti- 
mate; or its possession vicious V And it is evident 
that the latter qualification is utterly unmeaning ; 
for if there be an original fault, which vitiates the 
possession of independence, it cannot be removed 
by foreign recognition, which, according to this 
writer himself, is needless where the independence 



a concession by the recognising Power, the 
object of which was the advantage and se- 
curity of the government recognised. But 
when Great Britain (I hope very soon) recog- 
nises the states of Spanish America, it will 
not be as a concession to them, for they need 
no such recognition; but it will be for her 
own sake, — to promote her own interest, — to 
protect the trade and navigation of her sub- 
jects, — to acquire the best means of cul- 
tivating friendly relations with important 
countries, and of composing by immediate 
negotiation those differences which might 
otherwise terminate in war. Are these new 
doctrines? — quite the contrary. They are 
founded on the ancient practice of Europe. 
They have been acted upon for more than 
two centuries by England as well as other 
nations. 

I have already generally alluded, Sir, to 
the memorable and glorious revolt by which 
the United Provinces of the Netherlands 
threw off the yoke of Spain. Nearly four- 
score years passed from the beginning of 
that just insurrection to the time when a 
recognition of independence was at last ex- 
torted from Castilian pride and obstinacy. 
The people of the Netherlands first took up 
arms to obtain the redress of intolerable 
grievances; and for many years they for- 
bore from proceeding to the last extremity 
against their tyrannical king.* It was not 
till Philip had formally proscribed the Prince 
of Orange, — the purest and most perfect 
model of a patriotic hero, — putting a price 
on his head, and promising not only pardon 
for every crime, but the honours of nobility 
to any one who should assassinate him,f that 
the States-General declared the King of Spain 
to have forfeited, by a long course of merci- 
less tyranny, his rights of sovereignty over the 
Netherlands.! Several assassins attempted 
the life of the good and great Prince of 
Orange : one wounded him dangerously ; 
another consummated the murder, — a zealot 
of what was then, as it is now, called " legiti- 
macy.'"' He suffered the punishment due to 
his crime ; but the King of Spain bestowed 



is lawful, and must therefore be useless in those 
cases where he insinuates rather than asserts that 
foreign states are bound or entitled to treat it as 
unlawful. 

* The following are the words of their illustri- 
ous historian: — " Posi iongam dubitationem, ab 
ordinibus Belgarum Philippo, ob violatas leges, 
imperium abrogatum est ; lataque in ilium senten- 
tia cum quo, si verum fatemur, novem jam per 
annos bellatum erat ; sed tunc primum desitum 
nomen ejus et insignia usurpari, mutataque verba 
solennis jurisjurandi, ut qui princeps hactenus 
erat : hostis vocaretur. Hoc consilium vicinas 
apud gentes necessitate et tot irritis ante precious 
e.rrusatum, haud desiere Hispani ut scelus insec- 
tari, parum memores, pulsum a majoribus suis 
regno invisae crudelitatis regem, eique praelatam 
stirpem non ex legibus genitam ; ut jam taceantur 
Vetera apud Francos, minus vetera apud Anglos, 
recentiora apud Danos et Sueonas dejectorum 
regum exempla." — Grotii Annales, lib. iii. 

t Dumont, Corps Diplomatique, vol. v. p. 368. 

t Ibid. p. 413. 



552 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS, 



on his family the infamous nobility which 
had been earned by the assassin, — an ex- 
ample which has also disgraced our age. 
Before and alter that murder, the greatest 
vicissitudes of fortune had attended the 
arms of those who fought for the liberties of 
their country. Their chiefs were driven into 
exile ; their armies were dispersed. The 
greatest and most opulent of the Belgic 
Provinces, misled by priests, had made their 
peace with the tyrant. The greatest cap- 
tains of the age commanded against them. 
The Duke of Alva employed his valour and 
experience to quell the revolts which had 
been produced by his cruelty. The genius 
of the Prince of Parma long threatened the 
infant liberty of Holland. Spinola balanced 
the consummate ability of Prince Maurice, 
and kept up an equal contest, till Gustavus 
Adolphus rescued Europe from the Holy 
Allies of that age. The insurgents had seen 
with dread the armament called -- Invinci- 
ble," which was designed, by the conquest 
of England, to destroy the last hopes of the 
Netherlands. Their independence appeared 
more than once to be annihilated ; it was 
often endangered ; it was to the last fiercely 
contested. The fortune of war was as often 
adverse as favourable to their arms. 

It was not till the 30th of January, 1648,* 
nearly eight years after the revolt, nearly 
seventy after the declaration of independ- 
ence, that the Crown of Spain, by the Treaty 
of Munster, recognised the Republic of the 
United Provinces, and renounced all pre- 
tensions to sovereignty over their territory. 
What, during that long period, was the policy 
of the European states'? Did they wait for 
eighty years, till the obstinate punctilio or 
lazy pedantry of the Escurial was subdued ? 
Did they forego all the advantages of friendly 
intercourse with a powerful and nourishing- 
republic? Did they withhold from that re- 
public the ordinary courtesy of keeping up 
a regular and open correspondence with her 
through avowed and honourable ministers'? 
Did they refuse to their own subjects that pro- 
tection for their lives and properties, which 
such a correspondence alone could afford 1 

All this they ought to have done, accord- 
ing to the principles of those who would 
resist the prayer of the Petition in my hand. 
But nothing of this was then done or dreamt 
of. Every state in Europe, except the Ger- 
man branch of the House of Austria, sent 
ministers to the Hague, and received those 
of the States-General. Their friendship was 
prized, — their alliance courted; and defen- 
sive treaties were formed with them by 
Powers at peace with Spain, from the heroic 
Gustavus Adolphus to the barbarians of Per- 
sia and Muscovy. I say nothing of Eliza- 
beth herself,' — proscribed as she was as an 
usurper, — the stay of Holland, and the leader 
of the liberal party throughout Europe. But 
no one can question the authority on this 
point of her successor, — the great professor 

* Dumont, vol. vi. p. 429. 



of legitimacy, — the founder of that doctrine 
of the divine right of kings, which led his 
family to destruction. As king of Scotland,, 
in 1594, fort)*- four years before the recogni- 
tion by Spain, James recognised the States- 
General as the successors of the Houses of 
Austria and Burgundy, by stipulating with, 
them the renewal of a treaty concluded be- 
tween his mother Queen Mary and the 
Emperor Charles V.* In 1604, when he 
made peace with Spain, eager as he was by 
that transaction to be admitted into the fra- 
ternity of legitimate kings, he was so far 
curbed by the counsellors of Elizabeth, that 
he adhered to his own and to her recognition 
of the independence of Holland : the Court 
of Madrid virtually acknowledging, by seve- 
ral articles of the treaty,t that such perseve- 
rance in the recognition was no breach of 
neutrality, and no obstacle to friendship with 
Spain. At the very moment of the negotia- 
tion, Winwood was despatched with new 
instructions as minister to the States-Gene- 
ral. It is needless to add that England, at 
peace with Spain, continued to treat Holland 
as an independent slate for the forty-four 
years which passed from that treaty to the 
recognition of Munster. 

The policy of England towards Portugal, 
though in itself far less memorable, is still 
more strikingly pertinent to the purpose of 
this argument. On the 1st of December 
1640, the people of Portugal rose in arms 
against the tyranny of Spain, under which 
they had groaned about sixty years. They 
seated the Duke of Braganza on the throne. 
In January 1641, the Cortes of the kingdom 
were assembled to legalize his authority, 
though seldom convoked by his successors 
after their power was consolidated. Did 
England then wait the pleasure of Spain ? 
Did she desist from connection with Portu- 
gal, till it appeared from long experience 
that the attempts of Spain to recoyer that 
country must be unavailing? Did she even 
require that the Braganza Government should 
stand the test of time before she recognised 
its independent authority'? No: within a 
year of the proclamation of the Duke of 
Braganza by the Cortes, a treaty of peace 
and alliance was signed at Windsor between 
Charles I. and John IV., which not only treats 
with the latter as an independent sovereign, 
but expressly speaks of the King of Castile 
as a dispossessed ruler; and alleges on the 
part of the King of England, that he was 
moved to conclude this treaty u by his solici- 
tude to preserve the tranquillity of his king- 
doms, and to secure the liberty of trade of his 
beloved subjcctsJ'* The contest was carried 
on : the Spaniards obtained victories ; they 
excited conspiracies; they created divisions. 

* Dumont, vol. v. p. 507. 

t See particular]}' Art. xii. and xiv. in "Rymer, 
vol. xvi. The extreme anxiety of the English to 
adhere jto their connection with Holland, appears 
from the Instructions and Despatches in Win- 
wood. 

X Dumont, vol. vi. p. 238. 



ON THE RECOGNITION OF THE SPANISH-AMERICAN STATES. 553 



The palace of (he King of Portugal was the 
scene of domestic discord, court intrigue, and 
meditated usurpation. There is no trace of 
any complaint or remonstrance, or even mur- 
mur, against the early recognition by Eng- 
land, though it was not till twenty-six years 
afterwards that Spain herself acknowledged 
the independence of Portugal, and (what is 
remarkable) made that acknowledgment in 
a treaty concluded under the mediation of 
England.* 

To these examples let me add an observa- 
tion upon a part of the practice of nations, 
strongly illustrative of the principles which 
ought to decide this question. All the Pow- 
ers of Europe treated England, under the 
Commonwealth and the Protectorate, as re- 
taining her rights of sovereignty. They re- 
cognised these governments as much as they 
had recognised the Monarchy. The friends 
of Charles II. did not complain of this policy. 
That monarch, when restored, did not dis- 
allow the treaties of foreign Powers with the 
Republic or with Cromwell. Why % Be- 
cause these Powers were obliged, for the 
interest of their own subjects, to negotiate 
with the government which, whatever might 
be its character, was actually obeyed by the 
British nation. They pronounced no opinion 
on the legitimacy of that government, — no 
judgment unfavourable to the claims of the 
exiled prince ; they consulted only the secu- 
rity of the commerce and intercourse of their 
own subjects with the British Islands. 

It was quite otherwise with the recogni- 
tion by Louis XIV. of the son of James II., 
when his father died, as King of Great Bri- 
tain. As that prince was not acknowledged 
and obeyed in England, no interest of France 
required that Louis should maintain an inter- 
course, or take any notice of his pretensions. 
That recognition was therefore justly resent- 
ed by England as a wanton insult, — as a 
direct interference in her internal affairs, — 
as an assumption of authority to pronounce 
against the lawfulness of her government.!' 

I am aware, Sir, that our complaints of the 
interference of France in the American war 
may be quoted against my argument. Those 
who glance over the surface of history may 

* Treaty of Lisbon, February 23d, 1688. Du- 
mont, vol. vii. p. 70. 

t " Le Comte de Manchester, ambassadeur 
d'Angleierre, lie parut plus a Versailles apres la 
reconnaissance du Prince de Galles, et partit, sans 
prendre conge, quelques jours apres l'anivie du 
Roi a Fontainbleau. ' Le Roi Guillaume recut 
en sa maison de Loo en Hollande la nouvelle de 
la mort du Roi Jacques et de cette reconnaissance. 
II 6tait alors a table avec quelques autres seigneurs. 
II ne profera pas une seule parole outre la nouvelle; 
mais il rougit, enfon^a son chapeau, et ne put 
contenir son visage. 11 envoya ordre a Londres 
d'en chasser sur le champ Poussin, et de Ijii faire 
repasser la nier aussi-tot apres. II faisait les affaires 
du Roi en l'absence d'un ambassadeur et d'un 
envoye. Cet eclat fut suivi de pres de la signa- 
ture de la Grande Alliance defensive et offensive 
contre la France et l'Espagne, entre l'Empereur 
et l'Empire, l'Angleterre et la Hollande." — Me- 
moires de St. Simon, vol. iii. p. 228. 
70 



see some likeness between that case and 
the present : but the resemblance is merely 
superficial ; it disappears on the slightest 
examination. It was not of the establish- 
ment of diplomatic relations with America 
by France in 1778, that Great Britain com- 
plained. We now know from the last edi- 
tion of the Memoirs of the Marquis de Bou- 
ille, that from the first appearance of discon- 
tent in 1765, the Due de Choiseul employed 
secret agents to excite commotion in North 
America. That gallant and accomplished 
officer himself was no stranger to these in- 
trigues after the year 1768, when he became 
governor of Guadeloupe.* It is well known 
that the same clandestine and treacherous 
machinations were continued to the last, in 
a time of profound peace, and in spite of pro- 
fessions of amity so repeated and so solemn, 
that the breach of them produced a more 
than political resentment in the mind of King 
George III. against the House of Bourbon. 
We also learn, from no contemptible autho- 
rity, that at the very time that the prelimi- 
naries of peace were signed at Fontainbleau 
in 1762 by the Due de Choiseul and the Duke 
of Bedford, the former of these ministers con- 
cluded a secret treaty with Spain, by which 
it was stipulated, that in eight years both 
Powers should attack England ; — a design 
of which the removal of Choiseul defeated 
the execution. t The recognition of the 
United States was no more than the con- 
summation and avowal of these dark designs. 
So conscious was the Court of Versailles of 
their own perfidy, that they expected war to 
be the immediate consequence of it. On 
the same day with the treaty of commerce 
they signed another secret treaty,; by which 
it was stipulated, that in case of hostilities be- 
tween France and England, America should 
make common cause with the former. The 
division of the territories to be conquered' 
was even provided for. Negligent and su- 
pine as were the English Ministers, they can 
hardly be supposed to have been altogether 
ignorant of these secret treaties. The cause 
of war, then, was not a mere recognition 
after a long warning to the mother country, 
— after a more than generous forbearance 
shown to her dignity and claims (as it would 
be now in the case with Spanish America) : 
it was that France, in defiance of the most 
solemn assurances of her Ministers, and also 
as it is said of her Sovereign, at length openly 
avowed those machinations to destroy the 
union between the British nation and the 
people of America, — Englishmen by blood, 
and freemen by principle, dear to us by both 
ties, but most dear by the last, — which they 
had carried on during so many years of 
peace and pretended friendship. 

I now proceed to review the progress 
which we have already made towards the 

* Memoires de Bouille, p. 15. Choiseul, Rela- 
tion du Voyage de Louis XVI. a Varennes, p. 14. 

t Ferrand, Trois Demembremens de )a Polog- 
ne, vol. i. p. 76. 

+ Martens, Recueil d<5 Traites, vol. i. p. 701. 
2 W 



554 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



recognition of the states of Spanish America, 
as it appears in the Papers before the House. 
I will not dwell on the statute 3 Geo. IV. c. 
43, which provides, " that the merchandize 
of countries in America or the West Indies, 
being or having been a part of the dominions 
of the King of Spain, may be imported into 
Great Britain in ships which are the build 
of these countries ;" though that clause must 
be allowed to be an acknowledgment of in- 
dependence, unless it could be said that the 
provinces separated from Spain were either 
countries without inhabitants, or inhabited 
by men without a government. Neither will 
I say any thing of the declaration made to 
Spain, that consuls must be immediately sent 
to South America ; though I shall hereafter 
argue, that the appointment of consuls is as 
much an act of recognition as the appoint- 
ment of higher ministers. Lord Liverpool 
indeed said, that by doing so we were '"treat- 
ing South America as independent," — which 
is the only species of recognition which we 
have a right to make. I should be the last 
to blame the suspension of such a purpose 
during the lawless and faithless invasion of 
-Spain, then threatened, and soon after exe- 
cuted. So strongly was I convinced that 
this was a sacred duty, that I at that time 
declined to present a petition of a nature 
similar to that which I now offer to your 
consideration. Nothing under heaven could 
have induced me to give the slightest aid to 
the unrighteous violence which then mena- 
ced the independence of Spain. 

The Despatch of Mr. Secretary Canning to 
Sir Charles Stuart, of the 31st of March, 1823, 
is the first paper which I wish to recall to 
the remembrance, and recommend to the 
serious attention of the House. It declares 
that time and events have decided the sepa- 
ration of Sp&niah America, — that various cir- 
cumstances in their internal condition may 
■accelerate or retard the recognition of their 
independence ; and it concludes with intelli- 
gibly intimating that Great Britain would 
resist the conquest of any part of these pro- 
vinces by France. The mo^t explicit warn- 
ing was thus given to Spain, to' France, and 
to all Europe, as well as to the states of 
Spanish America, that Great Britain con- 
sidered their independence as certain, — that 
she regarded the time of recognising it as a 
question only of policy. — and that she would 
not suffer foreign Powers to interfere for pre- 
venting its establishment. France, indeed, 
is the only Power named ; but the reason of 
the case applied to every other, and extended 
as much to conquest under the name of Spain 
as if it were made avowedly for France her- 
self. 

The next document to which I shall refer 
is the Memorandum of a Conference be- 
tween M. de Polignac and Mr. Secretary 
Canning, on the 9th of October, 1823; and I 
cannot help earnestly recommending to all 
persons who have any doubt with respect to 
the present state of this question, or to the 
footing on which it has stood for many 



months, — who do not see or do not own that 
our determination has long been made and 
announced, — to observe with care the force 
and extent of the language of the British 
Government on this important occasion. — 
"The British Government," it is there said, 
" were of opinion that any attempt to bring 
Spanish America under its ancient submis- 
sion must be utterly hopeless; that all nego- 
tiation for that purpose would be unsuccess- 
ful ; and that the prolongation or renewal of 
war for the same object could be only a 
waste of human life and an infliction of ca- 
lamities on both parties to no end." Lan- 
guage cannot more strongly declare the con- 
viction of Great Britain that the issue of the 
contest was even then no longer doubtful. — 
that there was indeed no longer any such 
contest as could affect the policy of foreign 
states towards America. As soon as we had 
made known our opinion in terms so positive 
to Europe and America, the pretensions of 
Spain could not in point of justice be any 
reason for a delay. After declaring that we 
should remain, however, " strictly neutral 
if war should be unhappily prolonged," we 
go on to state more explicitly than before, 
" that the junction of any Power in an enter- 
prise of Spain against the colonies would be 
viewed as an entirely new question, upon 
which they must take such decision as the 
interest of Great Britain might require ;" — 
language which, however cautious and mo- 
derate in its forms, is in substance too clear 
to be misunderstood. After this paragraph, 
no state in Europe would have had a right 
to affect surprise at the recognition, if it had 
been proclaimed on the following day. Still 
more clearly, if possible, is the same princi- 
ple avowed in a subsequent paragraph : — 
" That the British Government had no de- 
sire to precipitate the recognition, so long as 
there was any reasonable chance of an ac- 
commodation with the mother country, by 
which such a recognition might come first 
from Spain :" but that it could not wait in- 
definitely for that result ; that it could not 
consent to make its recognition of the new 
states dependent on that of Spain; "and 
that it would consider any foreign interfer- 
ence, either by force or by menace, in the 
dispute between Spain and the colonies, as 
a motive for recognising the latter without 
delay." And here in a matter less impor- 
tant I should be willing to stop, and to rest 
my case on this passage alone. Words can- 
not be more explicit : it is needless to com- 
ment on them, and impossible to evade them. 
We declare, that the only accommodation 
which we contemplate, is one which is to 
terminate in recognition by Spain ; and that 
we cannot indefinitely wait even for that re- 
sult. We assert our right to recognise, 
whether Spain does so or not ; and we state 
a case in which we should immediately re- 
cognise, independently of the consent of the 
Spanish Government, and without regard to 
the internal state of the American provinces. 
As a natural consequence of these positions. 



ON THE RECOGNITION OF THE SPANISH-AMERICAN STATES. 



we decline any part in a proposed congress 
of European Powers for regulating the affairs 
of America. 

Sir, I cannot quit this document without 
paying a just tribute to that part which re- 
lates to commerce. — to the firmness with 
which it asserts the right of this country to 
continue her important trade with America, 
as well as the necessity of the appointment 
of consuls for the protection of that trade, — 
and to the distinct annunciation, ''that an 
attempt to renew the obsolete interdictions 
would be best cut short by a speedy and un- 
qualified recognition of the independence of 
the South American states." Still more do I 
applaud the declaration, '-'that Great Britain 
had no desire to set up any separate right to 
the free enjoyment of this trade ; that she 
considered the force of circumstances and 
the irreversible progress of events to have 
already determined the question of the ex- 
istence of that freedom for all the world."'' 
These are declarations equally wise and ad- 
mirable. They coincide indeed so evidently 
with the well-understood interest of every 
■state, that it is mortifying to be compelled 
to speak of them as generous; but they are 
so much at variance with the base and short- 
sighted policy of Governments, that it is re- 
freshing and consolatory to meet them in 
Acts of State ; — at least when, as here, they 
must be sincere, because the circumstances 
of their promulgation secure their observ- 
ance, and indeed render deviation from them 
impossible. I read them over and over with 
the utmost pleasure. They breathe the spirit 
of that just policy and sound philosophy, 
which teaches us to regard the interest of 
our country as best promoted by an increase 
of the industry, wealth, and happiness of 
other nations. 

Although the attention of the House is 
chiefly directed to the acts of our own Go- 
vernment, it is not foreign from the purpose 
of my argument to solicit them for a few 
minutes to consider the admirable Message 
sent on the 2d of December, 1823, by the 
President of the United Slates* to the Con- 
gress of that great republic. I heartily re- 
joice in the perfect agreement of that mes- 
sage with the principles professed by us to 
the French Minister, and afterwards to all 
the great Powers of Europe, whether mili- 
tary or maritime, and to the great English 
State beyond the Atlantic. I am not anx- 
ious to ascertain whether the Message was 
influenced by our communication, or was 
the mere result of similarity of principle 
and coincidence of interest. The United 
States had at all events long preceded us in 
the recognition. They sent consuls and 
commissioners two years before us, who 
found the greater part of South America 
quiet and secure, and in the agitations of 
the remainder, met with no obstacles to 
friendly intercourse. This recognition neither 
interrupted amicable relations with Spain, nor 
occasioned remonstrances from any Power 



* Mr. Monroe.— Ed. 



in Europe. They declared their neutrality 
at the moment of recognition : they solemnly 
renew that declaration in the Message be- 
fore me. That wise Government, in grave 
but determined language, and with that rea- 
sonable and deliberate tone which becomes 
true courage, proclaims the principles of her 
policy, and makes known the cases in which 
the care of her own safety will compel her 
to take up arms for the defence of other 
states. I have already observed its coinci- 
dence with the declarations of England : 
which indeed is perfect, if allowance be 
made for the deeper, or at least more imme- 
diate, interest in the independence of South 
America, which near neighbourhood gives to 
the United States. This coincidence of the 
two great English Commonwealths (for so I 
delight to call them, and I heartily pray that 
they may be for ever united in the cause of 
justice and liberty) cannot be contemplated 
without the utmost pleasure by every en- 
lightened citizen of either. Above all, Sir, 
there is one coincidence between them, 
which is, I trust, of happy augury to the 
whole civilized world : — they have both de- 
clared their neutrality in the American con- 
test as long as it shall be confined to Spain 
and her former colonies, or as long as no 
foreign Power shall interfere. 

On the 25th of December 1823, M. Ofalia, 
the Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs, 
proposed to the principal Powers of Europe 
a conference at Paris on the best means of 
enabling his Catholic Majesty to re-establish 
his legitimate authority, and to spread the 
blessings of his paternal government over 
the vast provinces of America which once 
acknowledged the supremacy of Spain. To 
this communication, which was made also to 
this n-overnment, an answer was given on 
the 30th of January following, which cannot 
be read by Englishmen without approbation 
and pleasure. In this answer, the proposi- 
tion of a congress is once more rejected : the 
British Government adheres to its original 
declaration, that it would wait for a time, — 
but a limited time only, — and would rejoice 
to see his Catholic Majesty have the grace 
and advantage of taking the lead among the 
Powers of Europe in the recognition of the 
American states, as well for the greater 
benefit and security of these states them- 
selves, as from the generous disposition felt 
by Great Britain to spare the remains of 
dignity and grandeur, however infinitesi- 
mally small, which may still be fancied to 
belong to the thing called the crown of Spain. 
Even the shadow of long-departed greatness 
was treated with compassionate forbearance. 
But all these courtesies and decorums were 
to have their limit. The interests of Europe 
and America imposed higher duties, which 
were not to be violated for the sake of leav- 
ing undisturbed the precedents copied by 
public offices at Madrid, from the power of 
Charles V. or the arrogance of Philip II. 
The principal circumstance in which this 
Despatch added to the preceding, was, that 



556 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



it both laid a wider foundation for the policy 
of recognition, and made a much nearer ap- 
proach to exactness in fixing the time beyond 
which it could not be delayed. 

I have no subsequent official information. 
I have heard, and I believe, that Spain has 
answered this Despatch, — that she repeats 
her invitation to England to send a minister 
to the proposed congress, and that she has 
notified the assent of Russia, Austria, France, 
and Prussia. I have heard, and I also be- 
lieve, that England on this occasion has 
proved true to herself,— that, in conformity 
to her ancient character, and in consistency 
with her repeated declarations,, she has de- 
clined all discussion of this question withfne 
Holy (or »n-Holy) Alliance. Would to God 
that we had from the beginning kept aloof 
from these Congresses, in which we have 
made shipwreck of our ancient honour ! If 
that were not possible, would to God that we 
had protested, at least by silence and ab- 
sence against that conspiracy at Verona, 
which has annihilated the liberties of conti- 
nental Europe ! 

In confirmation of the review which I have 
taken of the documents, I may also here 
mention the declaration made in this House, 
that during the occupation of Spain by a 
French army, every armament against the 
Spanish ports must be considered as having 
a French character, and being therefore 
within the principle repeatedly laid down in 
the Papers. Spain indeed, as a belligerent, 
can be now considered only as a fang of the 
Holy Alliance, powerless in itself, but which 
that monster has the power to arm with 
thrice-distilled venom. 

As the case now stands, Sir, I conceive it 
to be declared by Great Britain, that the ac- 
knowledgment of the independence of Spa- 
nish America is no breach of faith or neu- 
trality towards Spain, — that such an acknow- 
ledgment might long ago have been made 
without any violation of her rights or inter- 
position in her affairs, — that we have been 
for at least two years entitled to make it by 
all the rules of international law, — that we 
have delayed it, from friendly consideration 
for the feelings and claims of the Spanish 
Government, — that we have now carried our 
forbearance to the utmost verge of reasonable 
generosity. — and, having exhausted all the 
offices of friendship and good neighbourhood, 
are at perfect liberty to consult only the in- 
terest of our own subjects, and the just pre- 
tensions of the American states. 

In adopting this recognition now, we shall 
give just offence to no other Power. But if 
we did, and once suffer ourselves to be in- 
fluenced by the apprehension of danger in re- 
sisting unjust pretensions, we destroy the only 
bulwark, — that of principle, — that guards 
a nation. There never was a time when it 
would be more perilous to make concessions, 
or to show feebleness and fear. We live in 
an age of the most extravagant and mon- 
strous pretensions, supported by tremendous 
force. A confederacy of absolute monarchs 



claim the right of controlling the internal go- 
vernment of all nations. In the exercise of 
that usurped power they have already taken 
military possession of the whole continent 
of Europe. Continental governments either 
obey their laws or tremble at their displea- 
sure. England alone has condemned their 
principles, and is independent of their power. 
They ascribe all the misfortunes of the pre- 
sent age to the example of her institutions. 
On England, therefore, they must look with 
irreconcilable hatred. As long as she is free 
and powerful, their system is incomplete, all 
the precautions of their tyrannical policy are 
imperfect, and their oppressed subjects may 
turn their eyes to her, indulging the hope 
that circumstances will one day compel us 
to exchange the alliance of kings for the 
friendship of nations. 

I will not say that such a state of the world 
does not require a considerate and circum- 
spect policy. I acknowledge, and should 
earnestly contend, that there never was a 
moment at which the continuance of peace 
was more desirable. After passing through 
all the sufferings of twenty years universal 
war, and feeling its internal evils perhaps 
more severely since its close than when it 
raged most widely and fiercely, we are only 
now beginning to taste the natural and genu- 
ine fruits of peace. The robust constitution 
of a free community is just showing its power 
to heal the deepest wounds, — to compose 
obstinate convulsions, — and to restore health 
and vigour to every disordered function or 
disabled member. I deprecate the occur- 
rence of what must disturb this noble pro- 
cess, — one of the miracles of Liberty. But 
I am also firmly convinced, that prudence in 
the present circumstances of Europe forbids 
every measure that can be represented as 
having the appearance of fear. If we carry 
our caution further than strict abstinence 
from injustice, we cannot doubt to what mo- 
tive our forbearance will be imputed. Every 
delay is liable to that interpretation. The least 
scrupulous politicians condemn falsehood 
when it wears the appearance of fear. It 
may be sometimes unsafe to fire at the royal 
tiger who suddenly crosses your path in an 
eastern forest) but it is thought fully as dan- 
gerous to betray your fear by running away : 
prudent men quietly pursue their road with- 
out altering their pace, — without provoking 
or tempting the ferocious animal. 

Having thus traced the progress of mea- 
sures which have lead us to the very verge 
of recognition, the question naturally presents 
itself, Why do we not now recognize? It is 
not so much my duty as it is that of the Go- 
vernment, to tell us why they do not com- 
plete their own system. Every preparation 
is made ; every adverse claim is rejected ; 
ample notice is given to all parties. Why is 
the determination delayed % We are irrevo- 
cably pledged to maintain our principles, and 
to act on them towards America. We have 
cut off all honourable retreat. Why should 
we seem to hesitate ? America expects from 



ON THE RECOGNITION OF THE SPANISH-AMERICAN STATES. 



557 



us the common marks of amity and respect. 
Spain cannot complain at their being granted. 
No other state can intimate an opinion on the 
subject, without an open attack on the inde- 
pendence of Great Britain. What then hin- 
ders the decisive word from being spoken ? 

We have already indeed taken one step 
more, in addition to those on which I have 
too long dwelt. We have sent consuls to all 
the ports of Spanish America to which we 
trade, as well as to the seats of the new go- 
vernment in that country. We have seen in 
the public papers, that the consul at Buenos 
Ayres has presented a letter from the Secre- 
tary of State for Foreign Affairs in this coun- 
try to the Secretary of that Government, de- 
siring that they would grant the permission 
to the consul, without which he cannot ex- 
ercise his powers. Does not this act acknow- 
ledge the independence of the State of Bue- 
nos Ayres ? An independent state alone 
can appoint consuls : — an independent state 
only can receive consuls. We have not only 
sent consuls, but commissioners. What is 
their character ?• Can it be any other than 
that of an envoy with a new title"? Every 
agent publicly accredited to a foreign govern- 
ment, and not limited by his commission to 
commercial affairs, must in reality be a di- 
plomatic minister, whatever may be his offi- 
cial name. We read of the public and joyful 
reception of these commissioners, of presents 
matje by them to the American administra- 
tors, and of speeches in which they announce 
"the good-will of the Government and people 
of England towards the infant republics. I 
allude to the speech of Colonel Hamilton at 
Bogota, on which, as I have seen it only in 
a translation, I can only venture to conjecture 
(after making some allowance for the over- 
flow of courtesy and kindness which is apt 
to occur on such occasions) that it expressed 
the anxious wishes and earnest hopes of this 
country, that he might find Columbia in a 
state capable of maintaining those relations 
of amity which we were sincerely desirous 
to establish. Where should we apply for 
redress, if a Columbian privateer were to 
capture an English merchantman ? Not at 
Madrid, but at Bogota. Does not this answer 
decide the whole question 1 

But British subjects, Sir, have a right to 
expect, not merely that their Government 
shall provide some means of redress, but 
that they should provide adequate and effec- 
tual means, — those which universal expe- 
rience has proved to be the best. They are 
not bound to be content with the unavowed 
agency and precarious good offices of naval 
officers, nor even with the inferior and im- 
perfect protection of an agent whose com- 
mission is limited to the security of trade. 
The power of a consul is confined to com- 
mercial affairs ; and there are many of the 
severest wrongs which the merchant suffers, 
which, as they may not directly affect him 
in his trading concerns, are not within the 
proper province of the consul. The English 
trader at Buenos Ayres ought not to feel his 



safety less perfect than that of other foreign 
merchants. The habit of trusting to an am- 
bassador for security has a tendency to re- 
concile the spirit of adventurous industry 
with a constant affection for the place of a 
man's birth. If these advantages are not 
inconsiderable to any European nation, they 
must be important to the most commercial 
and maritime people of the world. 

The American Governments at present 
rate our friendship too high, to be jealous 
and punctilious in their intercourse with us. 
But a little longer delay may give rise to an 
unfavourable judgment of our conduct. They 
may even doubt our neutrality itself. In- 
stead of admitting that the acknowledgment 
of their independence would be a breach of 
neutrality towards Spain, they may much 
more naturally conceive that the delay to 
acknowledge it is a breach of neutrality 
towards themselves. Do we in truth deal 
equally by both the contending parties 1 We 
do not content ourselves with consuls at Ca- 
diz and Barcelona. If we expect justice to 
our subjects from the Government of Ferdi- 
nand VII., we in return pay every honour to 
that Government as a Power of the first class. 
We lend it every aid that it can desire from 
the presence of a British minister of the 
highest rank. We do not inquire whether 
he legitimately deposed his father, or legally 
dispersed the Cortes who preserved his 
throne. The inequality becomes the more 
strikingly offensive, when it is considered 
that the number of English in the American 
States is far greater, and our commerce with 
them much more important. 

We have long since advised Spain to ac- 
knowledge the independence of her late pro- 
vinces in America : we have told her that it 
is the only basis on which negotiations can be 
carried on, and that it affords her the only 
chance of preserving some of the advantages 
of friendship and commerce with these vast 
territories. Whatever rendered it right for 
Spain to recognise them, must also render it 
right for us. If we now delay, Spain may- 
very speciously charge us with insincerity 
"It now/' she may say, "appears from your 
own conduct, that under pretence of friend- 
ship vou advised us to do that from which 
you yourselves recoil." 

We have declared that we should imme- 
diately proceed to recognition, either'if Spain 
were to invade the liberty of trade which we 
now possess, or if any other Power were to 
take a part in the contest between her and 
the American states. But do not these decla- 
rations necessarily imply that they are in 
fact independent"? Surely no injustice of 
Spain, or France, or Russia could authorize 
England to acknowledge that to be a fact 
which we do not know to be so. Either 
therefore we have threatened to do what 
ought not to be done, or these states are 
now in a condition to be treated as independ- 
ent. 

It is now many months since it was de- 
clared to M. de Polignac, that we should 
2w2 



558 



MACKINTOSH^ MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS, 



consider '-any foreign interference, by force 
or menace, in the dispute between Spain and 
her colonies, as a motive for recognising the 
latter without delay." I ask whether the 
interference "by menace" has not now oc- 
curred ? M. Ofalia, on the 26th of Decem- 
ber, proposed a congress on the affairs of 
America, in hopes that the allies of King 
Ferdinand ■'' will assist him in accomplishing 
the worthy object of upholding the principles 
of order and legitimacy, the subversion of 
which, once commenced in America, would 
speedily communicate." Now I have al- 
ready said, that, if I am rightly informed, 
this proposition, happily rejected by Great 
Britain, has been acceded to by the Allied 
Powers. Preparations for the congress are 
said to be already made. Can there be a 
more distinct case of interference by menace 
in the American contest, than the agreement 
to assemble a congress for the purpose de- 
scribed in the despatch of M. Ofalia'? 

But it is said, Sir, that we ought not to re- 
cognise independence where a contest is still 
maintained, or where governments of some 
apparent stability do not exist. Both these 
ideas seem to be comprehended in the proposi- 
tion, — '-that we ought to recognise only where 
independence is actually enjoyed ;" though 
that proposition properly only affirms the 
former. But it is said that we are called 
upon only to acknowledge the fact of inde- 
pendence, and before we make the acknow- 
ledgment we ought to have evidence of the 
fact. To this single point the discussion is 
now confined. All considerations of Euro- 
pean policy are (I cannot repeat it too often) 
excluded : the policy of Spain, or France, or 
Russia, is no longer an element in the pro- 
blem. The fact of independence is now the 
sole object of consideration. If there be no 
independence, we cannot acknowledge it : if 
there be, we must. 

To understand the matter rightly, we must 
consider separately — what are often con- 
founded — the two quest ions, — Whether there 
is a contest with Spain still pending? and 
Whether internal tranquillity be securely 
established ? As to the first, we must mean 
such a contest as exhibits some equality of 
force, and of which, if the combatants were 
left to themselves, the issue would be in 
some degree doubtful. It never can be un- 
derstood so as to include a bare chance, that 
Spain might recover her ancient dominions at 
some distant and absolutely uncertain period. 

In this inquiry, do you consider Spanish 
America as one mass, or do you apply your 
inquiry to the peculiar situation of each in- 
dividual state ? For the purposes of the 
■present argument you may view them in 
either light : — in the latter, because they are 
sovereign commonwealths, as independent 
of each other as they all are of Europe ; or in 
the former, because they are united by a 
treaty of alliance offensive and defensive, 
which binds them to make common cause in 
this contest, and to conclude no separate 
peace with Spain. 



If I look on Spanish America as one vast 
unit, the question, of the existence of any 
serious contest is too simple to admit the 
slightest doubt. What proportion does the 
contest bear to the country in which it pre- 
vails ? My geograghy, or at least my recol- 
lection, does not serve me so far, that I could 
enumerate the degrees of latitude and longi- 
tude over which that vast country extends. 
On the western coast, however, it reaches 
from the northern point of New California to 
the utmost limit of cultivation towards Cape 
Horn. On the eastern it extends from the 
mouth of the Mississippi to that of the Ori- 
noco ; and, after the immense exception of 
Guiana and Brazil, from the Rio de la Plata 
to the southern footsteps of civilized man. 
The prodigious varieties of its elevation ex- 
hibit in the same parallel of latitude all the 
climates and products of the globe. It is the 
only abundant source of the metals justly call- 
ed '-precious," — the most generally and per- 
manently useful of all commodities, except 
those which are necessary to the preservation 
of human life. It is unequally and scantily peo- 
pled by sixteen or eighteen millions, — whose 
numbers, freedom of industry, and security 
of property must be quadrupled in a century. 
Its length on the Pacific coast is equal to that 
of the whole continent of Africa from the 
Cape of Good Hope to the Straits of Gibraltar- 
It is more extensive than the vast possessions 
of Russia or of Great Britain in Asia. The 
Spanish language is spoken over a line of 
nearly six thousand miles. The State of 
Mexico alone is five times larger that Euro- 
pean Spain. A single communication cut 
through these territories between the Atlan- 
tic and Pacific would bring China six thou- 
sand miles nearer to Europe ;* and the Re- 
public of Columbia or that of Mexico may 
open and command that new road for the 
commerce of the world. 

What is the Spanish strength? A single 
castle in Mexico, an island on the coast of 
Chili, and a small army in Upper Peru! Is 
this a contest approaching to equality? Is it 
sufficient to render the independence of 
such a country doubtful? Does it deserve 
the name of a contest? It is very little more 
than what in some of the wretched govern- 
ments of the East is thought desirable to 
keep alive the vigilance of the rulers, and 
to exercise the martial spirit of the people. 
There is no present appearance that the 
country can be reduced by the power of 
Spain alone; and if any other Power were 
to interfere, it is acknowledged that such an 
interference would impose new duties on 
Great Britain. 

If, on the other hand, we consider the 
American states as separate, the fact of in- 
dependence is undisputed, with respect at 
least to some of them. What doubts can be 
entertained of the independence of the im- 
mense provinces of Caraccas, New Grenada. 



* See Humboldt's admirable Essay on New 
Spain. 



ON THE RECOGNITION OF THE SPANISH- AM ERIC AN STATES, 55ft 



and Quito, which now form the Republic of 
Columbia? There, a considerable Spanish 
army has been defeated : all have been either 
destroyed, or expelled from the territory of 
the Republic: not a Royalist soldier remains. 
Three Congresses have successively been 
assembled : they have formed a reasonable 
and promising" Constitution ; and they have 
endeavoured to establish a wise system and 
a just administration of law. In the midst 
of their difficulties the Columbians have 
ventured (and hitherto with perfect success) 
to encounter the arduous and perilous, but 
noble problem of a pacific emancipation of 
their slaves. They have been able to ob- 
serve good faith with their creditors, and 
thus to preserve the greatest of all resources 
for times of danger. Their tranquillity has 
stood the test of the long absence of Bolivar 
in Peru. Englishmen who have lately tra- 
versed their territories in various directions, 
are unanimous in stating that their journeys 
were made in the most undisturbed security. 
Every where they saw the laws obeyed, 
justice administered, armies disciplined, and 
the revenue peaceably collected. Many 
British subjects have indeed given prac- 
tical proofs of their faith in the power and 
will of the Columbian Government to pro- 
tect industry and property: — they have esta- 
blished houses of trade ; they have under- 
taken to work mines ; and they are esta- 
blishing steam-boats on the Orinoco and the 
Magdalena. Where is the state which can 
give better proofs of secure independence ? 

The Republic of Buenos Ayres has an 
equally undisputed enjoyment of independ- 
ence. There no Spanish soldier has set his 
foot for fourteen years. It would be as diffi- 
cult to find a Royalist there, as it would be a 
Jacobite in England (I mean only a personal 
adherent of the House of Stuart, for as to 
Jacobites in principle. I fear they never were 
more abundant). Its rulers are so conscious 
of internal security, that they have crossed 
the Andes, and interposed with vigour and 
effect in the revolutions of Chili and Peru. 
Whoever wishes to know the state of Chili, 
will find it in a very valuable book lately 
published by Mrs. Graham,* a lady whom I 
have the happiness to call my friend, who, 
by the faithful and picturesque minuteness 
of her descriptions, places her reader in the 
midst of the country, and introduces him to 
the familiar acquaintance of the inhabitants. 
Whatever seeds of internal discord may be 
perceived, we do not discover the vestige of 
any party friendly to the dominion of Spain. 
Even in Peru, where the spirit of independ- 
ence has most recently appeared, and ap- 
pears most to fluctuate, no formidable body 
of Spanish partisans has been observed by 
the most intelligent observers; and it is very 
doubtful whether even the army which keeps 
the field in that province against the Ameri- 
can cause be devoted to the restored despot- 
ism of Spain. Mexico, the greatest, doubt- 

* Journal of a Residence in Chili. — Er. 



less, and most populous, but not perhaps the-, 
most enlightened, portion of Spanish America, 
has passed through severe trials, and seems 
hitherto far from showing a disposition again 
to fall under the authority of Spain. Even 
the party who long bore the name of Spain 
on their banners, imbibed in that very con- 
test the spirit of independence, and at length 
ceased to look abroad for a sovereign. The 
last Viceroy who was sent from Spain* was 
compelled to acknowledge the independence 
of Mexico: and the Ro}alist officer,f who 
appealer! for a time so fortunate, could not 
win his way to a transient power without 
declaring against the pretensions of the mo- 
ther country. 

If, then, we consider these states as one 
nation, there cannot be said to be any re- 
maining contest. If, on the other hand, we 
consider them separately, why do we not 
immediately comply with the prayer of this 
Petition, by recognising the independence 
of those which we must allow to be in fact 
independent ? Where is the objection to the 
instantaneous recognition at least of Colum- 
bia and Buenos Ayres ? 

But here, Sir, I shall be reminded of the 
second condition (as applicable to Mexico 
and Peru), — the necessity of a stable go- 
vernment and of internal tranquillity. Inde- 
pendence and good government are unfortu- 
nately very different things. Most countries 
have enjoyed the former : not above three 
or four since the beginning of history have 
had any pretensions to the latter. Still, 
man}* grossly misgoverned countries have 
performed the common duties of justice and 
good-will to their neighbours, — I do not say 
so well as more wisely ordered common- 
wealths, but still tolerably, and always much 
better than if they had not been controlled 
by the influence of opinion acting through a 
regular intercourse with other nations. 

We really do not deal with Spain and 
America by the same weight and measure. 
We exact proofs of independence and tran- 
quillity from America: we dispense both 
with independence and tranquillity in Old 
Spain. We have an ambassador at Madrid, 
though the whole kingdom be in the hands 
of France. We treat Spain with all the ho- 
nours due to a civilized state of the first rank, 
though we have been told in this House, that 
the continuance of the French army there is 
an act of humanity, necessary to prevent the 
faction of frantic Royalists from destroying 
not only the friends of liberty, but every 
Spaniard who hesitates to carry on a war of 
persecution and extirpation against all who 
are not the zealous supporters of unbounded 
tyranny. On the other hand, we require of 
the new-born states of America to solve the 
awful problem of reconciling liberty with or- 
der. We expect that all the efforts incident 
to a fearful struggle shall at once subside 
into the most perfect and undisturbed trau- 



* Admiral Apodaca. — Ed. 

t Don Augustin Iturbide. — Ed. 



560 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



quillity, — that every visionary or ambitious 
hope which it has kindled shall submit with- 
out a murmur to the counsels of wisdom and 
the authority of the laws. Who are we who 
exact the performance of such hard condi- 
tions'? Are we the English nation, to look 
thus coldly on rising liberty ? We have in- 
dulgence enough for tyrants: we make am- 
ple" allowance for the difficulties of their 
situation; we are ready enough to deprecate 
the censure of their worst acts. And are we. 
who spent ages of bloodshed in struggling 
for freedom, to treat with such severity 
others now following our example % Are we 
to refuse that indulgence to the errors and 
faults of other nations, which was so long 
needed by our own ancestors'? We who have 
passed through every form of civil and reli- 
gious tyranny, — who persecuted Protestants 
under Mary, — who — I blush to add — perse- 
cuted Catholics under Elizabeth, — shall we 
now inconsistently, — unreasonably, — basely 
hold, that distractions so much fewer and 
milder and shorter, endured in the same 
glorious cause, will unfit other nations for its 
attainment, and preclude them from the en- 
joyment of that rank and those privileges 
which we at the same moment recognise as 
belonging to slaves and barbarians'? 

I call upon my Right Honourable Friend* 
distinctly to tell us, on wdiat principle he con- 
siders the perfect enjoyment of internal quiet 
as a condition necessary for the acknowledg- 
ment of an independence which cannot be 
denied to exist. I can discover none, un- 
less the confusions of a country were such 
as to endanger the personal safety of a 
foreign minister. Yet the European Powers 
have always had ministers at Constantinople, 
though it was well known that the barbari- 
ans who ruled there would, on the approach 
of a quarrel, send these unfortunate gentle- 
men to a prison in which they might remain 
during a long war. But if there is any such 
insecurity in these states, how do the minis- 
ters of the United Slates of North America 
reside in their capitals'? or why do we trust 
our own consuls and commissioners among 
them? Is there any physical pecularity in 
a consul, which renders him invulnerable 
where an ambassador t>r an envoy would be 
in danger? Is he bullet-proof or bayonet- 
proof? or does he wear a coat of mail ? The 
same Government, one would think, which 
redresses an individual grievance on the ap- 
plication of a consul, may remove a cause of 
national difference after listening to the re- 
monstrance of an envoy. 

I will venture even to contend, that inter- 
nal distractions, instead of being an impedi- 
ment to diplomatic intercourse, are rather an 
additional reason for it. An ambassador is 
more necessary in a disturbed than in a tran- 
quil country, inasmuch as the evils against 
which his presence is intended to guard are 
more likely to occur in the former than in 
the latter. It is in the midst of civil corn- 



Mr. Canning. — Ed. 



motions that the foreign trader is the most 
likely to be wronged ; and it is then that he 
therefore requires not only the good offices 
of a consul, but the weightier interposition 
of a higher minister. In a perfectly well- 
ordered country the laws and the tribunals 
might be sufficient. In the same manner it 
is obvious, that if an ambassador be an im- 
portant security for the preservation of good 
understanding between the best regulated 
governments, his presence must be far more 
requisite to prevent the angry passions of 
exasperated factions from breaking out into 
war. Whether therefore we consider the 
individual or the public interests which are 
secured by embassies, it seems no paradox 
to maintain, that if they could be dispensed 
with at all, it would rather be in quiet than 
in disturbed countries. 

The interests here at stake may be said 
to be rather individual than national. But a 
wrong done to the humblest British subject, 
an insult offered to the British flag flying 
on the slightest skiff, is, if unrepaired, a dis- 
honour to the British nation. 

Then the amount of private interests en- 
gaged in our trade with Spanish America is 
so great as to render them a large part of the 
national interest. There are already at least 
a hundred English houses of trade established 
in various parts of that immense country. A 
great body of skilful miners have lately left 
this country, to restore and increase the 
working of the mines of Mexico. Botanists, 
and geologists, and zoologists, are preparing 
to explore regions too vast to be exhausted 
by the Condamines and Humboldts. These 
missionaries of civilization, who are about 
to spread European, and especially English 
opinions and habits, and to teach industry 
and the arts, with their natural consequences 
— the love of order and the desire of quiet, — 
are at the same time opening new markets 
for the produce of British labour, and new 
sources of improvement as well as enjoyment 
to the people of America. 

The excellent petition from Liverpool to 
the King sets forth the value of our South 
American commerce very clearly, with re- 
spect to its present extent, its rapid increase, 
and its probable permanence. In 1819, the 
official returns represent the value of British 
exports at thirty-five millions sterling,— in 
1822, at forty-six millions; and, in the opin- 
ion of the Petitioners, who are witnesses of 
the highest authority, a great part of this 
prodigious increase is to be ascribed to the 
progress of the South American trade. On 
this point, however, they are not content 
with probabilities. In 1822, they tell us that 
the British exports to the late Spanish colo- 
nies amounted in value to three millions 
eight hundred thousand pounds sterling; and 
in" 1823, to five millions six hundred thou- 
sand ; — an increase of near two millions in 
one year. As both the years compared are 
subsequent to the opening of the American 
ports, we may lay out of The account the in- 
direct trade formerly carried on with the 



ON THE RECOGNITION OF THE SPANISH-AMERICAN STATES. 



561 



Spanish Main through the West Indies, the 
far greater part of which must now be trans- 
ferred to a cheaper, shorter, and more con- 
venient channel. In the year 1820 and the 
three following years, the annual average 
number of ships which sailed from the port 
of Liverpool to Spanish America, was one 
hundred and eighty-nine ; and the number 
of those who have so sailed in five months 
of the present year, is already one hundred 
and twenty-four: being an increase in the 
proportion of thirty to nineteen. Another 
criterion of the importance of this trade, on 
which the traders of Liverpool are peculiarly- 
well qualified to judge, is the export of cot- 
ton goods from their own port The result 
of the comparison of that export to the United 
States of America, and to certain parts* of 
Spanish and Portuguese America, is pecu- 
liarly instructive and striking : — 

ACTUAL VALUE OF COTTON GOODS EXPORTED 
FROM LIVERPOOL. 

Year ending Jan. 5, 1820. 
To United States - - - £882,029 

To Spanish and Portuguese America 852,651 

Year ending Jan. 5, 1821. 
To United States - - - £1,033,206 
To Spanish and Portuguese America 1,111,574 

It is to be observed, that this last extraordi- 
nary statement relates to the comparative 
infancy of this trade ; that it comprehends 
neither Vera Cruz nor the ports of Columbia ; 
and that the striking disproportion in the rate 
of increase does not arise from the abate- 
ment of the North American demand (for 
that has increased), but from the rapid pro- 
gress of that in the South American market. 
Already, then, this new commerce surpasses 
in amount, and still more in progress, that 
.trade with the United States which is one 
of the oldest and most extensive, as well as 
most progressive branches of our traffic. 

If I consult another respectable authority, 
and look at the subject in a somewhat dif- 
ferent light, I find the annual value of our 
whole exports estimated in Lord Liverpool's 
speecht on this subject at forty-three mil- 
lions sterling, of which about twenty mil- 
lions' worth goes to Europe, and about the 
value of seventeen millions to North and 
South America ; leaving between four and 
five millions to Africa and Asia. According 
to this statement. I may reckon the trade to 
the new independent states as one eighth of 
the trade of the whole British Empire. It is 
more than our trade to all our possessions on 
the continent and islands of America was, 
before the beginning of the fatal American 
war in 1774: — for fatal I call it, not because 
I lament the independence of America, but 
because I deeply deplore the hostile separa- 
tion of the two great nations of English race. 

The official accounts of exports and im- 
ports laid before this House on the 3d of 

* Viz., Brazil. Buenos Ayres, Monte Video, 
Chili, and the West Coast of America. 

t Delivered in the House of Lords on the 15th 
of March.— Ed. 

71 



May, 1824, present another view of this 
subject, in which the Spanish colonies are 
carefully separated from Brazil. By these 
accounts it appears that the exports to the 
Spanish colonies were as follows : — 



1818, £735,344. 

1819, £850.943. 

1820, £431,615. 



1821, £917.916. 

1822, £1.210^825. 
1S23, £2,016,276. 



I quote all these statements of this com- 
merce, though they do not entirely agree 
with each other, because I well know the 
difficulty of attaining exactness on such sub- 
jects, — because the least of them is perfectly 
sufficient for my purpose, — and because the 
last, though not so large as others in amount, 
shows more clearly than any other its rapid 
progress, and the proportion which its increase 
bears to the extension of American independ- 
ence. 

If it were important to swell this account. 
I might follow the example of the Liverpoo 
Petitioners (who are to be heard with more 
respect, because on this subject they have 
no interest), by adding to the general amount 
of commerce the supply of money to the 
American states of about twelve millions 
sterling. For though I of course allow that 
such contracts cannot be enforced by the 
arms of this country against a foreign state, 
yet I consider the commerce in money as 
equally legitimate and honourable with any 
other sort of commercial dealing, and equally 
advantageous to the country of the lenders, 
wherever it is profitable to the lenders them- 
selves. I see no difference in principle be- 
tween a loan on the security of public reve- 
nue, and a loan on a mortgage of private 
property; and the protection of such deal- 
ings is in my opinion a perfectly good addi- 
tional reason for hastening to do that which 
is previously determined to be politic and 
just. 

If, Sir, I were further called to illustrate 
the value of a free intercourse with South 
America, I should refer the House to a valu- 
able work, which I hope all who hear me 
have read, and which I know they ought to 
read, — I mean Captain Basil Hall's Travels 
in that country. The whole book is one 
continued proof of the importance of a Free 
Trade to England, to America, and to man- 
kind. No man knows better how to extract 
information from the most seemingly trifling 
conversations, and to make them the means 
of conveying the most just conception of the 
opinions, interests, and feelings of a people. 
Though he can weigh interests in the scales 
of Smith, he also seizes with the skill of 
Plutarch on those small circumstances and 
expressions which characterize not only in- 
dividuals but nations. "While we were ad- 
miring the scenery," says he, "our people 
had established themselves in a hut, and 
were preparing supper under the direction 
of a peasant, — a tall copper-coloured semi- 
barbarous native of the forest, — but who, 
notwithstanding his uncivilized appearance, 
turned out to be a very shrewd fellow, and 



562 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



gave us sufficiently pertinent answers to 
most of our queries. A young Spaniard of 
our party, a Royalist by biith, and half a 
patriot in sentiment, asked the mountaineer 
what harm the King had done. ' Why,' an- 
swered he, 'as for the King, his only fault. 
at least that I know of, was his living too far 
off. If a king be really good for a country, 
it appears to me that he ought to live in that 
country, not two thousand leagues away 
from it.' On asking him what was his 
opinion of free trade, 'My opinion,' said he, 
'is this: — formerly I paid nine dollars for 
the piece of cloth of which this shirt is 
made; I now pay two : — that is my opinion 
of free trade.' "* This simple story illus- 
trates better than a thousand arguments the 
sense which the American consumer has of 
the consequences of free trade to him. 

If we ask how it affects the American 
producer, we shall find a decisive answer in 
the same admirable work. His interest is to 
produce his commodities at less expense, 
and to sell them at a higher price, as well as 
in greater quantity : — all these objects he 
has obtained. Before the Revolution, he sold 
his copper at seven dollars a quintal: in 
1821, he sold it at thirteen. The articles 
which he uses in the mines are, on the other 
hand, reduced; — steel from fifty dollars a 
quintal to sixteen dollars; iron from twenty- 
live to eight ; the provisions of his labourers 
in the proportion of twenty-one to fourteen ; 
the fine cloth which he himself wears, from 
twenty-three dollars a yard to twelve ; his 
crockery from three hundred and fifty reals 
per crate to forty; his hardware from three 
hundred to one hundred reals; and his glass 
from two hundred to one hundred. f 

It is justly observed by Captain Hall, that 
however incompetent a Peruvian might be 
to appreciate the benefits of political liberty, 
he can have no difficulty in estimating such 
sensible and palpable improvements in the 
condition of himself and his countrymen. 
With Spanish authority he connects the re- 
membrance of restriction, monopoly, degra- 
dation, poverty, discomfort, privation. In 
those who struggle to restore it, we may be 
assured that the majority of Americans can 
see only enemies who come to rob them of 
private enjoyments and personal accommo- 
dations. 

It will perhaps be said, that Spain is will- 
ing to abandon her monopolies. But if she 
does now, might she not by the same autho- 
rity restore them 1 If her sovereignty be re- 
stored, she must possess abundant means 
of evading the execution of any concessions 
now made in the hour of her distress. The 
faith of a Ferdinand is the only security she 
offers. On the other hand, if America con- 
tinues independent, our security is the strong 
sense of a most palpable interest already 
spread among the people, — the interest of 



* Vol. ii. p. 188. 

t Vol. ii. p. 47. This curious table relates to 
Chili, — the anecdote to Mexico. 



the miner of Chili in selling his copper, and 
of the peasant of Mexico in buying his shirt. 
I prefer it to the royal word of Ferdinand. 
But do we not know that the Royalist Gene- 
ral Canterac, in the summer of 1823, declared 
the old prohibitory laws to be still in force 
in Peru, and announced his intention of ac- 
cordingly confiscating all English merchan- 
dise which he had before generously spared"? 
Do we not know that English commerce 
every where flies from the Royalists, and 
hails with security and joy the appearance 
of the American flag?* But it is needless 
to reason on this subject, or to refer to the 
conduct of local agents. We have a decree 
of Ferdinand himself to appeal to, bearing 
date at Madrid on the 9th February, 1824. 
It is a very curious document, and very 
agreeable to the general character of his 
most important edicts; — in it there is more 
than the usual repugnance between the title 
and the purport. As he published a table 
of proscription under the name of a decree 
of amnesty, so his professed grant of free 
trade is in truth an establishment of mo- 
nopoly. The first article does indeed pro- 
mise a free trade to Spanish America. The 
second, however, hastens to declare, that 
this free trade is to be " regulated" by a 
future law, — that it is to be confined to cer- 
tain ports, — and that it shall be subjected to 
duties, which are to be regulated by the 
same law. The third also declares, that 
the preference to be granted to Spain shall 
be "regulated" in like manner. As if the 
duties, limitations, and preferences thus an- 
nounced had not provided such means of 
evasion as were equivalent to a repeal of the 
first article, the Royal lawgiver proceeds in 
the fourth article to enact, that " till the two 
foregoing articles can receive their perfect 
execution, there shall be nothing innovated 
in the state of America." As the Court of 
Madrid does not recognise the legality of 
what has been done in America since the 
revolt, must not this be reasonably inter- 
preted to import a re-establishment of the 
Spanish laws of absolute monopoly, till the 
Government of Spain shall be disposed to 
promulgate that code of restriction, of pre- 
ference, and of duties, — perhaps prohibitory 
ones, — which, according to them, constitutes 
free trade. 

But, Sir, it will be said elsewhere, though 
not here, that I now argue on the selfish and 
sordid principle of exclusive regard to Bri- 
tish interest, — that I would sacrifice every 
higher consideration to the extension of our 
traffic, and to the increase of our profits. 
For this is the insolent language, in which 
those who gratify their ambition by plunder- 
ing and destroying their fellow-creatures, 
have in all ages dared to speak of those who 
better their own condition by multiplying the 
enjoyments of mankind. In answer, I might 
content myself with saying, that having 



* As in the evacuation of Lima in the spring of 
1824. 



ON THE RECOGNITION OF THE SPANISH-AMERICAN STATES. 



563-' 



proved the recognition of the independence 
of these states to be conformable to justice, 
I have a perfect right to recommend it as 
conducive to the welfare of this nation. But 
I deny altogether the doctrine, that com- 
merce has a selfish character. — that it can 
benefit one party without being advantageous 
to the other. It is twice blessed : it blesses' 
the giver as well as the receiver. It consists 
in the interchange of the means of enjoy- 
ment ; and its very essence is to employ one 
part of mankind in contributing to the hap- 
piness of others. What is the instrument 
by which a savage is to be raised from a 
stale in which he has nothing human but the 
form, but commerce, — exciting in his mind 
the desire of accommodation and enjoyment, 
and presenting to him the means of obtain- 
ing these advantages ? It is thus only that 
he is gradually raised to industry, — to fore- 
sight. — to a respect for property, — to a sense 
of justice, — to a perception of the necessity 
of laws. What corrects his prejudices against 
foreign nations and dissimilar races ? — com- 
mercial intercourse. What slowly teaches 
him that the quiet and well-being of the 
most distant regions have some tendency to 
promote the prosperity of his own ? What 
at length disposes him even to tolerate those 
religious differences which led him to regard 
the greater part of the species with abhor- 
rence ? Nothing but the intercourse and 
familiarity into which commerce alone could 
have tempted him. What diffuses wealth, 
and therefore increases the leisure which 
calls into existence the works of genius, the 
discoveries of science, and the inventions of 
art ? What transports just opinions of go- 
vernment into enslaved countries, — raises the 
importance of the middle and lower classes 

. of society, and thus reforms social institu- 
tions, and establishes equal liberty? What 
but Commerce — the real civilizer and eman- 
cipator of mankind ? 

A delay of recognition would be an im- 
portant breach of justice to the American 
states. We send consuls to their territory, 
in the confidence that their Government and 
their judges will do justice to British sub- 

* jects ; but we receive no authorised agents 
from them in return. Until they shall be 
recognised by the King, our courts of law 
will not acknowledge their existence. Our 
statutes allow certain privileges to ships 
coming from the '-provinces in America 
lately subject to Spain;" but our courts will 
not acknowledge that these provinces are 
subject to any government. If the maritime 
war which has lately commenced should 
long continue, many questions of interna- 
tional law may arise out of our anomalous 
situation, which it will be impossible to de- 
termine by any established principles. If 
we escape this difficulty by recognising the 
actual governments in courts of Prize, how 
absurd, incinsistent. and inconvenient it is 
not to extend the same recognition to all our 
tribunals ! 
The reception of a new state into the so- 



ciety of civilized nations by those acts which 
amount to recognition, is a proceeding which, 
as it has no legal character, and is purely of 
a moral nature, must vary very much in its 
value, according to the authority of the na- 
tions who, upon such occasions, act as the 
representatives of civilized men. I will say 
nothing of England, but that she is the only 
anciently free state in the world. For her 
to refuse her moral aid to communities strug- 
gling for liberty, is an act of unnatural harsh- 
ness, which, if it does not recoil on herself, 
must injure America in the estimation of 
mankind. 

This is not all. The delay of recognition 
tends to prolong and exasperate the disorders 
which are the reason alleged for it. It en- 
courages Spain to waste herself in desperate 
efforts: it encourages the Holy Alliance to 
sow division, — to employ intrigue and cor- 
ruption. — to threaten, perhaps to equip and 
despatch, armaments. Then it encourages 
every incendiary to excite revolt, and every 
ambitious adventurer to embark in projects 
of usurpation. It is a cruel policy, which 
has the strongest tendency to continue for a 
time, of which we cannot foresee the limits, 
rapine and blood, commotions and civil wars, 
throughout the larger portion of the New 
World. By maintaining an outlawry against 
them, we shall give them the character of 
outlaws. The long continuance of confu- 
sion, — in part arising from our refusing to 
countenance their governments, to impose on 
them the mild yoke of civilized opinion, and 
to teach them respect for themselves by as- 
sociating them with other free communities, 
— may at length really unfit them for liberty 
or order, and destroy in America that capa- 
city to maintain the usual relations of peace 
and amity with us which undoubtedly exists 
there at present. 

It is vain to expect that Spain, even if she 
were to reconquer America, could establish 
in that country a vigorous government, ca- 
pable of securing a peaceful intercourse with 
other countries. America is too determined, 
and Spain is too feeble. The only possible 
result of so unhappy an event would be, to 
exhibit the wretched spectacle of beggary, 
plunder, bloodshed, and alternate anarchy 
and despotism in a country almost depopu- 
lated. It may require time to give firmness 
to native governments ; but it is impossi- 
ble that a Spanish one should ever again ac- 
quire it. 

Sir, I am far from foretelling that the Ame- 
rican nations will not speedily and complete- 
ly subdue the agitations which are in some 
degree, perhaps, inseparable from a struggle 
for independence. I have no such gloomy 
forebodings; though even if I were to yield 
to them, I should not speak the language 
once grateful to the ears of this House, if I 
were not to say that the chance of liberty is- 
worth the agitations of centuries. If any 
Englishman were to speak opposite doctrines 
to these rising communities, the present 
power and prosperity and glory .of England 



i>6,4 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



would enable them to detect his slavish 
sophistry. As a man, I trust (hat the virtue 
and fortune of these American states will 
spare them many of the sufferings which 
appear to be the price set on liberty; but as 
u Briton, I am desirous that we should aid 
them by early treating them with that honour 
and kindness which the justice, humanity, 
valour, and magnanimity which they have 
displayed in the prosecution of the noblest 
abject of human pursuit, have so well de- 
1 ed. 

To conclude : — the delay of the recogni- 
tion is not due to Spain : it is injurious to 
America : it is inconvenient to all European 
nations, — and only most inconvenient to 
Great Britain, because she has a greater in- 
tercourse with America than any other na- 
tion. I would not endanger the safety of my 
own country for the advantage of others ; I 
would not violate the rules of duty to pro- 
mote its interest; I would not take unlawful 
means even for the purpose of diffusing 
liberty among men ; I would not violate neu- 
trality to serve America, nor commit injus- 
tice to extend the commerce of England : 



but I would do an act. consistent with neu- 
trality, and warranted by impartial justice, 
tending to mature the liberty and to consoli- 
date the internal quiet of a vast continent, — 
to increase the probability of the benefits of 
free and just government being attained by 
a great portion of mankind, — to procure for 
England the honour of a becoming share in 
contributing to so unspeakable a blessing, — 
to prevent the dictators of Europe from be- 
coming the masters of the New World, — to 
re-establish some balance of opinions and 
force, by placing the republics of America, 
with the wealth and maritime power of the 
world, in the scale opposite to that of the 
European Allies,— to establish beyond the 
Atlantic an asylum which may preserve, till 
happier times, the remains of the Spanish 
name, — to save nations, who have already 
proved their generous spirit, from becoming 
the slaves of the Holy Alliance, — and to 
rescue sixteen millions of American Spa- 
niards from sharing with their European 
brethren that sort of law and justice, — of 
peace and order, — which now prevails from 
the Pyrenees to the Rock of Gibraltar. 



SPEECH 

ON THE CIVIL GOVERNMENT OF CANADA. 

DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 2d OF MAY, 1828. 



Mr. Speaker, — I think I may interpret 
fairly the general feeling of the House, when 
I express my congratulations upon the great 
extent of talent and information which the 
Honourable Member for St. Michael's* has 
just displayed, and that I may venture to 
assert he has given us full assurance, in his 
future progress, of proving a useful and valu- 
able member of the Parliament of this coun- 
try. I cannot, also, avoid observing, that the 
laudable curiosity which carried him to visit 
that country whose situation is now the sub- 
ject of discussion, and still more the curiosity 
which led him to visit that Imperial Republic 
which occupies the other best portion of the 
American continent, gave evidence of a mind 
actuated by enlarged and liberal views. 

After having presented a petition signed 
by eighty-seven thousand of the inhabitants 
of Lower Canada — comprehending in that 
number nine-tenths of the heads of families 
in the province, and more than two-thirds of 
its landed proprietors, and after having shown 
that the Petitioners had the greatest causes 
of complaint against the administration of 

* Mr. [now ihe Right Honourable] Henry La- 
touchere. — Ed. 



the government in that colony, it would be 
an act of inconsistency on my part to attempt 
to throw any obstacle in the way of that in- 
quiry which the Right Honourable Gentle- 
man* proposes. It might seem, indeed, a 
more natural course on my part, if I had 
seconded such a proposition. Perhaps I 
might have been contented to give a silent 
acquiescence in the appointment of a com- 
mittee, and to reserve any observations I 
may have to offer until some specific mea- 
sure is proposed, or until the House is in pos- 
session of the information which may be 
procured through the labours of the commit- 
ter. — perhaps, I say, I might have been dis- 
posed to adopt this course if I had not been 
intrusted with the presentation of that Peti- 
tion. But I feel bound by a sense of the 
trust reposed in me to allow no opportunity 
to pass over of calling the attention of the 
House to the grievances of the Petitioners, 

* Mr. Huskisson, Secretary for the Colonial 
Department, had moved to refer the whole ques- 
tion of the already embroiled affairs of the Ca- 
nadian provinces to a Select Committee of the 
House of Commons, which was eventually agreed 
to.— Ed. 



ON THE CIVIL GOVERNMENT OF CANADA. 



and to their claims for redress and for the 
maintenance of their legitimate rights. This 
duty I hold myself bound to execute, ac- 
cording to the best of my ability, without 
sacrificing my judgment, or rendering it sub- 
ordinate to any sense of duty ; — but feeling 
only that the confidence of the Petitioners 
binds me to act on their behalf, and as their 
advocate, in precisely the same manner, 
and to the s.ame extent, as if I had been in- 
vested with another character, and autho- 
rised to state their complaints in a different 
situation.* 

To begin then with the speech of the 
Right Honourable Gentleman, I may take 
leave to observe, that in all that was con- 
tained in the latter part of it he has my full- 
est and most cordial assent. In 1822, when 
the Canadians were last before the House. 
I stated the principles which ought to be 
maintained with respect to what the Right 
Honourable Gentleman has very properly 
and very eloquently called the "Great Bri- 
tish Confederacy." I hold now, as I did 
then, that all the different portions of that 
Confederacy are integral parts of the British 
Empire, and as such entitled to the fullest 
protection. I hold that they are all bound 
together as one great class, by an alliance 
prior in importance to every other, — more 
binding upon us than any treaty ever enter- 
ed into with any state, — the fulfilment of 
which we can never desert without the 
sacrifice of a great moral duty. I hold that 
it can be a matter of no moment, in this bond 
of alliance, whether the parties be divided 
by oceans or be neighbours : — I hold that 
the moral bond of duty and protection is the 
same. My maxims of Colonial Policy are 
few and simple : — a full and efficient pro- 
tection from all foreign influence ; full per- 
mission to conduct the whole of their own 
internal affairs: compelling them to pay all 
the reasonable expenses of their own govern- 
ment, and giving them at the same time a 
perfect control over the expenditures of the 
money; and imposing no restrictions of any 
kind upon the industry or traffic of the peo- 
ple. These are the only means by which 
the hitherto almost incurable evil of distant 
government can be either mitigated or re- 
moved. And it may be a matter of doubt, 
whether in such circumstances the colonists 
would not be under a more gentle control, 
and in a happier state, than if they were to 
be admitted to a full participation in the 
rule, and brought under the immediate and 
full protection, of the parent government. 
I agree most fully with the Honourable Gen- 
tleman who spoke last, when he expressed a 
wish that we should leave the regulation of 
the internal affairs of the colonies to the 
colonists, except in cases of the most urgent 
and manifest necessity. The most urgent 
and manifest necessity, I say; and few and 

* This alludes to his nomination some time 
previously by the House of Assembly of Lower 
Canada as the Agent of the Province, which 
nomination had not however taken effect. — Ed. 



rare ought to be the exceptions to the rule 1 
even upon the strength of those necessities. 

Under these circumstances of right I con- 
tend it is prudent to regard all our colonies; 
and peculiarly the population of these two 
great provinces; — provinces placed in one 
of those rare and happy states of society in. 
which the progress of population must be 
regarded as a blessing to mankind, — exempt 
from the curse of fostering slavery, — exempt 
from the evils produced by the contentions 
of jarring systems of religion, — enjoying the 
blessings of universal toleration, — and pre- 
senting a state of society the most unlike 
that can possibly be imagined to the fastidi- 
ous distinctions of Europe. Exempt at onc6 
from the slavery of the West, and the castes 
of the East, — exempt, too, from the embar- 
rassments of that other great continent which 
we have chosen as a penal settlement, and 
in which the prejudices of society have 1 
been fostered. I regret to find, in a most un- 
reasonable degree, — exempt from all the 
artificial distinctions of the Old World, and 
many of the evils of the New, we see a great 
population rapidly growing up to be a great 
nation. None of the claims of such a popu- 
lation ought to be cast aside ; and none of 
their complaints can receive any but the 
most serious consideration. 

In the first part of his speech the Righi 
Honourable Gentleman declared, that the 
excesses and complaints of the colonists 
arose from the defect of their constitution, 
and next from certain contentions into which 
they had fallen with Lord Dalhousie. In 
any thing I may say on this occasion, I beg 
to be understood as not casting any imputa- 
tion upon the character of that Noble Lord : 
I speak merely of the acts of his Govern- 
ment : and I wish solely to be understood as 
saying, that my opinion of the acts of that 
Government are different from those which 
I believe to have been conscientiously his. 

I, however, must say, that I thought the 1 
Right Honourable Gentleman in one part of 
his address had indulged himself in some 
pleasantries which seemed ill suited to the 
subject to which he claimed our attention; 
— I allude to the three essential grievances 
which he seemed to imagine led to man}', 
if not all, of the discontents and complaints 
of the colonists. There was the perplexed 
system of real-property-law, creating such a 
vexatious delay, and such enormous costs to 
the suitor as to amount very nearly to a de- 
nial of justice : this, he said, arose from ad- 
hering to the Custom of Paris. The next 
cause of discontent is the inadequate repre- 
sentation of the people in Parliament : that 
he recommended to the immediate attention 
of the committee, for the purpose of revision. 
Lastly, the members of the Legislature were 
so absurdly ignorant of the first principles of 
political economy, as to have attempted to 
exclude all the industry and capital of other 
countries from flowing in to enrich and fer- 
tilise their shores. These were the three 
grounds upon which he formally impeached 
2X 



566 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAY'S. 



the people of Canada before the Knights, 
Citizens, and Burgesses of Great Britain and 
Ireland in Parliament assembled. 

Did the Right Honourable Gentleman never 
hear of any other system of law, in any 
other country than Canada, in which a jumble 
of obsolete usages were mixed up and con- 
founded with modern subtleties, until the 
mind of the most acute men of the age and 
nation — men who had, in a service of forty 
years, passed through every stage of its gra- 
dations — were driven to declare that they 
felt totally unable to find their way through 
its labyrinths, and were compelled, by their 
doubts of what was law and what was not, 
to add in a most ruinous degree to the ex- 
penses of the suitor ? This system has been 
called the "Common Law/' — "the wisdom 
of our ancestors," — and various other vener- 
able names. Did he never hear of a system 
of representation in any other country totally 
irreconcilable either with the state of the 
population or with any rule or principle under 
heaven I Have I not heard over and over 
again from the lips of the Right Honourable 
Gentleman, and from one* whom, alas ! I 
shall hear no more, that this inadequate 
system of representation possessed extraor- 
dinary advantages over those more syste- 
matic contrivances which resulted from the 
studies of the " constitution makers" of other 
countries? And yet it is for this very irre- 
gularity in their mode of representation that 
the Canadians are now to be brought before 
the judgment of the Right Honourable Gentle- 
man's committee. I felt still greater wonder, 
however, when I heard him mention his third 
ground of objection to the proceedings of the 
colonists, and his third cause of their dis- 
content — their ignorance of political econo- 
my. Too surely the laws for the exclusion 
of the capital and industry of other countries 
did display the grossest ignorance of that 
science ! I should not much wonder if I 
heard of the Canadians devising plans to 
prevent the entrance of a single grain of 
foreign corn into the provinces. I should not 
wonder to hear the members of their Legis- 
lature and their great land-owners contend- 
ing that it was absolutely necessary that the 
people should be able to raise all their own 
food ; and consequently (although, perhaps. 
they do not see the consequences) to make 
every other nation completely independent 
of their products and their industry. It is 
perhaps barely possible that some such non- 
sense as this might be uttered in the legisla- 
tive assembly of the Canadians. 

Then again, Sir, the Right Honourable 
Gentleman has alluded to the Seigneurs and 
their vassals. Some of these "most potent, 
grave, and reverend" Seigneurs may happen 
to be jealous of their manorial rights: for 
seigneuralty means manor, and a seigneur is 
only, therefore, a lord of the manor. How 
harmless this lofty word seems to be when 
translated ! Some of these seigneurs might 

* Mr. Canning.— Ed. 



happen, I say, to be jealous of their manorial 
privileges, and anxious for the preservation 
of .their game. I am a very bad sportsman 
myself, and not well acquainted with the 
various objects of anxiety to such persons; 
but there may be, too, in these colonies also, 
persons who may take upon themselves to 
institute a rigorous inquiry into the state of 
their game, and into the best methods of 
preserving red game and black game, and 
pheasants and partridges ; and who might be 
disposed to make it a question whether any 
evils arise from the preservation of these 
things for their sport, or whether the safety, 
the fiberty, and the life of their fellow-sub- 
jects ought not to be sacrificed for their per- 
sonal gratification. 

With regard to the observance of the 
Custom of Paris, I beg the House to consider 
that no change was effected from 1760 to 
1789; and (although I admit with the Right 
Honourable Gentleman that it may be bad as 
a system of conveyance, and may be expen- 
sive on account of the difficulties produced 
by mortgages) that the Canadians cannot be 
very ill off under a code of laws which grew 
up under the auspices of the Parliament of 
Paris — a body comprising the greatest learn- 
ing and talent ever brought to the study of 
the law, and boasting the names of L'Hopital 
and Montesquieu. 

Neither can it be said, that the Assembly 
of Canada was so entirely indifferent to its 
system of representation : for it ought to be 
recollected, that they passed a bill to amend 
it, which was thrown out by the Council. — 
that is, in fact, by the Government. At all 
events, this shows that there was no want 
of a disposition to amend the state of their 
representation ; although Government might 
differ from them as to the best method of 
accomplishing it. A bill for establishing the 
independence of the judges was another re- 
medial measure thrown out by the Upper 
House. 

As at present informed, however, without 
going further into these questions, I see 
enough stated in the Petition upon the table 
of the House, to justify the appointment of 
a committee of inquiry. 

In every country, Sir, the wishes of the 
greater number of the inhabitants, and of 
those in possession of the great mass of the 
property, ought to have great influence in the 
government) — they ought to possess the 
power of the government. If this be true 
generally, the rule ought, a mv.ltb fortiori, to 
be followed in the government of distant 
colonies, from which the information that is 
to guide the Government at home is sent by 
a few, and is never correct or complete. A 
Government on the spot, though with the 
means of obtaining correct information, is 
exposed to the delusions of prejudice: — for 
a Government at a distance, the only safe 
course to pursue is to follow public opinion. 
In making the practical application of this 
principle, if I find the Government of any 
country engaged in squabbles with the great 



ON THE CIVIL GOVERNMENT OF CANADA. 



567 



mass of the people, — if I find it engaged in 
vexatious controversies and ill-timed dis- 
putes, — especially if that Government be the 
Government of a colony, — I say, that there 
is a reasonable presumption against that Go- 
vernment. I do not charge it with injustice, 
but I charge it with imprudence and indis- 
cretion ; and I say that it is unfit to hold the 
authority intrusted to it. The ten years of 
squabbles and hostility which have existed 
in this instance, are a sufficient charge against 
this Government. 

I was surprised to hear the Right Honour- 
able Gentleman put the People and the Go- 
vernment on the same footing in this respect. 
What is government good for, if not to temper 
passion with wisdom? The People are said 
to be deficient in certain qualities, and a go- 
vernment are said to possess them. If the 
People are not deficient in them, it is a fal- 
lacy to talk of the danger of intrusting them 
with political power: if they are deficient, 
where is the common sense of exacting from 
them that moderation which government is 
instituted for the very purpose of supplying? 

Taking this to be true as a general princi- 
ple, it cannot be false in its application to 
the question before the House. As I under- 
stand it, the House of Assembly has a right 
to appropriate the supplies which itself has 
granted. The House of Commons knows 
well how to appreciate that right, and should 
not quarrel with the House of Assembly for 
indulging in a similar feeling. The Right 
Honourable Gentleman himself admits the 
existence of this right. The Governor-Gene- 
ral has, however, infringed it, by appropria- 
ting a sum of one hundred and forty thousand 
pounds without the authority of the Assem- 
bly. That House does not claim to appro- 
priate the revenue raised under the Act of 
1774: they only claim a right to examine 
the items of the appropriation in order to 
ascertain if the Government need any fresh 
supplies. The Petitioners slate it as one of 
their not unimaginary grievances, that they 
have lost one hundred thousand pounds by 
the neglect of the Receiver-General. This 
is not one of those grievances which are said 
to arise from the Assembly's claim of politi- 
cal rights. Another dispute arises from the 
Governor-General claiming, in imitation of 
the power of the King, a right to confirm the 
Speaker of the House of Assembly. This 
right, — a very ancient one, and venerable 
from its antiquity and from being an esta- 
blished fact of an excellent constitution at 
home, — is a most absurd adjunct to a colo- 
nial government. But I will not investigate 
the question, nor enter into any legal argu- 
ment with regard to it ; for no discussion can 
in any case, as I feel, be put in competition 
with the feelings of a whole people. It is a 
fatal error in the rulers of a country to despise 
the people : its safety, honour, and strength, 
are best preserved by consulting their wishes 
and feelings. The Government at Quebec, 
despising such considerations, has been long 
engaged in a scuffle with the people, and has 
2q2 



thought hard words and hard blows not in- 
consistent with its dignity. 

I observe, Sir, that twenty-one bills were 
passed by the House of Assembly in 1827, 
— most of them reformatory, — of which not 
one was approved of by the Legislative 
Council. Is the Governor responsible for 
this? I answer, he is. The Council is no- 
thing else but his tool : it is not, as at present 
constituted, a fair and just constitutional 
check bet\ve< n the popular assembly and the 
Governor. Of the twenty-seven Councillors, 
seventeen hold places under the Government 
at pleasure, dividingamongthemselvesyearly 
fifteen thousand pounds, which is not a small 
sum in a country hi which a thousand a-year 
is a large income for a country gentleman. 
I omit the Bishop, who is perhaps rather too 
much inclined to authority, but is of a pacific 
character. The minority, worn out in their 
fruitless resistance, have withdrawn from 
attendance on the Council. Two of them, 
being the most considerable landholders in 
the province, were amongst the subscribers 
to the Petition. I appeal to the House, if the 
Canadians are not justified in considering the 
very existence of this Council as a constitu- 
tional grievance 1 

It has been said that there is no aristocracy 
formed in the province. It is not possible 
that this part of Mr. Pitt's plan could ever 
have been carried into execution : an aristo- 
cracy — the creature of time and opinion — 
cannot be created. But men of great merit 
and superior qualifications get an influence 
over the people ; and they form a species of 
aristocracy, differing, indeed, from one of 
birth and descent, but supplying the mate- 
rials out of which a constitutional senate 
may be constituted. Such an aristocracy 
there is in Canada; but it is excluded from 
the Council. 

There are then, Sir. two specific classes 
of grievances complained of by the Lower- 
Canadians: the first is, the continued hosti- 
lity to all the projected measures of the 
Assembly by the Governor; the second is, 
the use lie makes of the Council to oppose 
them. These are the grounds on which in- 
quiry and change are demanded. I, how- 
ever, do not look upon these circumstances 
alone as peremptorily requiring a change in 
the constitution of the province. These are 
wrongs which the Government might have 
remedied. It might have selected a better 
Council; and it might have sent out instruc- 
tions to the Governor to consult the feelings 
of the people. It might have pointed out to 
him the example of a Government which 
gave way to the wishes of a people, — of a 
majority of the people, expressed by a ma- 
jority of their representatives, — on a ques- 
tion, too, of religious liberty,* and instead of 
weakening themselves, had thereby more 
firmly seated themselves in the hearts of the 
people. On reviewing the whole question, 
the only practical remedy which I see, is to 



* Alluding to the repeal of the Test Act. — Ed. 



568 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



introduce move prudence and discretion into 
the counsels of the Administration of the 
Province. 

The Right Honourable Gentleman has made 
allusion to the English settlers in Lower- 
Canada, as if they were oppressed by the 
natives. But I ask what law has been passed 
by the Assembly that is unjust to them ?• Is 
it a remedy for this that it is proposed to 
change the scheme of representation ? The 
English inhabitants of Lower-Canada, with 
some few exceptions, collected in towns as 
merchants or the agents of merchants, — 
very respectable persons, I have no doubt, — 
amount to about eighty thousand : would it 
not be the height of injustice to give them 
the same influence which the four hundred 
thousand Canadians, from their numbers and 
property, ought to possess? Sir, when I hear 
of an inquiry on account of measures neces- 
sary to protect English settlers, I greatly 
lament that any such language should have 
been used. Are we to have an English colony 
in Canada separated from the rest of the in- 
habitants, — a favoured body, with peculiar 
privileges '? Shall they have a sympathy with 
English sympathies and English interests 1 
And shall we deal out to Canada six hundred 
years of such miseries as we have to Ireland '? 
Let us not, in God's name, introduce such 
curses into another region. Let our policy 
be to give all the King's subjects in Canada 
equal law and equal justice. I cannot listen 
to unwise distinctions, generating alarm, and 
leading to nothing but evil, without adverting 
to them j and I shall be glad if my observa- 
tions supply the Gentlemen opposite with the 
opportunity of disavowing, — knowing, as I 
do, that the disavowal will be sincere — that 
any such distinction is to be kept up. 

As to Upper Canada, the statement of the 
Right Honourable Gentleman appears to be 
scanty in information : it does not point out, 
— as is usual in proposing such a Committee, 
— what is to be the termination of the change 
proposed. He has thrown out two or three 
plans : but he has also himself supplied ob- 
jections to them. The Assembly there ap- 
pears to be as independent as the one in the 
Lower province. I have heard of some of 
their measures — an Alien bill, a Catholic 
bill, and a bill for regulating the Press : 
and these discussions were managed with as 
much spirit as those of an assembly which 
I will not say is better, but which has the 
good fortune to be their superiors. The peo- 
ple have been much disappointed by the 



immense grants of land which have been 
reserved for the Church of England, — which 
faith is not that of the majority of the people. 
Such endowments are to be held sacred 
where they have been long made ; but I do 
not see the propriety of creating them anew, 
— and for a Church, too, to which the ma- 
jority of the people do not belong. Then, 
with regard to the regulations which have 
been made for the new college, I see with 
astonishment that, in a country where the 
majority of the people do not belong to the 
Church of England, the professors are all to 
subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles : so that, 
if Dr. Adam Smith were alive, he could not 
fill the chair of political economy, and Dr. 
Black would be excluded from that of chem- 
istry. Another thing should be considered : 
— a large portion of the population consists 
of American settlers, who can least of all 
men bear the intrusion of law into the do- 
mains of conscience and religion. It is a 
bad augury for the welfare of the province, 
that opinions prevalent at the distance of 
thousands of miles, are to be the foundations 
of the college-charter : it is still worse, if 
they be only the opinions of a faction, that 
we cannot interfere to correct the injustice. 

To the proposed plan for the union of the 
two provinces there are so many and such 
powerful objections, that I scarcely think 
that such a measure can soon be success- 
fully concluded. The Bill proposed in 1822, 
w T hereby the bitterness of the Lower-Canada 
Assembly was to be mitigated by an infu- 
sion of mildness from the Upper province, — 
failing as it did, — has excited general alarm 
and mistrust among all your colonies. Ex- 
cept that measure, which ought to be looked 
upon as a warning rather than a precedent, 
I think the grounds upon which we have 
now been called upon to interfere the scan- 
tiest that ever were exhibited. 

I do not know, Sir, what other plans are to 
be produced, but I think the wisest measure 
would be to send out a temperate Governor, 
with instructions to be candid, and to supply 
him with such a Council as will put an end 
to the present disputes, and infuse a better 
spirit into the administration than it has 
known for the last ten years. I wish, how- 
ever, to state, that I have not come to a final 
judgment, but have merely described what 
the bearing of my mind is on those general 
maxims of colonial policy, any deviation 
from which is as inconsistent with national 
policy as it is with national justice. 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF PORTUGAL. 



569 



SPEECH 



ON MOVING FOR 



PAPERS RELATIVE TO THE AFFAIRS OF PORTUGAL. 

DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, ON THE 1st OF JUNE, 1829. 



Mr. Speaker, — I think it will be scarcely 
necessary for any man who addresses the 
House from that part of it where I generally 
sit, to disclaim any spirit of party opposition 
to His Majesty's Ministers during the present 
session. My own conduct in dealing with 
the motion which I regret that it is now my 
painful duty to bring forward, affords, I be- 
lieve I may say. a pretty fair sample of the 
principle and feeling which have guided all 
my friends in the course they have adopted 
since the very first day of this Session, when 
I intimated my intention to call public atten- 
tion to the present subject. For the first 
two months of the session, I considered my- 
self and my political friends as acting under 
a sacred and irresistible obligation not to do 
any thing which might appear even to ruffle 
the surface of that hearty and complete co- 
operation which experience has proved to 
have been not more than necessary to the suc- 
cess of that grand healing measure* brought 
forward by His Majesty's Ministers. — that 
measure which I trust and believe will be 
found the most beneficent ever adopted by 
Parliament since the period when the happy 
settlement of a Parliamentary and constitu- 
tional crown on the House of Brunswick, not 
only preserved the constitution of England, 
but struck a death-blow against all preten- 
sions to unbounded power and indefeasible 
title throughout the world. I cannot now 
throw off the feelings that actuated me in 
the course of the contest by means of which 
this great measure has been effected. I can- 
not so soon forget that I have fought by the 
side of the Gentlemen opposite for the at- 
tainment of that end. Such are my feelings 
upon the present occasion, that while I will 
endeavour to discharge my duty, as I feel 
no hostility, so I shall assume no appearance 
of acrimony. At the same time, I trust my 
conduct will be found to be at an immeasura- 
ble distance from that lukewarmness, which, 
on a question of national honour, and in the 
cause of the defenceless. I should hold to be 
aggravated treachery. I am influenced by 
a solicitude that the councils of England 
should be and should seem unspotted, not 
only at home ; but in the eye of the people 
as well as the rulers of Europe, — by a desire 



* The Bill for removing the Roman Catholic 
disabilities. 

72 



for an explanation of measures which have 
ended in plunging our most ancient ally into 
the lowest depths of degradation, — by a warm 
and therefore jealous regard to national hon 
our, which, in my judgment, consists still 
more in not doing or abetting, or approach- 
ing, or conniving at wrong to others, than in 
the spirit never tamely to brook wrong done 
to ourselves. 

I hold it, Sir, as a general principle to be 
exceedingly beneficial and wholesome, that 
the attention of the House should be some- 
times drawn to the state of our foreign rela- 
tions : and this for the satisfaction of the peo- 
ple of England ; — in the first place, in order 
to assure them that proper care is taken for 
the maintenance of peace and security; — 
above all, to convince them that care is taken 
of the national honour, the best, and indeed 
only sufficient guard of that peace and secu- 
rity. I regard such discussions as acts of 
courtesy due to cur fellow-members of the 
great commonwealth of European states j 
more particularly now that some of them are 
bound to us by kindred ties of liberty, and 
by the possession of institutions similar to 
our own. Two of our neighbouring states, 
— one our closest and most congenial ally, — 
the other, in times less happy, our most 
illustrious antagonist, but in times to come 
our most illustrious rival — have adopted our 
English institutions of limited monarchy and 
representative assemblies : may they con- 
solidate and perpetuate their wise alliance 
between authority and freedom ! The occa- 
sional discussions of Foreign Policy in such 
assemblies will, I believe, in spite of cross 
accidents and intemperate individuals, prove 
on the whole, and in the long-run, favourable 
to good-will and good understanding between 
nations, by gradually softening prejudices, 
by leading to public and satisfactory expla- 
nations of ambiguous acts, and even by 
affording a timely vent to jealousies and re- 
sentments. They will, I am persuaded, root 
more deeply that strong and growing passion 
for peace, which, whatever may be the pro- 
jects or intrigues of Cabinets, is daily spread- 
ing in the hearts of European nations, and 
which, let me add, is the best legacy be- 
queathed to us by the fierce wars which 
have desolated Europe from Copenhagen to 
Cadiz. They will foster this useful disposi- 
tion, through the most generous sentiments 
2x2 



570 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



of human nature, instead of attempting to 
attain the same end by under-rating the re- 
sources or magnifying the difficulties of any 
single country, at a moment when distress is 
felt by all : — attempts more likely to rouse 
and provoke the just sense of national dig- 
nity which belongs to great and gallant na- 
tions, than to check their boldness or to damp 
their spirit. 

If any thing was wanting to strengthen my 
passion for peace, it would draw new rigour 
from the dissuasive against war which I 
heard fall with such weight from the lips of 
him,* of whom alone in the two thousand 
years that have passed since Scipio defeated 
Hannibal at Zama. it can be said, (hat in a 
single battle he overthrew the greatest of 
commanders. I thought, at the moment, of 
verses written and sometimes quoted for 
other purposes, but characteristic of a dis- 
suasive, which derived its weight from so 
many victories, and of the awful lesson taught 
by the fate of his mighty antagonist : — 

" Si admoveris ora, 
Cannas et Trebiam ante oculos, Thrasymenaque 

busla, 
Et Pauli stare ingentein miraberis umbram."t 

Actuated by a passion for peace, I own 
that I am as jealous of new guarantees of 
foreign political arrangements, as I should be 
resolute in observing the old. I object to 
them as multiplying the chances of war. 
And I deprecate virtual, as well as express 
ones : for such engagements may be as much 
contracted by acts as by words. To proclaim 
by our measures, or our language, that the 
preservation of the integrity of a particular 
state is to be introduced as a principle iulo 
the public policy of Europe, is in truth to 
form a new, and, perhaps, universal, even 
if only a virtual, guarantee. I will not affect 
to conceal that I allude to our peculiarly ob- 
jectionable guarantee of the Ottoman em- 
pire.!' I cannot see the justice of a policy, 
which would doom to perpetual barbarism 
and barrenness the eastern and southern 
shores of the Mediterranean, — the fair and 
famous lands which wind from the Euxine 
to the Atlantic. I recoil from thus riveting 
the Turkish yoke on the neck of the Chris- 
tian nations of Asia Minor, of Mesopotamia, 
of Syria, and of Egypt ; encouraged as they 
are on the one hand to hope for deliverance 
by the example of Greece, and sure that 
the barbarians will be provoked, by the 
same example, to maltreat them with tenfold 
cruelty. It is in vain to distinguish in this 
case between a guarantee against foreign 
enemies, and one against internal revolt. If 
all the Powers of Europe be pledged by their 
acts to protect the Turkish territory from 
invasion, the unhappy Christians of the East 

* Alluding to a passage contained in a speech 
of the Dukeof Wellington on the Catholic Relief 
Bill— Ed. 

t Pharsalia, lib. vii. — Ed. 

t Which formed part of the basis of the arrange- 
ments for liberating Greece. — Ed. 



must look on all as enemies : while the Turk, 
relieved from all foreign fear, is at perfect 
liberty to tyrannize over his slaves. The 
Christians must despair not only of aid, but 
even of good-will, from states whose interest 
it will become, that a Government which 
they are bound to shield from abroad should 
be undisturbed at home. Such a guarantee 
cannot be long enforced : it will shortly give 
rise to the very dangers against which it is 
intended to guard. The issue will assuredly, 
in no long time, be, that the great military 
Powers of the neighbourhood, when they 
come to the brink of war with each other, 
will recur to their ancient secret of avoiding 
a quarrel, by fairly cutting up the prey that 
lies at their feet. They will smile at the 
credulity of those most distant states, whose 
strength, however great, is neither of the 
kind, nor within the distance, which would 
enable them to prevent the partition. But 
of this, perhaps, too much. 

The case of Portugal touches us most near- 
ly. It is that of a country connected with 
England by treaty for four hundred and fifty 
years, without the interruption of a single 
day's coldness, — with which we have been 
connected by a treaty of guarantee for more 
than a century, without ever having been 
drawn into war, or exposed to the danger of 
it, — which, on the other hand, for her stead- 
fast faith to England, has been three times 
invaded— in 1760, in 1801, and in 1807,— 
and the soldiers of which have fought for 
European independence, when it was main- 
tained by our most renowned captains against 
Louis XIV. and Napoleon. It is a connection 
which in length and intimacy the history of 
mankind cannot match. All other nations 
have learnt to regard our ascendant, and 
their attachment, as two of the elements of 
the European system. May I venture to 
add, that Portugal preceded us, though but 
for a short period, in the command of the 
sea. and that it is the country of the greatest 
poet who has employed his genius in cele- 
brating nautical enterprise ? 

Such is the country which has fallen under 
the yoke of an usurper, whose private crimes 
rather remind us of the age of Commodus 
and Caracalla, than of the level mediocrity 
of civilized vice, — who appears before the 
whole world with the deep brand on his 
brow of a pardon from his king and father 
for a parricide rebellion, — who has waded 
to the throne through a succession of frauds, 
falsehoods, and perjuries, for which any man 
amenable to the law would have suffered 
the most disgraceful, — if not the last pun- 
ishment. Meanwhile the lawful sovereign, 
Donna Maria II., received by His Majesty 
with parental kindness, — by the British na- 
tion with the interest due to her age, and 
sex, and royal dignity, — solemnly recognised 
by the British Government as Queen of Por- 
tugal, — whom all the great Powers of Europe 
once co-operated to place on her throne, con- 
tinues still to be an exile ; though the very 
acts by which she is unlawfully dispossessed 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF PORTUGAL. 



571 



are outrages and indignities- of the highest 
nature against these Powers themselves. 

His Majesty has twice told his Parliament 
that he has been compelled, by this alike 
perfidious and insolent usurpation, to break 
off all diplomatic intercourse with Portugal. 
Europe has tried the Usurper. Europe is 
determined that under his sway the usual re- 
lations of amity and courtesy cannot be kept 
up with a once illustrious and still respecta- 
ble nation. So strong a mark of the displea- 
sure of all European rulers has never yet 
been set on any country in time of peace. 
It would be a reflection on them, to doubt 
that they have been in some measure influ- 
enced by those unconfuted — I might say, un- 
contradicted — charges of monstrous crimes 
which hang over the head of the Usurper. 
His crimes, public and private, have brought 
on her this unparalleled dishonour. Never 
before were the crimes of a ruler the avowed 
and sufficient ground of so severe a visitation 
on a people. It is, therefore, my public duty 
to state them here; and I cannot do so in 
soft words, without injustice to Portugal and 
disgrace to myself. In a case touching our 
national honour, in relation to our conduct 
towards a feeble ally, and to the unmatched 
ignominy which has now befallen her, I 
must use the utmost frankness of speech. 

I must inquire what are the causes of this 
fatal issue 1 Has the fluctuation of British 
policy had any part in it ? Can we safely 
say that we have acted not merely with 
literal fidelity to engagements, but with gene- 
rous support to those who risked all in reli- 
ance on us, — with consistent friendship to- 
wards a people who put their trust in us, — 
with liberal good faith to a monarch whom 
we acknowledge as lawful, and who has 
taken irretrievable steps in consequence of 
our apparent encouragement? The motion 
with which I shall conclude, will be for an 
address to obtain answers to these important 
questions, by the production of the principal 
despatches and documents relating to Portu- 
guese affairs, from the summer of 1826 to 
to the present moment; whether originating 
at London, at Lisbon, at Vienna, at Rio Ja- 
neiro, or at Terceira. 

As a ground for such a motion, I am obliged, 
Sir, to state at some length, though as shortly 
as I can. the events on which these docu- 
ments may throw the needful light. In this 
statement I shall first lighten my burden by 
throwing overboard the pretended claim of 
Miguel to the crown, under I know not what 
ancient laws : not that I have not examined 
it,* and found it to be altogether absurd ; but 
because he renounced it by repeated oaths, — 
because all the Powers of Europe recognised 
another settlement of the Portuguese crown, 
and took measures, though inadequate ones, 
to carry it into effect, — because His Majesty 
has withdrawn his minister from Lisbon, in 
acknowledgment of Donna Maria's right. I 
content myself with these authorities, as, in 



See the Case of Donna Maria. — Ed. 



this place, indisputable. In the performance 
of my duty, I shall have to relate facts which 
I have heard from high authority, and to 
quote copies which I consider as accurate, 
of various despatches and minutes. I be- 
lieve the truth of what I shall relate, and the 
correctness of what I shall quote. I shall be 
corrected wheresoever I may chance to be 
misinformed. I owe no part of my intelli- 
gence to any breach of duty. The House 
will not wonder that many copies of docu- 
ments interesting to multitudes of men, in 
the disastrous situation of some of the pa rties, 
should have been scattered over Europe. 

I pass over the revolution of 1820, when a 
democratical monarchy was adopted. The 
principles of its best adherents have been 
modified by the reform of 1826 : its basest 
leaders are now among the tools of the 
Usurper, Avhile he proscribes the loyal suf- 
ferers of that period. ] mention only in pas- 
sing the Treaty of Rio Janeiro, completed in 
August, 1825, by which Brazil was separated 
from Portugal, under the mediation of Eng- 
land and Austria; — the result of negotiations 
in which Sir Charles Stuart (now Lord Stuart 
de Rothesay), one of the most distinguished 
of British diplomatists, acted as the plenipo- 
tentiary of Portugal. In the following spring, 
John VI., the late King of Portugal, died, 
after having, in the ratification of the treaty, 
acknowledged Dom Pedro as his heir. It 
was a necessary interpretation of that treaty 
that the latter was not to continue King of 
Portugal in his own right, but only for the 
purpose of separating and settling the two 
kingdoms. He held Portugal in trust, and 
only till he had discharged this trust : for 
that purpose some time was necessary; the 
duration could not be precisely defined; but 
it was sufficient that there should appear no 
symptom of bad faith, — no appearance of an 
intention to hold it longer than the purposes 
of the trust absolutely required. For these 
purposes, and for that time, he was as much 
King of Portugal as his forefathers, and as 
such was recognised by all Europe, with the 
exception of Spain, which did not throw the 
discredit of her recognition on his title. 

To effect the separation safely and bene- 
ficially for both countries, Dom Pedro abdi- 
cated the crown of Portugal in favour of his 
daughter Donna Maria, who was to be affi- 
anced to Dom Miguel, on condition of his 
swearing to observe the Constitution at the 
same time bestowed by Dom Pedro on the 
Portuguese nation. With whatever pangs 
he thus sacrificed his daughter, it must be 
owned that no arrangement seemed more 
likely to secure peace between the parties 
who divided Portugal, than the union of the 
chief of the Absolutists with a princess who 
became the hope of the Constitutionalists. 
Various opinions may be formed of the fit- 
ness of Portugal for a free constitution : but 
no one can doubt that the foundations of 
tranquillity could be laid no otherwise than 
in the security of each party from being op- 
pressed by the other, — that a fair distribu- 



572 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



tion of political power between them was 
the only means of shielding either. — and that 
no such distribution could be effected with- 
out a constitution comprehending all classes 
and parties. 

In the month of June, 1826, this Constitu- 
tion was brought to Lisbon by the same emi- 
nent English minister who had gone from 
that city to Brazil as the plenipotentiary of 
John VI.. and who now returned from Rio to 
the Tagus. as the bearer of the Constitutional 
Charter granted by Dom Pedro. I do not 
meddle with the rumours of dissatisfaction 
then produced by that Minister's visit to 
Lisbon. It is easier to censure at a distance, 
than to decide on a pressing emergency. It 
doubtless appeared of the utmost importance 
to Sir Charles Stuart, that the uncertainty of 
the Portuguese nation as to their form of 
government should not be continued ; and 
that he, a messenger of peace, should hasten 
with its tidings. No one can doubt that the 
people of Portugal received such a boon, by 
such a bearer, as a mark of the favourable 
disposition of the British Government towards 
the Constitution. It is matter of notoriety 
that many of the Nobility were encouraged 
by this seeming approbation of Great Britain 
publicly to espouse it in a maimer which 
they might and would otherwise have con- 
sidered as an useless sacrifice of their own 
safety. Their constitutional principles, how- 
ever sincere, required no such devotion, 
without these reasonable hopes of success, 
which every mark of the favour of England 
strongly tended to inspire. No diplomatic 
disavowal (a proceeding so apt to be con- 
sidered as merely formal) could, even if it 
were public, which it was not, undo the im- 
pression made by this act of Sir Charles 
Stuart. No avowal, however public, made 
six months after, of an intention to abstain 
from all interference in intestine divisions, 
could replace the Portuguese in their first 
situation : they had taken irrevocable steps, 
and cut themselves off from all retreat. 

But this is not all. Unless I be misin- 
formed by those who cannot deceive, and 
are most unlikely to be deceived, the promul- 
gation of the Constitution was suspended at 
Lisbon till the Regency could receive advice 
from His Majesty. The delay lasted at least 
a fortnight. The advice given was, to put 
the Charter in force. I do not know the 
terms of this opinion, or the limitations and 
conditions which might accompany it ; nor 
does it import to my reasoning that I should. 
The great practical fact that it was asked 
for, was sure to be published, as it instantly 
was, through all the societies of Lisbon. — 
The small accessories were either likely to 
be concealed, or sure to be disregarded, by 
eager and ardent reporters. In the rapid 
succession of governments which then ap- 
peared at Lisbon, it could not fail to be known 
to every man of information, and spread with 
the usual exaggerations among the multitude, 
that Great Britain had declared for the Con- 
stitution. Let it not be thought that I men- 



tion these acts to blame them. They were 
the good offices of an ally. Friendly advice 
is not undue interference : it involves no en- 
croachment on independence, — no departure 
from neutrality. "Strict neutrality consists 
merely, first, in abstaining from all part in 
the operations of war; and, secondly, in 
equally allowing or forbidding the supply of 
instruments of war to both parties."* Neu- 
trality does not imply indifference. It re- 
quires no detestable impartiality between 
right or wrong. It consists in an abstinence 
from certain outward acts, well defined by 
international law, — leaving the heart entirely 
free, and the hands at liberty, where they 
are not visibly bound. We violated no neu- 
trality in execrating the sale of Corsica, — in 
loudly crying" out against the partition of 
Poland. Neutrality did not prevent Mr. 
Canning from almost praying in this House 
for the defeat of the French invasion of 
Spain. No war with France, or Austria, or 
Prussia, or Russia, ensued. Neutrality is 
not a point, but a line extending from the 
camp of one party to the camp of his oppo- 
nent. It comprehends a great variety of 
shades and degrees of good and ill opinion : 
so that there is scope within its technical 
limits for a change from the most friendly to 
the most adverse policy, as long as arms are 
not taken up. 

Soon after, another encouragement of an 
extraordinary nature presented itself to this 
unfortunate people, the atrocious peculiari- 
ties of which throw into shade its connection, 
through subsequent occurrences, with the 
acts of Great Britain. On the 30th October 
following, Dom Miguel, at Vienna, first swore 
to the Constitution, and was consequently 
affianced by the Pope's Nuncio, in the pre- 
sence of the Imperial Ministers, to Donna 
Maria, whom he then solemnly acknow- 
ledged as Queen of Portugal. This was 
the first of his perjuries. It was a deliberate 
one, for it depended on the issue of a Papal' 
dispensation, which required time and many 
formalities. The falsehood had every aggra- 
vation that can arise from the quality of 
the witnesses, the importance of the object 
which it secured to him, and the reliance- 
which he desired should be placed on it by 
this country. At the same moment, a re- 
bellion, abetted by Spain, broke out in his 
name, which still he publicly disavowed. 
Two months more, and the perfidy of Spain 
became apparent : the English troops were 
landed in Portugal ; the rebels were driven 
from the territory of our ancient friends, by 
one of the most wise, honourable, vigorous, 
and brilliant strokes of policy ever struck 
by England. Mr. Canning delivered Portu- 
gal, and thus paid the debt which we owed 
for four centuries of constant faith and friend- 
ship, — for three invasions and a conquest 
endured in our cause. Still we were neutral : 
but what Portuguese could doubt that the 
nation which had scattered the Absolutists 

* Martens, Precis du Droit des Gens, p. 524. 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF PORTUGAL. 



573 



xvas friendly to the Constitution '? No tech- 
nical rule was broken ; but new encourage- 
ment was unavoidably held out. These re- 
peated incentives to a nation's hopes, — these 
informal but most effective, and therefore 
most binding acts, are those on which I lay 
the stress of this argument, still more than 
on federal and diplomatic proceedings. 

There occurred in the following year a 
transaction between the Governments, more 
nearly approaching the nature of a treaty, 
and which, in my humble judgment, par- 
takes much of its nature, and imposes its 
equitable and honourable duties. I now 
come to the conferences of Vienna "in au- 
tumn, 1827. On the 3d of July in that year, 
Dom Pedro had issued an edict by which he 
approached more nearly to an abdication of 
the crown, and nominated Dom Miguel lieu- 
tenant of the kingdom. This decree had 
been enforced by letters of the same date, — 
one to Dom Miguel, commanding and re- 
quiring him to execute the office in con- 
formity with the Constitution, and others to 
his allies, the Emperor of Austria and the 
King of Great Britain, committing to them 
as it were the execution of his decree, and 
beseeching them to take such measures as 
should render the Constitutional Charter the 
fundamental law of the Portuguese mo- 
narchy.* On these conditions, for this pur- 
pose, he prayed for aid in the establishment 
of Miguel. In consequence of this decree, 
measures had been immediately taken for a 
ministerial conference at Vienna, to concert 
the means of its execution. 

And here, Sir, I must mention one of them. 
as 'of the utmost importance to both branches 
of my argument ; — as an encouragement to 
the Portuguese, and as a virtual engagement 
with Dom Pedro : and I entreat the House to 
bear in mind the character of the transactions 
of which I am now to speak, as it affects both 
these important points. Count Villa Real, at 
that time in London, was appointed, I know 
not by whom, to act as a Portuguese minis- 
ter at Vienna. Under colour of want of time 
to consult the Princess Regent at Lisbon, un- 
signed papers of advice, amounting in effect 
to instructions, were put into his hands by an 
Austrian and an English minister. In these 
papers he was instructed to assure Miguel, 
that by observing the Constitutional Charter, 
he would insure the support of England. 
The tone and temper fit to be adopted by 
Miguel in conversations at Paris were pointed 
out. Count Villa Real was more especially 
instructed to urge the necessity of Miguel's 
return by England. "His return," it was 
said, " is itself an immense guarantee to the 
Royalists ; his return through this country 
will be a security to the other party." Could 
the Nobility and people of Portugal fail to 



* " Je supplie V. M. de m'aider non seulement 
a faire que ceite regence entre promptement en 
fonctions, mais encore a effectuer que la Charte 
Constitutionelle octroyee par moi devienne la loi 
fondamentale du Royaume." — Dom Pedro to the 
King of Great Britain, 3d July, 1827. 



consider so active a part in the settlement 
of their government, as an encouragement 
from their ancient and powerful ally to ad- 
here to the Constitution'? Is it possible that 
language so remarkable should not speedily 
have spread among them ? May not some 
of those before whose eyes now rises a scaf- 
fold have been emboldened to act on their 
opinions by encouragement which seemed 
so flattering ? 

In the month of September, 1827, when 
Europe and America were bewailing the 
death of Mr. Canning, a note was given in at 
Vienna by the Marquess de Rezende, the 
Brazilian minister at that court, containing 
the edict and letters of the 3d of July. The 
ministers of Austria, England, Portugal, and 
Brazil, assembled there on the 18th of Octo- 
ber. They began by taking the Brazilian 
note and the documents which accompanied 
it, as the basis of their proceedings. It was 
thus acknowledged, solemnly, that Dom 
Pedro's title was unimpaired, and his settle- 
ment of the constitutional crown legitimate. 
They thus also accepted the execution of the 
trust on the conditions under which he com- 
mitted it to them. 

It appears from a despatch of Prince Met- 
ternich to Prince Esterhazy (the copy of 
which was entered on the minutes of the 
conference), that Prince Metternich imme- 
diately proceeded to dispose Dom Miguel 
towards a prudent and obedient course. He 
represented to him that Dom Pedro had re- 
quired "the effectual aid of Austria to en- 
gage the Infant to submit with entire defer- 
ence to the orders of his brother;" and he 
added, that u the Emperor of Austria could, 
in no case, consent to his return through 
Spain, which would be contrary to the wishes 
of Dom Pedro, and to the opinion of all the 
Governments of Europe." These represen- 
tations were vain: the good offices of an Au- 
gust Person were interposed : — Miguel con- 
tinued inflexible. But in an interview, where, 
if there had been any truth in him, he must 
have uttered it, he spontaneously added, that 
" he was determined to maintain in Portugal 
the Charter to which he had sworn, and that 
His Majesty might be at ease in that respect." 
This voluntary falsehood, — this daring allu- 
sion to his oath, amounting, virtually, to a re- 
petition of it, — this promise, made at a mo- 
ment when obstinacy in other respects gave 
it a fraudulent credit, deserves to be num- 
bered among the most signal of the perjuries 
by which he deluded his subjects, and in- 
sulted all European sovereigns. 

Prince Metternich, after having consulted 
Sir Henry Wellesley (now Lord Cowley) and 
the other Ministers, ''on the means of con- 
quering the resistance of the Infant," deter- 
mined, conformably, (be it remembered) 
with the concurrence of all, to have a last 
and categorical explanation with that Prince. 
"I declared to him," says Prince Metter- 
nich, " without reserve, that, in his position, 
he had only to choose between immediately 
going to England on his way to Portugal, or 



574 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



waiting at Vienna the further determination 
of Dom Pedro, to whom the Courts of Lon- 
don (be it not forgotten) and Vienna would 
communicate the motives which had induced 
the Infant not immediately to obey his bro- 
ther's orders/' Prince Metternich describes 
the instantaneous effect of this menace of 
further imprisonment with the elaborate soft- 
ness of a courtier and a diplomatist. " I was 
not slow in perceiving that I had the happi- 
ness to make a profound impression on the 
mind of the Infant. After some moments 
of reflection, he at last yielded to the coun- 
sels of friendship and of reason." He owned 
" that he dreaded a return through England, 
because he knew that there were strong pre- 
judices against him in that country, and he 
feared a bad reception there." He did jus- 
tice to the people of England ; — his conscious 
guilt foresaw their just indignation : but he 
could not be expected to comprehend those 
higher and more generous qualities which 
disposed them to forget his former crimes, 
in the hope that he was about to atone for 
them by the establishment of liberty. No- 
thing in their own nature taught them that 
it was possible for a being in human shape 
to employ the solemn promises which de- 
luded them as the means of perpetrating 
new and more atrocious crimes. 

Here, Sir, I must pause. Prince Metter- 
nich, with the concurrence of the English 
Minister, announced to Miguel, that if he did 
not immediately return to Portugal by way 
of England, he must remain at Vienna until 
Bom Pedro's further pleasure should be 
known. Reflections here crowd on the mind. 
Miguel had before agreed to maintain the 
Charter : had he hesitated on that subject, it 
is evident that the language used to him 
must have been still more categorical. No 
doubt is hinted on either side of his brother's 
sovereign authority: the whole proceeding im- 
plies it ; and in many of its parts it is express- 
ly affirmed. He is to be detained at Vienna, 
if he does not consent to go through England, 
in order to persuade the whole Portuguese 
nation of his sincerity, and to hold out — in 
the already quoted words of the English 
Minister — " a security to the Constitutional 
party," or, in other language, the strongest 
practical assurance to them, that he was sent 
by Austria, and more especially by England, 
to exercise the Regency, on condition of ad- 
hering to the Constitution. Whence did this 
right of imprisonment arise 1 I cannot ques- 
tion it without charging a threat of false im- 
prisonment on all the great Powers. It may, 
perhaps, be thought, if not said, that it was 
founded on the original commitment by John 
VI. for rebellion and meditated parricide, 
and on the, perhaps, too lenient commuta- 
tion of it into a sentence of transportation to 
Vienna. The pardon and enlargement grant- 
ed by Dom Pedro were, on that supposition, 
conditional, and could not be earned without 
the fulfilment of all the conditions. Miguel's 
escape from custody must, then, be regarded 
as effected by fraud ) and those to whom his 



person was intrusted by Dom Pedro, seem 
to me to have been bound, by their trust, to 
do all that was necessary to repair the evil 
consequences of his enlargement to the King 
and people of Portugal. But the more natu- 
ral supposition is, that they undertook the 
trust, the custody, and the conditional liber- 
ation, in consequence of the application of 
their ally, the lawful Sovereign of Portugal, 
and for the public object of preserving the 
quiet of that kingdom, and with it the peace 
of Europe-and the secure tranquillity of their 
own dominions. Did they not thereby con- 
tract a federal obligation with Dom Pedro to 
complete their work, and, more especially, 
to take care that Miguel should not imme- 
diately employ the liberty, the sanction, the 
moral aid. which they had given him, for the 
overthrow of the fundamental laws which 
they too easily trusted that he would observe 
his promises and oaths to uphold ? When 
did this duty cease? Was it not fully as 
binding on the banks of the Tagus as on those 
of the Danube 1 If, in the fulfilment of this 
obligation, they had a right to imprison him 
at Vienna, because he would not allay the 
suspicions of the Constitutional party by re- 
turning through England, is it possible to con- 
tend that they were not bound to require and 
demand at Lisbon, that he should instantly 
desist from his open overthrow of the Char- 
ter? 

I do not enter into any technical distinc- 
tions between a protocol and a treaty. I 
consider the protocol as the minutes of con- 
ferences, in which the parties verbally agreed 
on certain important measures, which, being 
afterwards acted upon by others, became 
conclusively binding, in, faith, honour, and 
conscience, on themselves. In consequence 
of these conferences, Dom Miguel, on the 
19th of October, wrote letters to his brother, 
His Britannic Majesty, and Her Royal High- 
ness the Regent of Portugal. In the two 
former, he solemnly re-affirmed his determi- 
nation to maintain the charter "granted by 
Dom Pedro;" and, in the last, he more fully 
assures his sister his unshaken purpose "to 
maintain, and cause to be observed, the laws 
and institutions legally granted by our august 
brother, and which we have all sworn to 
maintain J and I desire that you should give 
to this solemn declaration the necessary pub- 
licity." On the faith of these declarations, 
he was suffered to leave Vienna. The Pow- 
ers who thus enlarged him taught the world, 
by this act, that they believed him. They 
lent him their credit, and became vouchers 
for his fidelity. On the faith of these decla- 
tions, the King and people of England re- 
ceived him with kindness, and forgot the 
criminal, to hail the first Constitutional King 
of emancipated Portugal. On the same faith, 
the English ambassadors attended him ; and 
the English flag, which sanctioned his return, 
proclaimed to the Constitutionalists, that they 
might lay aside their fears for liberty and 
their reasonable apprehensions for them- 
selves. The British ministers, in their in- 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF PORTUGAL. 



575 



structions to Count Villa Real, had expressly 
declared, that his return through England 
was a great security to the Constitutional 
party. Facts had loudly spoken the same 
language; but the very words of the British 
Minister must inevitably have resounded 
through Portugal — lulling vigilance, seeming 
to dispense with caution, and tending to ex- 
tinguish the blackest suspicions. This is 
not all : Count Villa Flor, then a minister, 
who knew his man, on the first rumours of 
Miguel's return obtained the appointment of 
Ambassador to Paris, that he might not be 
caught by the wolf in his den. It was ap- 
prehended that such a step would give gene- 
ral alarm : — he was prevailed upon to remain, 
by letters from Vienna, with assurances of 
Miguel's good dispositions, which were not 
unknown to the British Ministers at Vienna; 
and he continued in office a living pledge 
from the two Powers to the whole Portu- 
guese people, that their Constitution was 
to be preserved. How many irrevocable 
acts were done, — how many dungeons were 
crowded, — how many deaths were braved, — 
how many were suffered — from faith in per- 
fidious assurances, accredited by the appa- 
rent sanction of two deluded and abused 
Courts ! How can these Courts be released 
from the duty of repairing the evil which 
their credulity has caused ! - 

I shall say nothing of the Protocol of Lon- 
don of the 12th of January, 1828, except 
that it adopted and ratified the conferences 
of Vienna, — that it provided for a loan to 
Miguel to assist his re-establishment, — and 
that it was immediately transmitted to Dom 
Pedro, together with the Protocol of Vienna. 
Dom Pedro had originally besought the aid 
of the Powers to secure the Constitution. 
They did not refuse it ; — they did not make 
any T reservations or limitations respecting it: 
on the contrary, they took the most decisive 
measures on the principle of his proposition. 
So implicitly did Dom Pedro rely on them 
that, in spite of all threatening symptoms 
of danger, he has sent his daughter to Eu- 
rope; — a step from which he cannot recede, 
without betraying his own dignity, and seem- 
ing to weaken her claims ; and which has 
proved a fruitful source of embarrassment, 
vexation, and humiliation, to himself and his 
most faithful councillors. By this decisive 
measure, he has placed his loyal subjects in 
a more lasting and irreconcilable state of 
hostility with those who have mastered their 
country, and has rendered compromise under 
better rulers more difficult. 

Under all these circumstances, Sir, I can- 
not doubt that the Mediating Powers have 
acquired a right imperatively to require that 
Miguel shall renounce that authority which 
by fraud and falsehood he has obtained from 
them the means of usurping. They are 
bound to exercise that right by a sacred 
duty towards Dom Pedro, who has intrusted 
them with the conditional establishment of 
the Regency, and the people of Portugal, 
with whom their obligation of honour is the 



more inviolable, because it must be informal. 
I shall be sorry to hear that such duties are 
to be distinguished, by the hist Powers of 
Christendom, from the most strictly literal 
obligations of a treaty. 

On the 28th of February, Miguel landed 
at Lisbon, accompanied by an English am- 
bassador, who showed as much sagacity and 
firmness as were perhaps ever combined in 
Buch circumstances. The Cortes met to re- 
ceive ihe oaths of the Regent to the Emperor 
and ihe Constitution. A scene then passed 
which is the most dastardly of all his per- 
juries, — -the basest evasion that could be 
devised by a cowardly and immoral super- 
stition. He acted as if he were taking the 
oaths, slurring them over in apparent hurry, 
and muttering inarticulately, instead of ut- 
tering their words. A Prince of one of the 
most illustrious of Royal Houses, at the mo- 
ment of undertaking the sacred duties of 
supreme magistracy, in the presence of the 
representatives of the nation, and of the 
ministers of all civilized states, had recourse 
to the lowest of the knavish tricks formerly 
said (but I hope calumniously) to have been 
practised by miscreants at the Old Bailey, 
who by bringing their lips so near the book 
without kissing it as to deceive the specta- 
tor, satisfied their own base superstition, and 
dared to hope that they could deceive the 
Searcher of Hearts. 

I shall not follow him through the steps 
of his usurpation. His designs were soon 
perceived : they were so evident that Sir 
Frederick Lamb, with equal sense and spi- 
rit, refused to land the money raised by- 
loan, and sent it back to this country. They 
might have been then defeated by the 
Loyalists : but an insurmountable obstacle 
presented itself. The British troops were 
instructed to abstain from interference in 
domestic dissensions : — there was one ex- 
ception, and it was in favour of the basest 
man in Portugal. The Loyalists had the 
means of sending Miguel to his too merciful 
brother in Brazil : they were bound by their 
allegiance to prevent his rebellion ; and loy- 
alty and liberty alike required it. The right 
was not doubted by the British authorities : 
but they were compelled to say that the 
general instruction to protect the Royal Fa- 
mily would oblige them to protect Miguel 
against attack. Our troops remained long 
enough to give him time to displace all 
faithful officers, and to fill the garrison with 
rebels; while by the help of monks and 
bribes, he stirred up the vilest rabble to a 
"sedition for slavery." When his designs 
were ripe for execution, we delivered him 
from all shadow of restraint by recalling 
our troops to England. I do not mention 
this circumstance as matter of blame, but 
of the deepest regret. It is too certain, 
that if they had left Lisbon three months 
sooner, or remained there three months 
longer, in either case Portugal would have 
been saved. This consequence, however 
unintended, surely imposes on us the duty 



576 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



of showing much more than ordinary con- 
sideration towards those who were destroy- 
ed by the effect of our measures. The form 
in which the blockade of Oporto was an- 
nounced did not repair this misfortune. I 
have never yet heard why we did not speak of 
"the persons exercising the power of govern- 
ment," instead of calling Miguel " Prince Re- 
gent," — a title which he had forfeited, and 
indeed had himself rejected. Nor do I see 
why in the singular case of two parties, — 
one falsely, the other truly, — professing to 
.act on behalf of Dom Pedro, both might not 
have been impartially forbidden to exercise 
belligerent rights at sea until his pleasure 
was made known. The fatal events which 
have followed are, I have serious reasons to 
■believe, no proof of the state of general opi- 
nion in Portugal. A majority of the higher 
nobility, with almost all the considerable in- 
habitants of towns, were and are still well 
affected. The clergy, the lower gentry, 
and the rabble, were, but I believe are not 
now, adverse. The enemies of the Consti- 
tution were the same classes who opposed 
•our own Revolution for fourscore years. Ac- 
cidents, unusually unfortunate, deprived the 
Oporto army of its commanders. Had they 
disregarded this obstacle, and immediately 
advanced from Coimbra, it is the opinion of 
the most impartial and intelligent persons, 
then at Lisbon, that they would have suc- 
ceeded without a blow. It is certain that 
the Usurper and his mother had prepared for 
a flight to Madrid, and, after the fatal delay 
at Coimbra, were with difficulty persuaded 
to adopt measures of courage. As soon as 
Miguel assumed the fitle of King, all the 
Foreign Ministers fled from Lisbon : a nation 
which ceased to resist such a tyrant was 
deemed unworthy of remaining a member 
•of the European community. The brand of 
exclusion was fixed, which is not yet with- 
drawn. But, in the mean time, the delay 
at Coimbra, the strength thence gained by 
the Usurper, and the discouragement spread 
by the retreat of the Loyalists, led to the fall 
of Oporto, and compelled its loyal garrison, 
with many other faithful subjects, to leave 
their dishonoured country. They were 
doubly honoured by the barbarous inhospi- 
tality of Spam on the one hand, and on the 
other by the sympathy of France and of 
England. 

At this point, Sir, I must deviate a mo- 
ment from my line, to consider the very pe- 
culiar state of our diplomatic intercourse 
with Dom Pedro and Donna Maria, in rela- 
tion to the crown of Portugal. All diplo- 
matic intercourse with the Usurper in posses- 
sion of it was broken off. There were three 
ministers from the legitimate sovereigns of 
the House of Braganza in London: — the 
Marquess Palmella, ambassador from Portu- 
gal, who considered himself in that character 
as the minister of Donna Maria, the Queen 
acknowledged by us, — the Marquess Barba- 
cena, the confidential adviser appointed by 
Dom Pedro to guide the infant Queen, — and 



the Viscount Itabayana, the recognised min- 
ister from that monarch as Emperor of Bra- 
zil. They all negotiated, or attempted to 
negotiate, with us. The Marquess Palmella 
was told that the success of the usurpation 
left him no Portuguese interests to protect, — 
that his occupation was gone. The Viscount 
Itabayana was repelled as being merely the 
minister from Brazil, a country finally sepa- 
rated from Portugal. The Marquess Barba- 
cena was positively apprised that we did not 
recognise the right of Dom Pedro to interfere 
as head of the House of Brazil, or as interna- 
tional guardian of his daughter. By some 
ingenious stratagem each was excluded, or 
driven to negotiate in an inferior and unac- 
knowledged character. This policy seems 
to me very like what used to be called in 
the courts, l! sharp practice." It is not free 
from all appearance of international special 
pleading, which seems to me the less com- 
mendable, because the Government were 
neither guided nor hampered by precedent. 
It is a case. I will venture to say, without 
parallel. The result was, that an infant 
Queen, recognised as legitimate, treated with 
personal honour and kindness, is left without 
a guardian to guide her, or a minister to act 
for her % Such was the result of our interna- 
tional subtleties and diplomatic punctilios ! 

To avoid such a practical absurdity, no- 
thing seemed more simple than to hold that 
nature and necessit}', with the entire absence 
of any other qualified person, had vested in 
Dom Pedro the guardianship of his Royal 
daughter, for the purpose of executing the 
separation of the tw T o countries, and the ab- 
dication of the Portuguese crown. His cha- 
racter would have had some analogy to that 
of the guardian named in a court of justice 
to a minor party in a law-suit. Ingenuity 
would, I think, have been better employed 
in discovering the legal analogies, or politi- 
cal reasons, which are favourable to this na- 
tural and convenient doctrine. Even the 
rejection of the minister of a deposed sove- 
reign has not always been rigidly enforced. 
Queen Elizabeth's virtues were not indul- 
gent ; nor did her treatment of the Queen of 
Scots do honour to her character : yet she 
continued for years after the deposition of 
Mary to treat with Bishop Leslie; and he 
was not pronounced to have forfeited the 
privileges of an ambassador till he was de- 
tected in a treasonable conspiracy. 

A negotiation under the disadvantage of 
an unacknowledged character was, however, 
carried on by the Marquess Palmella, and 
the Marquess Barbacena, between the months 
of November and February last, in which 
they claimed the aid of Great Britain against 
the Usurper, by virtue of the ancient treaties, 
and of the conferences at Vienna. Perhaps 
I must allow that the first claim could not in 
strictness be maintained : — perhaps this case 
was not in the bond. But I have already 
stated my reasons for considering the con- 
ferences at Vienna, the measures concerted 
there, and the acts done on their faithj as 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF PORTUGAL. 



577 



equivalent to an engagement on the part of 
Austria and England with Dom Pedro. At 
all events, this series of treaties for Tour 
hundred and fifty years, from Edward III. to 
George IV. — longer and more uninterrupted 
than any other in history, — containing many 
articles closely approaching the nature of a 
guarantee, followed, as it has been by the 
strong marks of favour showed by England 
to the Constitution, and by the principles and 
plan adopted by England and Austria (with 
the approbation of Fiance, Russia, and Prus- 
sia), at Vienna, altogether hold out the strong- 
est virtual encouragement to the Constitu- 
tionalists. How could Portugal believe that 
those who threatened to imprison Miguel at 
Vienna, would hesitate about hurling him 
from an usurped throne at Lisbon ? How 
could the Portuguese nation suppose that, in 
a case where Austria and England had the 
concurrence of all the great Powers, they 
should be deterred from doing justice by a 
fear of war? How could they imagine that 
the rule of non-interference, — violated against 
Spain, — violated against Naples, — violated 
against Piedmont, — more honourably violat- 
ed for Greece but against Turkey. — should 
be held sacred, only when it served to screen 
the armies and guard the usurpation of Mi- 
guel ?- Perhaps their confidence might have 
been strengthened by what they must think 
the obvious policy of the two Courts. It 
does seem to me that they might have com- 
manded Miguel to quit his pre} - (for war is 
ridiculous) as a mere act of self-defence. 
Ferdinand VII. is doubtless an able preacher 
of republicanism ; but he is surpassed in this 
particular by Miguel. I cannot think it a 
safe policy to allow the performance of an 
experiment to determine how low the kingly 
character may sink in the Pyrenean Penin- 
sula, without abating its estimation in the 
rest of Europe. Kings are sometimes the 
most formidable of all enemies to royalty. 

The issue of our conduct towards Portugal 
for the last eighteen months is, in point of 
policy, astonishing. We are now bound to 
defend a country of which we have made all 
the inhabitants our enemies. - It is needless 
to speak of former divisions : there are now 
only two parties there. The Absolutists hate 
us : they detest the country of juries and of 
Parliaments,— the native land of Canning, — 
the source from which their Constitution 
seemed to come, — the model which has ex- 
cited the love of liberty throughout the world. 
No half-measures, however cruel to their 
opponents, can allay their hatred. If you 
doubt, look at their treatment of British sub- 
jects, which I consider chiefly important, as 
indicating their deep-rooted and irreconcil- 
able malignity to us. The very name of an 
Englishman is with them that of a jacobin 
and an atheist. Look at their treatment of 
the city of Oporto and of the island of Ma- 
deira, which may be almost considered as 
English colonies. If this hatred was in any 
degree excited by the feelings of the Eng- 
lish inhabitants towards them, from what 
73 



could such feelings spring but from a know- 
ledge of the execrable character of the ruling 
faction ? Can they ever forgive us for de- 
grading their Government and disgracing 
their minion, by an exclusion from interna- 
tional intercourse more rigorous than any in- 
curred under a Papal interdict of the four- 
teenth century'? Their trust alone is in the 
Spanish Apostolicals. The Constitutionalists, 
who had absorbed and softened all the more 
popular parties of the former period, no longer 
trust us. They consider us as having incited 
them to resistance, and as having afterwards 
abandoned them to their fate. They do not 
distinguish between treaties and protocols, — 
between one sort of guarantee and another. 
They view us, more simply, as friends who 
have ruined them. Their trust alone is in 
Constitutional France. Even those who think, 
perhaps justly, that the political value of 
Portugal to us is unspeakably diminished by 
the measures which we have happily taken 
for the security of Ireland, cannot reasonably 
expect that any nation of the second order, 
which sees the fate of Portugal, will feel as- 
surance of safety from the protection of 
England. 

If we persist in an unfriendly neutrality, it 
is absurd voluntarily to continue to submit 
to obligations from which we may justly re- 
lease ourselves. For undoubtedly a govern- 
ment so covered with crimes, so disgraced 
by Europe as that of Miguel, is a new source 
of danger, not contemplated in the treaties 
of alliance and guarantee. If Mr. Canning, 
with reason, held that an alliance of Portugal 
with the Spanish Revolutionists would, on 
that principle, release us from our obligations, 
it cannot be doubted that by the standing in- 
famy of submission to the present Govern- 
ment, she well deserves to forfeit all remain- 
ing claims to our protection. 

Notwithstanding the failure of the nego- 
tiations to obtain our aid as an ally, I believe 
that others have been carried on, and proba- 
bly are not yet closed, in London and at Rio 
Janeiro. It has been proposed, by the Me- 
diating Powers, to Dom Pedro, to complete 
the marriage, to be silent on the Constitu- 
tion, — but to obtain an universal amnesty. I 
cannot wonder at Dom Pedro ; s rejection of 
conditions, one of which only can be effec- 
tual, — that which imposes on his daughter 
the worst husband in Europe. What wonder 
that he should reject a proposal to put the 
life of a Royal infant under the care of mur- 
derers, — to join her youthful hand, at the 
altar, with one embrued in the blood of hei 
most faithful friends ! As for the other con- 
ditions, what amnesty can be expected from 
the wolf of Oporto'? What imaginable se- 
curity can be devised for an amnesty, unless 
the vanquished party be shielded by some 
political privileges'? Yet I rejoice that these 
negotiations have not closed, — that the two 
Powers have adopted the decisive principle 
of stipulating what Miguel must do, without 
consulting him ; and that, whether from the 
generous feelings of a Royal mind at home, 



578 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



or from the spirit of constitutional liberty in 
the greatest of foreign countries, or from 
both these causes, the negotiations have as- 
sumed a more amicable tone. I do not 
wonder that Dom Pedro, after having pro- 
tested against the rebellion of his brother, 
and the coldness of his friends, should in- 
dignantly give orders for the return of the 
young Queen, while he provides for the as- 
sertion of her rights, by the establishment of 
a regency in Europe. I am well pleased 
however to learn, that the Mediating Powers 
have advised his ministers to suspend the 
execution of his commands till he shall be 
acquainted with the present state of affairs. 
The monstrous marriage is, at all events, I 
trust, for ever abandoned. As long as a ne- 
gotiation is on foot respecting the general 
question, I shall not despair of our ancient 
Ally. 

Sir, I must own. that there is no circum- 
stance in this case, which, taken sing])-, I so 
deeply regret as the late unhappy affair of 
Terceira. The Portuguese troops and Roy- 
alists who landed in England, had been sta- 
tioned, after some time, at Plymouth, where 
their exemplary conduct gained the most 
public and general marks of the esteem of 
the inhabitants. In the month of November, 
a proposition to disperse them in the towns 
and villages of the adjacent counties, without 
their officers, was made by the British Go- 
vernment. Far be it from me to question 
the right of His Majesty to disperse all mili- 
tary bodies in his dominions, and to prevent 
this country from being used as an arsenal or 
port of equipment by one belligerent against 
another, — even in cases where, as in the 
present, it cannot be said that the assemblage 
was dangerous to the peace of this kingdom, 
or menacing to the safety of any other. 1 
admit, in their fullest extent, the rights and 
duties of neutral states. Yet the dispersion 
of these troops, without their officers, could 
scarcely fail to discourage them, to deprive 
them of military spirits and habits, and to 
end in the utter disbanding of the feeble re- 
mains of a faithful army. The ministers of 
Donna Maria considered this as fatal to their 
hopes. An unofficial correspondence was 
carried on from the end of November to the 
beginning of January on the subject, between 
the Duke of Wellington and the Marquess 
Palmella, — a man of whom I cannot help 
saying, that he is perhaps the individual by 
whom his country is most favourably known 
to foreign nations, — that, highly esteemed as 
he is among statesmen for his share in the 
greatest affairs of Europe for the last sixteen 
years, he is not less valued by his friends for 
his amiable character and various accom- 
plishments, — and that there is no one living 
more incapable of forgetting the severest 
dictates of delicacy and honour. The Mar- 
quess chose rather to send the faithful rem- 
nant of Donna Maria's troops to Brazil, than 
to subject Ihem to utter annihilation. Va- 
rious letters passed on the reasonableness of 
this dispersion, and the mode of removal, 



from the 20th of November to the 20ih of 
December, in which Brazil was considered as 
the destination of the troops. In a letter of 
I he 20th of December, the Marquess Palmella, 
for the first time, mentioned the Island of 
Terceira. It had been twice before men- 
tioned, in negotiations, by two ministers of 
the House of Bragahza, with totally different 
views, which, if the course of debate should 
call for it, I- trust I shall explain: but it was 
first substituted for Brazil by the Marquess 
Palmella on the 20th of December. I anx- 
iously particularize the date, because it is 
alone sufficient to vindicate his scrupulous 
honour. In the month of May. some parti- 
sans of Miguel had shaken the loyalty of a 
part of the inhabitants: Dom Pedro and the 
Constitution were proclaimed on the 22d of 
June i the ringleaders of the rebellion were 
arrested ; and the lawful government was re- 
established. Some disturbances, however, 
continued, which enabled the priests to stir 
up a revolt in the end of September. The 
insurgents were again suppressed in a few 
days ; but it was not till the 4th of December 
that Donna Maria was proclaimed as Queen 
of Portugal in conformity to the treaty of se- 
paration, to the Constitutional Charter, and 
to the Act of Abdication. Since that lime I 
have now before me documents which de- 
monstrate that her authority has been regu- 
larly exercised and acknowledged in that 
island, with no other disturbance than that 
occasioned by one or two bands of Guerillas, 
quickly dispersed, and without any pretence 
for alleging that there was in that island a 
disputed title, or an armed contest. 

On the 20th of December, then, the Mar- 
quess Palmella informed the Duke of Wel- 
lington, that though he (the Marquess) had 
hitherto chosen Brazil as being the only safe, 
though distant, refuge for the troops, "yet, 
from the information which he had just re- 
ceived of the entire and peaceable submission 
of Terceira to the young Queen, and of the 
disappearance of the squadron sent by the ac- 
tual Government of Portugal to blockade the 
Azores, he now intended to send her troops 
to that part of her dominions where she was 
not only the rightful but the actual Sove- 
reign, and for which he conceived that they 
might embark at Plymouth, without any in- 
fringement of the neutrality of the British 
territories." This letter contains the explana- 
tion of the change of destination. Unarmed 
troops could not have been safely sent to 
Terceira, nor merchant vessels either, while 
there were intestine divisions, or apprehen- 
sions of a blockade, or indeed till there was 
full and authentic information of the esta- 
blishment of quiet and legitimate authority. 
The Marquess Palmella thought that the 
transportation of the troops had now become 
as lawful as it was obviously desirable. To 
remove the Queen's troops to a part of her 
own actual dominions, seemed to him, as I 
own it still seems to me, an act consistent 
even with the cold and stern neutrality as- 
sumed by England. Had not a Queen, ac- 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF PORTUGAL. 



573- 



knowledged in England, and obeyed in Ter- 
ceira, a perfect right to send her own sol- 
diers home from a neutral country'? If the 
fact of the actual return of Terceira to its 
allegiance be not denied and disproved, I 
shall be anxious to hear the reasons, to me 
unknown, which authorise a neutral power 
to forbid such a movement. It is vain to 
say, that Great Britain, as mediator in the 
Treaty of 1825, was entitled to prevent the 
separation of the Azores from Portugal, and 
their subjection to Brazil; for, on the 4th of 
December, Donna Maria had been proclaim- 
ed at Terceira as Queen of Portugal, in virtue 
of the possession of the Portuguese crown. 
It is vain to say that the embarcation had a 
hostile character ;, since it was immediately 
destined for the territory of the friendly 
sovereign. Beyond this point the neutral is 
neither bound nor entitled to inquire. It 
was not, as has been inconsiderately said. 
an expedition against the Azores. It was 
the movement of Portuguese troops from 
neutral England to obedient and loyal Ter- 
ceira, — where surely the Sovereign might 
employ her troops in such manner as she 
judged right. How far is the contrary pro- 
position to go 1 Should we, — could we, as a 
neutral Power, have hindered Miguel from 
transporting those of his followers, who might 
be in England, to Lisbon, because they might 
be sent thence against the Azores. It is true, 
the group of islands have the geneiic name 
of the Azores : but so, — though the Ameri- 
can islands are called the West Indies, — I 
presume it will not be contended that a re- 
bellion in Barbadoes could authorise a foreign 
Sovereign in preventing British troops which 
happened to be on his territory from being 
despatched by His Majesty to strengthen his 
garrison of Jamaica. Supposing the facts 
which I have stated to be true, I can see no 
mode of impugning the inferences which I 
have made from them. Until I receive a 
satisfactory answer, I am bound to say, that 
I consider the prohibition of this embarca- 
tion as a breach of neutrality in favour of 
the Usurper. 

And even, Sir, if these arguments are suc- 
cessfully controverted, another proposition 
remains, to which it is still more difficult for 
me to conceive the possibility of an answer. 
Granting that the permission of the embarca- 
tion was a breach of neutrality, which might 
be, and must be, prevented on British land, 
or in British waters, where is the proof from 
reason, from usage, — even from example or 
authority, that England was bound, or enti- 
tled, to pursue the expedition over the ocean, 
— to use force against them on the high seas, 
— most of all to levy war against them within 
the waters of Terceira ? Where are the proofs 
of the existence of any such right or duty? I 
have searched for them in vain. Even if an 
example or two could be dug up, they would 
not affect my judgment. T desire to know 
where the series of examples from good 
times can be found which might amount to 
general usage, and thus constitute a part of 



international law. I never can consider mere- 
general reasoning as a sufficient justification 
of such an act. There are many instances 
in which international law rejects such rea- 
sonings. For example, to allow a passage 
to a belligerent through a neutral territory, 
is not in itself a departure from neutrality. 
But to fire on a friendly ship within the wa- 
ters of a friendly state, for a wrong done in 
an English harbour, is an act which appears 
to me a most alarming innovation in the law 
of civilized war. The attack on the Spanish 
frigates in 1805 is probably reconcilable with 
the stern and odious rights of war : yet I am 
sure that every cool-headed and true-hearted 
Englishman would desire to blot the scene 
from the annals of Europe. Every approach 
towards rigour, beyoncl the common and 
well-known usage of war, is an innovation : 
and it must ever be deplored that we have 
made the first experiment of its extension 
beyond former usage in the case of the most 
ancient of our allies, in the season of her 
utmost need. 

I shrink from enlarging on the scene which 
closed, — I fear for ever, — a friendship of four 
hundred and fifty years. On the 16th of 
January last, three English vessels and a 
Russian brig, having aboard five hundred 
unarmed Portuguese, attempted to enter the 
port of Praya, in the island of Terceira. Cap- 
tain Walpolc, of His Majesty's ship " Ran- 
ger," fired on two of these vessels, which 
had pot under the guns of the forts protect- 
ing the harbour: \he blood of Her Most 
Faithful Majesty's subjects was spilt ; one 
soldier was killed; a peaceable passenger 
was dangerously wounded. I forbear to state 
further particulars. I hope and confidently 
trust that Captain Walpole will acquit him- 
self of all negligence, — of all want of the 
most anxious endeavours to spare blood, and 
to be frugal of violence, in a proceeding where 
such defects would be crimes. Warmly as I 
rejoice in the prevalence of that spirit of li- 
berty, and, as a consequence, of humanity, 
of which the triumph in France is so happy 
for Europe, I must own that I cannot con- 
template without mortification the spectacle 
of the loyal Portuguese exhibiting in a French 
port wounds inflicted by the arms of their an- 
cient ally, protector, and friend. The friend- 
ship of four centuries and a half should have 
had a more becoming close : it should not 
have been extinguished in fire and blood. 

I will now conclude. Sir, with the latest,, 
and perhaps the saddest incident in this tra- 
gic story of a nation's '■ hopes too fondly 
raised," perhaps, but surely "too rudely 
crossed." I shall not quote it as a proof of 
the Usurper's inhumanity; — there is no man 
in this House who would not say that such 
proofs are needless: I produce it, only as a 
sample of the boldness with which he now 
throws down the gauntlet to the govern- 
ments and nations of Christendom. On 
Thursday the 7th of May, little more than 
three weeks ago, in the city of Oporto, ten 
gentlemen were openly murdered on the 



580 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



avowed ground, that on the 16th of May, I 
1828, while Miguel himself still pretended 
to be the lieutenant of Dom Pedro, they fol- 
lowed the example of Austria and England, 
in treating Dom Pedro as their lawful sove- 
reign, and in endeavouring to carry into ex- 
ecution the laws established by him. Two 
were reserved for longer suffering by a pre- 
tended pardon : — the tender mercies of the 
wicked are cruel. One of these two was j 
condemned to a lingering yet agonizing death 
in the galleys of Angola; the other, the bro- 
ther of the Ambassador at Brussels, was con- 
demned to hard labour for life, but adjudged 
first to witness the execution of his friends; 
— an aggravation light to the hard-hearted, j 
heart-breaking to the generous, which, by a I 
hateful contrivance, draws the whole force 
of the infliction from the virtues of the suf- 
ferer. The city of Oporto felt this scene 
with a horror not lessened by the sentiments 
which generations of Englishmen have, I 
would fain hope, left behind them. The rich 
fled to their villas; the poor shut up their 
doors and windows ; the peasants of the | 
neighbourhood withheld their wonted sup- j 
plies from the markets of the tainted city ; 
the deserted streets were left to the execu- \ 
tioner, his guards, and his victims, — with no ; 
more beholders than were needful to bear i 
witness, that those "faithful found among 
the faithless" left the world with the feel- 
ings of men who die for their country. 

On the 16th of May, 1828, the day on j 
which the pretended treasons were charged 
to have been committed, the state of Portu- 
gal was, in the light most indulgent to Mi- 
guel, that of a contest for the crown. It was 
not a rebellion : it was a civil war. At the j 



close of these wars without triumph, civilized 
victors hasten to throw the pall of amnesty 
over the wounds of their country. Not so 
Miguel : ten months after submission, he 
sheds blood for acts done before the war. 
He has not the excuses of Robespierre and 
Marat : — no army is marching on Lisbon ; no 
squadron is entering the Tagus with the flag 
of deliverance. The season of fulness and 
safety, which stills the tiger, rouses the 
coward's thirst for blood. Is this the blind 
instinct of ferocity 1 Is it only to carry des- 
pair into the thousands of loyal Portuguese 
whom he has scattered over the earth'? No ! 
acts of later date might have served that 
purpose : his choice of time is a defiance to 
Europe. The offence here was resisting an 
usurpation, the consummation of which a 
few weeks after made the representatives 
of Europe fly from Lisbon, as from a city 
of the plague. The indignity is chiefly 
pointed at the two Mediating Powers, who 
have not yet relinquished all hopes of com- 
promise. But it is not confined to them : 
though he is aware that a breath would blow 
him away without blood or cost, he makes 
a daring experiment on the patience of all 
Europe. He will draw out for slaughter 
handful after handful of those, whose sole 
crime was to trust the words and follow the 
example of all civilized nations. He be- 
lieves that an attempt will at length be made 
to stop his crimes by a recognition of his 
authority, — that by dint of murders he may 
force his way into the number of the dis- 
pensers of justice and mercy. He holds up 
the bleeding heads of Oporto to tell sove- 
reigns and nations alike how he scorns their 
judgment and defies their power. 



SPEECH 

ON THE SECOND READING OF 

THE BILL TO AMEND THE REPRESENTATION 

OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 

DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, ON THE 4th OF JDLY, 1831. 



Mr. Speaker, — I feel no surprise, and cer- 
tainly no regret, at the applause which fol- 
lowed the speech of the Honourable and 
Learned Gentleman,* whose speeches never 
leave any unpleasant impression, but the re- 



-Ed 



Mr. Fynes Clinton, M. P. for Aldborough. 



flection that he speaks so seldom. Much 
of that excellent speech so immediately 
bears on the whole question of Parliamen- 
tary Reform, that it will naturally lead me 
to the consideration of the general principle 
of the Bill before us. 

I must, Sir, however, premise a very few 
remarks on the speech of the Honourable 



SPEECH ON THE REFORM BILL. 



$81 



Baronet;* though I shall not follow him 
through his account of the squabble between 
the labourers and their employers at Merthyr 
Tidvil, which I leave to the justice of the 
law. or, what is better, to the prudence and 
principle of both parties. Neither can I 
seriously handle his objection to this Bill 7 
that it has produced a strong interest, and 
divided opinions throughout the kingdom. 
Such objections prove too much : they would 
exclude most important questions, and, cer- 
tainly, all reformatory measures. It is one 
of the chief advantages of free governments, 
that they excite, — sometimes to an incon- 
venient degree, but, upon the whole, with 
the utmost benefit, — all the generous feel- 
ings, all the efforts for a public cause, of 
which human nature is capable. But there 
is one point in the ingenious speech of the 
Honourable Baronet, which, as it touches the 
great doctrines of the Constitution, and in- 
volves a reflection on the conduct of many 
Members of this House, cannot be passed 
over, without an exposition of the fallacy 
which shuts his eyes to very plain truths. — 
Mr. Burke, in the famous speech at Bristol, 
told, indeed, his constituents, that as soon as 
he should be elected, however much he 
might respect their opinions, his votes must 
be governed by his own conscience. This 
doctrine was indisputably true. But did he 
not, by his elaborate justification of his 
public conduct, admit their jurisdiction over 
it, and acknowledge, that if he failed in con- 
verting them, they had an undoubted right 
to reject him'? Then, if they could justly 
reject him, for differing from what they 
thought right, it follows, most evidently, 
that they might, with equal justice, refuse 
their suffrages to him, if they thought his 
future votes likely to differ from those which 
they deemed indispensable to the public 
weal. If they doubted what that future 
conduct might be, they were entitled, and 
bound, to require a satisfactory explanation, 
either in public or in private ; and in case 
of unsatisfactory, or of no explanation, to 
refuse their support to the candidate. This 
duty the people may exercise in whatever 
form they deem most effectual. They im- 
pose no restriction on the conscience of the 
candidate ; they only satisfy their own con- 
science, by rejecting a candidate, of whose 
conduct, on the most momentous question, 
they have reason to doubt. Far less could 
constituents be absolved, on the present occa- 
sion, from the absolute duty of ascertaining 
the determination of candidates on the sub- 
ject of Parliamentary Reform. His Majesty, 
in his speech from the throne, on the 22d 
of April, was pleased to declare, "I have 
come to meet you, for the purpose of pro- 
roguing Parliament, with a view to its im- 
mediate dissolution. I have been induced 
to resort to this measure, for the purpose of 

* Sir John Walsh, who had moved the amend- 
ment that the Bill be read that day six months, 
which Mr. Clinton had seconded. — Ed. 



ascertaining the sense of my people, in the 
way in which it can be most constitutionally 
and authentically expressed, on the expedi- 
ency of making such changes in the repre- 
sentation as circumstances may appear to 
require; and which, founded upon the ac- 
knowledged principles of the Constitution, 
may tend at once to uphold the just rights 
and prerogatives of the Crown, and to give 
security to the liberties of the subject." 
What answer could the people have made 
to the appeal thus generously made to them, 
without taking all necessary means to be 
assured that the votes of those, whom they 
chose, would sufficiently manifest to him the 
sense of his people, on the changes neces- 
sary to be made in the representation. 

On subjects of foreign policy, Sir, a long 
silence has been observed on this side of 
the House, — undisturbed, I am bound to add, 
by the opposite side, for reasons which are 
very obvious. We are silent, and we are 
allowed to be silent ; because, a word spoken 
awry, might occasion fatal explosions. The 
affairs of the Continent are so embroiled, 
that we have forborne to express those feel- 
ings, which must agitate the breast of every 
human being, at the sight of that admirable 
and afflicting struggle* on which the eyes 
of Europe are constantly, however silently, 
fixed. As it is admitted by the Honourable 
Baronet, that the resistance of the French to 
an usurpation of their rights last year was 
glorious to all who were concerned in it, it 
follows that, being just, it has no need of 
being sanctioned by the approbation of for- 
tune. Who then are morally answerable for 
the unfortunate confusions which followed, 
and for the further commotion, which, if 
heaven avert it not, may convulse France 
and Europe'? Who opened the floodgates 
of discord on mankind ? Not the friends of 
liberty, — not the advocates of popular prin- 
ciples: their hands are clean ; — they took up 
arms only to defend themselves against 
wrong. I hold sacred every retreat of mis- 
fortune, and desire not to disturb fallen great- 
ness; but justice compels me to say, that the 
hands of the late King of France were made 
to unlock these gates by his usurping ordi- 
nances, — 

" To open ; but to shut surpassed his power." 

The dangers of Europe do not originate in de- 
mocratical principles, or democratical power, 
but in a conspiracy for the subversion of all 
popular rights, however sanctioned by oaths, 
by constitution, and by laws. 

I shall now, Sir, directly proceed to the 
latter part of the speech of the Honourable 
and Learned Member for Boroughbridge, 
which regards the general principle and 
character of this Bill. In so doing, I shall 
endeavour, as far as may be, not to displease 
the fastidious ears of the Honourable Baro- 
net, by frequently repeating the barbarous 
names of the Tudors and Plantagenets. I- 

* The insurrection in Poland. — Ed. 
2 y 2 



582 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



must, however, follow the Honourable and 
Learned Member to the fountains of our go- 
vernment and laws, whither, indeed, he 
calls upon me with no unfriendly voice to 
accompany him. 

That no example can be found from the 
time of Simon de Mont fort to the present 
year, cither in the practice of ancient legis- 
lation, or in the improvements proposed by 
modern Reformers, which sanctions the 
general principle of this Bill, is an assertion, 
which I am sure the Honourable Gentleman 
will discover to be unadvisedly hazarded. 

I shall begin with one of the latest exam- 
ples of a Reformer of great weight and au- 
thority, — that which is afforded by the 
speech and the plan of Mr. Pitt, in 1785, 
because it does not only itself exhibit the 
principle of the schedules of this Bill, but 
because it proves, beyond all possibility of 
dispute, his thorough conviction that this 
principle is conformable to the ancient laws 
and practice of the constitution. The prin- 
ciple of Schedules A. and B. is the abolition, 
partial or total, of the elective rights of petty 
and dependent boroughs. The principle of 
Schedules C. D. and E. is the transfer of 
that resumed right to great towns, and to 
•other bodies of constituents deemed likely 
to use it better. Let me now state Mr. Pitt's 
opinion, in his own words, on the expediency 
of acting on both these principles, and on the 
agreement of both with the ancient course 
and order of the constitution. His plan, it is 
well known, was to take away seventy-two 
members from thirty-six small boroughs, and 
to add them to the county representation, 
with a permanent provision for such other 
transfers of similar rights to great towns, as 
should from time to time seem necessary. 
His object, in this disfranchisement and en- 
franchisement, was, according to his own 
words, '•' to make the House of Commons an 
assembly which should have the closest 
union, and the most perfect sympathy with 
the mass of the people." To effect this 
object, he proposed to buy up these boroughs 
by the establishment of a fund, {cheers from 
■the Opposition.) of which the first effect was 
expected to be considerable, and the accu- 
mulation would prove an irresistible tempta- 
tion. Gentlemen would do well to hear the 
whole words of Mr. Pitt, before they so 
loudly exult: — "It is an indisputable doc- 
trine of antiquity, that the state of the repre- 
sentation is to be changed with the change 
of circumstances. Change in the borough 
representation was frequent. A great num- 
ber of the boroughs, originally Parliamentary, 
had been disfranchised, — that is, the Crown 
had ceased to summon them to send bur- 
gesses. Some of these had been restored on 
their petitions: the rest had not recovered 
their lost franchise. Considering the resto- 
ration of the former, and the deprivation of 
the latter, the constitution had been grossly 
violated, if it icas true {which he denied,) that 
the extension of the elective franchise to 
«ne set of boroughs, and the resumption of 



it from others, was a violation of the consti- 
tution. The alterations were not made from 
principle; but they were founded on the 
general notion which gave the discretionary 
power to the Crown. — viz., that the prin- 
cipal places, and not the decayed boroughs, 
should exercise the right of election."* I 
know full well that these boroughs were to 
be bought. I also know, that the late Mem- 
ber for Dorset (Mr. Bankes), the college- 
friend, the zealous but independent sup- 
porter of Mr. Pitt, exclaimed against the 
purchase, though he applauded the Reform. 
How did Mr. Pitt answer'? Did he say, I 
cannot deprive men of inviolable privileges 
without compensation ; I cannot promote 
Reform by injustice 1 Must he not have so 
answered, if he had considered the resump- 
tion of the franchise as " corporation rob- 
bery V No ! he excuses himself to his 
friend : he declares the purchase to be 
"the tender part of the subject," and apolo- 
gizes for it, as "having become a necessary 
evil, if any Reform was to take place." 
Would this great master of language, who 
so thoroughly understood and practised pre- 
cision and propriety of words, have called 
that a necessary evil which he thought an 
obligation of justice, — the payment of a 
sacred debt ? It is clear from the very 
words that follow, — u if any Reform were 
to take place," that he regarded the price 
of the boroughs merely as a boon to so many 
borough -holders to become proselytes to it. 
It is materia] also to observe, that as com- 
pensation was no part of his plans or sug- 
gestions in 1782 and 1783, he could not have 
consistently represented it as of right due. 
Another decisive reason renders it impos- 
sible to annex any other meaning to his lan- 
guage : — he justifies his system of transfer- 
ring the franchise by analogy to the ancient 
practice of ceasing to summon some boroughs 
to send members, while the prerogative of 
summoning others at pleasure was acknow- 
ledged. But the analogy would have failed, 
if he thought compensation was due; for it 
is certain that no compensation was dreamt 
of, till his own plan. Would he have so 
strenuously maintained the constitutional 
authority to disfranchise and enfranchise dif- 
ferent places, if he had entertained the least 
suspicion that it could not be exercised 
without being justly characterised as an act 
of rapine 1 Another circumstance is conclu- 
sive : — his plan, as may be seen in his 
speech, was to make the compensation to 
the borough-holders, — not to the poor free- 
men, the scot and lot voters, the pot-wallop- 
pers, — whose spoliation has been so much 
deprecated on this occasion, — who alone 
could have had any pretence of justice or 
colour of law^ to claim it. They at least had 
legal privileges: the compensation to the 
borough-holders was to be for the loss of 
their profits by breaches of law. One pas- 
sage only in Mr. Pitt's speech, may be 

* Pari. Hist. vol. xxv. p. 435.— Ed. 



SPEECH ON THE REFORM BILL. 



583 



thought favourable to another sense : — "To 
a Reform by violence he had an insurmount- 
able objection." Now these words might 
mean only an objection to effect his purpose 
by an act of the supreme power, when he 
could introduce the same good by milder 
means. The reports of that period were far 
less accurate than they now are : the general 
tenor of the speech must determine the mean- 
ing of a single word. It seems to me impos- 
sible to believe, that he could have intended 
more than that he preferred a pacific accom- 
modation of almost any sort to formidable 
resistance, and the chance of lasting discon- 
tent. This preference, founded either on 
personal feelings, or on supposed expedi- 
ency, is nothing against my present purpose. 
What an imputation would be thrown on his 
memory, by supposing that he who answered 
the objection of Reform being unconstitu- 
tional, could pass over the more serious ob- 
jection that it was unjust. 

That I may not be obliged to return to this 
case, I shall add one other observation, which 
more strictly belongs to another part of the 
argument. Mr. Pitt never once hints, that 
the dependent boroughs were thought neces- 
sary to the security of property. It never 
occurred to him that any one could think 
them intrinsically good. It was impossible 
that he could propose to employ a million 
sterling in demolishing the safeguards of the 
British constitution. Be it observed, that 
this remark must be considered by all who 
respect the authority of Mr. Pitt as of great 
weight, even if they believe compensation 
and voluntary surrender to be essential to 
the justice of transferring the elective fran- 
chise. It must, then, I think, be acknow- 
ledged by the Honourable and Learned Mem- 
ber for Aldborough himself, that there was 
a Reformer of great name before my Noble 
Friend, who maintained the transfer of the 
elective franchise, by disfranchisement and 
enfranchisement, to be conformable to an- 
cient rights or usages, and for that reason, 
among others, fit to be employed as parts of 
a plan of Parliamentary Reform.* 

The two plans of Reform, Sir, that have 
been proposed, during the last seventy years, 
may be divided into the Simultaneous and the 
Progressive. Of the first it is manifest, that 
the two expedients of resuming the franchise 
from those who cannot use it for the public 
good, and bestowing it where it will proba- 
bly be better employed, are indispensable, 
or rather essential parts. I shall presently 
show that it is impossible to execute the most 
slowly Progressive scheme of Reformation, 
without some application, however limited, 
of these now altogether proscribed principles. 

I do not wish to displease the Honour- 
able Baronet by frequent or extensive excur- 
sions into the Middle Ages ; but the Honour- 
able and Learned Gentlernau will admit that 

* The Reforms proposed by Mr. Flood in 1790, 
and by Lord Grey in 1797, might have been added 
io those of Mr. Pitt in 1782, 1783 and 1785. 



the right of the Crown to summon new bo- 
roughs, was never disputed until its last ex- 
ercise by Charles II. in the well-known in- 
stance of Newark. In the Tudor reigns, this 
prerogative had added one hundred and fifty 
members to this House. In the forty-five 
years of Elizabeth, more than sixty were 
received into it. From the accession of 
Henry VII. to the disuse of the prerogative, 
the representation received an accession of 
about two hundred, if we include the cases 
where representation was established by 
Parliament, and those where, after a disuse 
of centuries, it was so restored. Let me 
add, without enlarging on it, that forty-four 
boroughs, and a city, which anciently sent 
burgesses to this House, are unrepresented 
at this day. I know no Parliamentary mode 
of restoring their franchises, but by a statute, 
which would be in effect a new grant. I 
believe, that if such matters were cogniza- 
ble by courts of law, the judges would pre- 
sume, or, for greater security, advise a jury 
to presume, after a disuse of so many centu- 
ries, that it had originated either in a sur- 
render, or in some other legal mode of ter- 
minating the privilege. According to the 
common maxim, that there is no right with- 
out a remedy, we may infer the absence of 
right from the absence of remedy. In that 
case, the disuse of granting summonses by 
the King, or his officers, must be taken to 
have been legal, in spite of the authority of 
Serjeant Glanville and his Committee, who, 
in the reign of James I., held the contrary 
doctrine. But I waive this question, because 
the answer to it is needless to the purpose 
of my argument. It is enough for me that 
the disuse had been practically maintained, 
without being questioned, till the end of 
James' reign ; and that it still shuts our doors 
on ninety persons who might otherwise be 
chosen to sit in this House. The practice 
of resuming the franchise, therefore, prevailed 
as certainly in ancient times, as the exercise 
of the prerogative of conferring it. The 
effect of both combined, was to take from 
the representation the character of immuta- 
bility, and to bestow on it that flexibility 
which, if it had been then properly applied, 
migb.1 have easily fitted it for every change 
of circumstances. These powers were never 
exercised on any fixed principle. The pre- 
rogative was often grievously abused ; but 
the abuse chiefly consisted in granting the 
privilege to beggarly villages, or to the manor 
or demesne of a favoured lord : there are few 
examples of withholding the franchise from 
considerable towns. On a rapid review of 
the class of towns next in importance to Lon- 
don, such as York, Bristol, Exeter, Norwich, 
Lincoln, &c, it appears to me, that they all 
sent Members to the House of Commons of 
Edward I. Boston did not occur to me ; but, 
admitting the statement respecting that place 
to be accurate, the Honourable and Learned 
Gentleman must allow this instance to be at 
variance with the general spirit and ten- 
dency of the ancient constitution, in the dis- 



584 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



tribution of elective privileges. I do not 
call it an exception to a rule ; for there were 
no rules : it was no departure from principle ; 
for no general principle was professed, or, 
perhaps, thought of: but it was at variance 
with that disposition not to leave grant towns 
unrepresented, which, though not reduced to 
system, yet practically influenced the coarse 
good sense of our ancestors, and, what is re- 
markable, is most discernible in the earliest 
part of their legislation.* 

It was not the Union with Scotland that 
stopped the exercise of the prerogative. With 
the exception of Newark, there was no in- 
stance of its exertion for nearly seventy 
years before that date. We know that the 
Stuart Kings dreaded an increase of mem- 
bers in this House, as likely to bestow a more 
democratical character on its proceedings : 
but still the true cause of the extinction of 
the prerogative, was the jealousy of a people 
become more enlightened, and suspicious of 
a power which had already been abused, 
and which might be made the means of en- 
slaving the kingdom. The discussions in 
this House respecting the admission of the 
members for Newark, though they ended 
favourably to the Crown in that instance, 
afforded such a specimen of the general sen- 
timents and temper respecting the preroga- 
tive, that no man was bold enough to advise 
its subsequent exercise. 

The course of true wisdom would have 
been to regulate the employment of the pre- 
rogative by a law, which, acting quietly, 
calmly, but constantly, would have removed 
or prevented all gross inequality in the re- 
presentation. It would have then been ne- 
cessary only to enact that every town, which 
grew to a certain number of houses, should 
be summoned to send members to Parlia- 
ment, and that every town which fell below 
a certain number, should cease to be so sum- 
moned. The consequence of this neglect 
became apparent as the want of some re- 
medial power was felt. The regulator of 
the representation, which had been injuri- 
ously active in stationary' times, was suffered 
to drop from the machine at a moment when 
it was much needed to adapt the elective 
system to the rapid and prodigious changes 
which have occurred in the state of society, 
— when vast cities have sprung up in every 
province, and the manufacturing world may 
be said to have been created. There was 
no longer any renovating principle in the 
frame of the constitution. All the marvel- 
lous works of industry and science are un- 
noticed in our system of representation. The 
changes of a century and a half since the 
case of Newark, — the social revolution of the 
last sixty years, have altered the whole con- 
dition of mankind more than did the three 
centuries which passed before : — the repre- 
sentation alone has stood still. It is to this 

* For a more detailed reference to the earlier 
statutory regulations affecting the franchise, see 
Appendix A — Ed. 



interruption of the vis medicatrix et conserva- 
trix of the commonwealth that we owe the 
necessity of now recurring to the extensive 
plan of Simultaneous Reform, of which I do 
not dispute the inconveniences. We are 
now called on to pay the arrears of a hundred 
and sixty years of an unreformed represen- 
tation. The immediate settlement of this 
constitutional balance is now difficult; — it 
may not be without danger : but it is become 
necessary that we may avoid ruin. It may 
soon be impossible to save us by that, or by 
any other means. 

But, Sir, we are here met by a serious 
question, which, being founded on a princi- 
ple generally true, acquires a great effect by 
specious application. We are reminded by 
the Honourable and Learned Gentleman, that 
governments are to be valued for their bene- 
iicial effects, — not for their beauty as inge- 
nious pieces of machinery. We are asked, 
what is the practical evil which we propose 
to remove, or even to lesson, by Reform ? 
We are told, that the representative system 
" works well," artd that the excellence of the 
English constitution is attested by the ad- 
mirable fruits, which for at least a century 
and a half it has produced. I dare not take 
the high ground of denying the truth of the 
facts thus alleged. God forbid that I should 
ever derogate from the transcendent merits 
of the English constitution, which it has been 
the chief occupation of my life to study, 
and which I now seek, because I love it, to 
reform ! 

Much as I love and revere this constitu- 
tion, I must say, that, during the last century, 
the representative system has not worked 
well. I do not mean to undervalue its gene- 
ral results ; but it has not worked well for 
one grand purpose, without which, no other 
benefit can be safe : — the means employed 
in elections, has worked all respect for the 
constitution out of the hearts of the people. 
The foulness and shamefulness, or the fraud 
and mockery of borough elections, have 
slowly weaned the people from their ancient 
attachments. With less competence, per- 
haps, than others, to draw up the general 
comparison between the good and evil re- 
sults, they were shocked by the barefaced 
corruption which the increasing frequency 
of contests constantly brought home to them. 
These disgusting scenes could not but uproot 
attachment to the government to which they r 
seemed to pertain. The people could see 
nothing venerable in venality, — in bribery, — 
in the sale of some, and in the gift of other 
seats, — in nominal elections carried on by in- 
dividuals, under the disguise of popular forms. 

It is true, that the vile machinery of openly 
marketable votes, was the most powerful 
cause which alienated them. But half the 
nomination-boroughs were so marketable. 
Though I know one nomination borough* 

* Knaresborough, the property of the Duke 
of Devonshire, which he had represented since 
1818.— Ed. 



SPEECH ON THE REFORM BILL. 



585 



where no seat was ever sold, — where no 
Member ever heard a whisper of the wishes 
of a patron, — where One Member at least 
was under no restraint beyond the ties of 
political opinion and friendship, which he 
voluntarily imposed upon himself. It does 
not become me to say how the Member to 
whom I advert would have acted in other 
circumstances; but I am firmly convinced 
that the generous nature of the other Party 
would as much recoil from imposing de- 
pendency, as any other could recoil from 
submitting to it. I do not pretend to say 
that this is a solitary instance : but I believe 
it to be too favourable a one to be a fair sam- 
ple of the general practice. 

Even in the best cases, the pretended 
election was an eye-sore to all that witnessed 
it. A lie was solemnly acted before their 
eyes. While the popular principles of the 
constitution had taught them that popular 
elections belonged to the people, all the acts 
that the letter of the law had expressly for- 
bidden were now become the ordinary means 
of obtaining a Parliamentary seat. These 
odious and loathsome means became more 
general as the country increased in wealth, 
and as the people grew better informed, — 
more jealous of encroachment on their rights, 
and more impatient of exclusion from power. 
In the times of the Stuarts and Tudors. the 
burgesses, as we see from the lists, had been 
very generally the sons of neighbouring gen- 
tlemen, chosen with little contest and noise, 
and so seldom open to the charge of bribery, 
that when it occurred, we find it mentioned 
as a singular event. It was not till after the 
Revolution that moriied candidates came from 
the Capital to invade a tranquillity very 
closly allied to blind submission. At length, 
the worst of all practical effects was pro- 
duced : — the constitution sunk in popular 
estimation; the mass of the people were 
estranged from the objects of their here- 
ditary reverence. An election is the part 
of our constitution with which the multitude 
come into most frequent contact. Seeing in 
many of them nothing but debauchery, — 
riot, — the sale of a right to concur in making 
law, — the purchase in open market of a 
share in the choice of lawgivers, — absolute 
nomination under the forms of election, they 
were conscious that many immoral, many 
illegal practices became habitual, and were 
even justified. Was it not natural for the 
majority of honest men to form their judg- 
ments rather by means of their moral feel- 
ings, than as the results of refined argu- 
ments, founded on a calm comparison of 
evils'? Such at least was the effect of this 
most mischievous practice, that when any 
misfortune of the country, any error of the 
Government, any commotion abroad, or any 
disorder at home arose, they were all as- 
cribed, with exaggeration, but naturally, to 
the corruption, which the humblest of the 
people saw had tainted the vital organs of 
the commonwealth. 

My Honourable and Excellent Friend, the 
74 



Member for the University of Oxford,* in- 
deed told the last Parliament, that the cla- 
mours about the state of the representation 
were only momentary cries, which, however 
magnified at the moment, always quickly 
yielded to a vigorous and politic government. 
He, might have looked back somewhat far- 
ther. What were the Place Bills and Trien- 
nial Bills of Sir Bobert Walpole's time ? 
Were they not, in truth, demands of Parlia- 
mentary Reform ? The cry is therefore one 
of the symptoms of a distemper, which has 
lasted for a century. But to come to his 
more recent examples : — in 1770, Lord Chat- 
ham was the agitator; Mr. Burke was the 
incendiary pamphleteer, who exaggerated 
the importance of a momentary delusion,. 
which was to subside as quickly as it had; 
risen. Unfortunately for this reasoning,, 
though the delusion subsided after 1770, it 
revived again in 1780, under Sir George 
Saville ; under Mr. Pitt in 1782. 1783, and 
1784 : it was felt at the time of Mr. Flood's 
motion in 1790. Lord Grey's motion in 1797 
was supported by respectable Tories, such 
as Sir William Dolben, Sir Rowland Hill, and 
by conscientious men, more friendly to Mr. 
Pitt than to his opponents, of whom it i& 
enough to name Mr. Henry Thornton, then 
Member for Surrey. Instead of being the ex- 
pressions of a transient delusion, these con- 
stantly recurring complaints are the symp- 
toms of a deep-rooted malady, sometimes 
breaking out, sometimes dying away, some- 
times repelled, but always sure to return, — 
re-appearing with resistless force in the elec- 
tions of 1830, and still more decisively in 
those of 1831. If we seek for proof of an 
occasional provocation, which roused the peo- 
ple to a louder declaration of their opinions, 
where shall we find a more unexceptionable 
witness, than in one of the ablest and most 
unsparing opponents of the Ministers and of 
their Bill. Mr. Henry Drummond, in his 
very able Address to the Freeholders of Sur- 
rey, explicitly ascribes the irritation which 
now prevails to the unwise language of the 
late Ministers. The declaration of the late 
Ministers against Reform, says he, "proved 
their gross ignorance of the national feeling, 
and drove the people of England to despair." 
Many allege, Sir, that the people have 
gained so much strength and influence 
through the press, that they need no formal 
privileges or legal franchises to reinforce it. 
If it be so, I consider it to be a decisive rea- 
son for a reformation of the scheme of the 
representation. A country in which the 
masses are become powerful by their intel- 
ligence and by their wealth, while they 
are exasperated by exclusion from political 
rights, never can be in a safe condition. I 
hold it to be one of the most invariable 
maxims of legislation, to bind to the consti- 
tution, by the participation of legal privilege, 
all persons who have risen in wealth, — in in- 
telligence, — in any of the legitimate sources 

* Sir Robert Harry Inglis, Bart. — Ed. 



586 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



of ascendancy. I would do now what our 
forefathers, though rudely, aimed at doing, 
by calling into the national councils every 
rising element in the body politic. 

The grand objection to this Bill, Sir, is 
what ought to be fatal to any Bill, if the ob- 
jection had any foundation but loud and 
bold assertion, — that it is unjust. This ar- 
gument was never, indeed, urged by the 
Right Honourable Baronet, and it seems to 
be on the eve of being abandoned. But the 
walls of the House still seem to resound 
with the vociferations of my Honourable and 
Learned Friend, the Member for Borough- 
bridge,* against what he called "corporation 
robbery." Now many of these boroughs have 
no corporations at ail ; while none who have 
will be deprived of their corporate rights. 
But if all these corporations had been about 
to be divested of their character, — divested 
of rights which have been, or are likely to 
be abused, the term "robbery" would have 
been ridiculously inapplicable. Examples 
are more striking than general reasonings. 
Was the disuse of issuing Writs of Summons, 
as a consequence of which near a hundred 
Members are excluded from this House, an 
act of " robbery 1 " Was the Union with Scot- 
land, which reduced the borough representa- 
tion from sixty-five to fifteen, an act of "rob- 
bery'?" Yes, surely it was, if the term can 
be properly applied to this Bill. The Scotch 
boroughs were thrown into clusters of four 
and five, each of which sent a burgess. But 
if it be "robbery" to take away the whole 
of a franchise, is it not in principle as violent 
an invasion of property to take away four- 
fifths or three-fourths of it. What will be 
said of the Union with Ireland 1 Was it 
" robbery" to reduce her representation from 
three hundred to one hundred Members ? 
Was it " robbery " to disfranchise, as they did 
then, one hundred boroughs, on the very 
principle of the present Bill, — because they 
were decayed, dependent, and so unfit to 
exercise the franchise'? Was it "robbery" 
to deprive the Peers of Scotland of their 
birthright, and compel them to be contented 
with a bare possibility of being occasionally 
elected 1 Was it " robbery " to mutilate the 
legislative rights of the Irish Peerage ? No ! 
because in all these cases, the powers taken 
away or limited were trusts returnable by 
Parliament for the general well-being. 

Further, I contend that if this be "'rob- 
bery," every borough disfranchised for cor- 
ruption has been "robbed" of its rights. 
Talk not to me of the guilt of these bo- 
roughs: individuals are innocent or guilty, 
— bodies politic can be neither. If disfran- 
chisement be considered as a punishment, 
where is the trial, — where are the wit- 
nesses on oath, — where are the precautions 
against partiality, — where are the responsible 
judges? — who, indeed, are the judges'? men 
who have avowedly committed and have 
justified as constitutional the very offence. 
Why, in such cases, are the unborn punished 

* Sir Charles Wetherell— Er^ 



for the offences of the present generation ? 
Why should the innocent minority suffer for 
the sins of a venal majority ? If the rights 
of unoffending parties are reserved, of what 
importance is the reservation, if they are to 
be merged in those of hundreds or thousands 
of fellow-voters? Would not the opening 
of the suffrage in the city of Bath be as de- 
structive to the close Corporation as if they 
were to be byname disfranchised 1 Viewed 
in that light, every Bill of Disfranchisement 
is a Bill of Pains and Penalties, and in the 
nature of a Bill of Attainder. How are these 
absurdities avoided ? — only by the principle 
of this Bill, — that political trust may be 
justly resumed by the supreme power, when- 
ever it is deemed injurious to the common- 
wealth. 

The test, Sir, which distinguishes property 
from trust, is simple, and easily applied : — 
property exists for the benefit of the pro- 
prietor; political power exists only for the 
service of the state. Property is, indeed, 
the most useful of all human institutions : it 
is so, because the power of every man to do 
what he will with his own, is beneficial and 
even essential to the existence of society. 
A trustee is legally answerable for the abuse 
of his power : a proprietor is not amenable 
to human law for any misuse of his property, 
unless it should involve a direct violation of 
the rights of others. It is said, that property 
is a trust; and so it may, in figurative lan- 
guage, be called : but it is a moral, not a 
legal one. In the present argument, we have 
to deal only with the latter. The confusion 
of the ideas misled the Stuarts so far, that 
they thought the kingdom their property, till 
they were undeceived by the Revolution, 
which taught us, that man cannot have a 
property in his fellows. As all government 
is a trust, the share which each voter has in 
the nomination of lawgivers is one also. 
Otherwise, if the voter, as such, were a pro- 
prietor, he must have a property in his fel- 
low citizens, who are governed by laws, of 
which he has a share in naming the makers. 
If the doctrine of the franchise being pro- 
perty be admitted, all Reform is for ever pre- 
cluded. Even the enfranchisement of new 
boroughs, or districts, must be renounced; 
for every addition diminishes the value of 
the previous suffrage : and it is no more law- 
ful to lessen the value of property, than to 
take it away. 

Of all doctrines which threaten the prin- 
ciple of property, none more dangerous was 
ever promulgated, than that which confounds 
it with political privileges. None of the dis- 
ciples of St. Simon, or of the followers of the 
ingenious and benevolent Owen, have struck 
so deadly a blow at it, as those who would 
reduce it to the level of the elective rights 
of Gatton and Old Sarum. Property, the 
nourisher of mankind, — the incentive to in- 
dustry, — the cement of human society, — will 
be in a perilous condition, if the people be 
taught to identify it with political abuse, and 
to deal with it as being involved in its im- 



SPEECH ON THE REFORM BILL. 



587 



pending fate. Let us not teach the spoilers 
of future times to represent our resumption 
of a right of suffrage as a precedent for their 
seizure of lands and possessions. 

Much is said in praise of the practice of 
nomination, which is now called "the most 
unexceptionable part of our representation." 
To nomination, it seems, we owe the talents 
of our young Members, — the prudence and 
experience of the more aged. It supplies 
the colonies and dependencies of this great 
empire with virtual representation in this 
House. By it commercial and funded pro- 
perty finds skilful advocates and intrepid de- 
fenders. All these happy consequences are 
ascribed to that flagrant system of breaches 
of the law, which is now called " the prac- 
tice of the English constitution." 

Sir, I never had, and have not now, any 
objection to the admission of representatives 
of the colonies into this House, on fair and 
just conditions. But I cannot conceive that 
a Bill which is objected to, as raising the 
commercial interest at the expense of the 
landed, will also lessen the safeguards of 
their property. Considering the well-known 
and most remarkable subdivision of funded 
income, — the most minutely divided of any 
mass of property, — I do not believe that any 
representatives, or even any constituents, 
could be ultimately disposed to do them- 
selves so great an injury as to invade it. Men 
of genius, and men of experience, and men 
of opulence, have found their way into this 
House through nomination, or worse means, 
— through any channel that was open : the 
same classes of candidates will now direct 
their ambition and their efforts to the new 
channels opened by the present Bill ; they 
will attain their end by only varying their 
means. 

A list has been read to us of illustrious 
men who found an introduction to Parlia- 
ment, or a refuge from unmerited loss of 
popularity, by means of decayed boroughs. 
What does such a catalogue prove, but that 
England, for the last sixty years, has been a 
country full of ability, — of knowledge, — of 
intellectual activity, — of honourable ambi- 
tion, and that a large portion of these quali- 
ties has flowed into the House of Commons'? 
Might not the same dazzling common-places 
have been opposed to the abolition of the 
court of the Star Chamber? "What," it 
might have been said, "'will you, in your 
frantic rage of innovation, demolish the tri- 
bunal in which Sir Thomas More, the best of 
men, and Lord Bacon, the greatest of philo- 
sophers, presided, — where Sir Edward Coke, 
the oracle of law, — where Burleigh and Wal- 
singham, the most revered of English states- 
men, sat as judges, — which Bacon, enlight- 
ened by philosophy and experience, called 
the peculiar glory of our legislation, as being 
'a court of criminal equity?-' Will you, in 
your paroxysms of audacious frenzy, abo- 
lish this Praetorian tribunal, — this sole instru- 
ment for bridling popular incendiaries? Will 
you dare to persevere in your wild purpose, 



at a moment when Scotland is agitated by a 
rebellious League and Covenant, — when Ire- 
land is threatened with insurrection and 
massacre ? Will you surrender the shield 
of the crown, — the only formidable arm of 
prerogative, — at a time when his Majesty's 
authority is openly defied in the capital 
where we are assembled ?" 

I cannot, indeed. Sir, recollect a single 
instance in that long course of reformation, 
which constitutes the history of the English 
constitution, where the same plausible argu- 
ments, and the same exciting topics, might 
not have been employed as are now pointed 
against the present measure. The Honoura- 
ble and Learned Gentleman has alluded to 
Simon de Montfort, — the first and most ex- 
tensive Parliamentary Reformer, — who pla- 
ced the representatives of the burgesses in 
Parliament. The haughty and unlettered 
Barons disdained argument ; but their murr 
murs were doubtless loud and vehement. 
Even they could exclaim that the new con- 
stitution was an "untried scheme," — that it 
was a "daring experiment," — that it "would 
level all the distinctions of society," — that it 
would throw the power of the state into the 
hands of traffickers and burgesses. Were 
men but yesterday slaves, now to be seated 
by the side of Plantagenets engaged in the 
arduous duty of making laws? Are these 
not the topics which are substantially used 
against Parliamentary Reform ? They are 
now belied by experience, which has taught 
us that the adoption of the lower classes 
into the constitution, the concessions made 
to them, and the widening of the foundation 
of the legislature, have been the source of 
peace, of order, of harmony, — of all that is 
excellent in our government, and of all that 
secures the frame of our society. The Ha- 
beas Corpus Act, in the reign of Charles the 
Second, was obtained only by repeated, per- 
severing, unwearied exertions of the Earl of 
Shaftesbury, after a meritorious struggle of 
many years. I mention the facts with plea- 
sure in the presence of his descendant.* 
It is now well known, from the confidential 
correspondence of Charles and his brother 
James, that they both believed sincerely 
that a government without the power of 
arbitrary imprisonment would not long exist; 
and that Shaftesbury had forced this Act 
upon them, in order either to expose them 
unarmed to the populace, or to drive them 
to have recourse to the odious and precarious 
protection of a standing army. The belief 
of the Royal Brothers was the more incorri- 
gible, because it was sincere. It is the fatal 
effect of absolute power to corrupt the judg- 
ment of its possessors, and to insinuate into 
their minds the false and pernicious opinion, 
that power is always weakened by limitation. 

Shall I be told, that the sale of seats is 
not in itself an evil ? The same most inge- 
nious person! who hazarded this* paradox, 

* Viscount Ashley. — Ed. 
t It would not seem easy to specify the person 
alluded to. — Ed. 



588 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



quoted the example of the sale of the judi- 
cial office in Old France, with a near ap- 
proach to approbation. That practice has 
been vindicated by French writers of great 
note ; and it had, in fact, many guards and 
limitations not to be found in our system of 
marketable boroughs : but it has been swept 
away by the Revolution ; and there is now 
no man disposed to palliate its shameless 
enormity. The grossest abuses, as long as 
they prevail, never want advocates to find 
out specious mitigations of their effects: 
their downfall discovers their deformity to 
every eye. For my part, I do not see, why 
the sale of a power to make laws should not 
be as immoral as the sale of a power to ad- 
minister them. 

We have heard it said, Sir, that the Peer- 
age, and even the Monarchy, cannot survive 
the loss of these boroughs ; and we are re- 
ferred to the period that has elapsed since 
the Revolution, as that during which this 
influence has been their main guard against 
popular assault and dictation. I respectfully 
lay aside the Crown in this debate ; and in 
the few words that I am now about to utter, 
I am desirous to express myself in cautious 
and constitutional language. Since the Re- 
volution. — since the defeat of the attempts 
to establish absolute monarchy, the English 
government has undoubtedly become Parlia- 
mentary. But during that time, also, the 
hereditary elements of the constitution have 
been uniformly respected as wholesome 
temperaments of the rashness of popular 
assemblies. I can discover nothing in this 
proposed change which will disable the 
Peers from usefully continuing to perform 
this duty. If some inconvenient diminution 
of the influence of great property should 
follow, we must encounter the risk; for no- 
thing can, in my judgment, be more certain, 
than that the constitution can no longer bear 
the weight of the obloquy thrown upon it by 
our present mode of conducting elections. 
The community cannot afford to purchase any 
advantage at such an expense of private cha- 
racter. But so great is the natural influence 
of property, especially in a country where 
the various ranks of society have been so 
long bound together by friendly ties as in 
ours, that I can scarcely conceive any laws 
or institutions which could much diminish 
the influence of well-spent wealth, whether 
honourably inherited, or honestly earned. 

The benefits of any reformation might 
indeed be hazarded, if the great proprie- 
tors were to set themselves in battle array 
against the permanent desires of the people. 
If they treat their countrymen as adversa- 
ries, they may. in their turn, excite a hostile 
spirit. Distrust will beget distrust: jealousy 
will awaken an adverse jealousy. I trust 
these evil consequences may not arise. The 
Nobility of England, in former times, have 
led their countrymen in the battles of liber- 
ty : those among them who are most distin- 
guished by ample possessions, by historical 
names, or by hereditary fame, interwoven 



with the glory of their country, have, on this 
occasion, been the foremost to show their 
confidence in the people, — their unsuspect- 
ing liberality in the enlargement of popular 
privilege, — their reliance on the sense and 
honesty of their fellow-citizens, as the best 
safeguard of property and of order, as well 
as of all other interests of society. Already, 
this measure has exhibited a disinterested- 
ness which has united all classes, from the 
highest borough-holder to the humblest non- 
resident freeman, in the sacrifice of their 
own exclusive advantages to what they 
think a great public good. There must be- 
something good in what produces so noble a 
sacrifice. 

This, Sir, is not solely a reformatory mea- 
sure ; it is also conciliatory. If it were pro- 
posed exclusively for the amendment of in- 
stitutions, I might join in the prevalent cry 
"that it goes too far," or at least "travels 
too fast," — farther and faster than the max- 
ims of wise reformation would warrant. But 
as it is a means of regaining national confi- 
dence, it must be guided by other maxims. 
In that important view of the subject, I con- 
sider the terms of this plan as of less conse- 
quence than the temper which it breathes, 
and the spirit by which it is animated. A 
conciliatory measure deserves the name only, 
when it is seen and felt by the simplest of 
men, to flow from the desire and determina- 
tion to conciliate. At this moment, when, 
amidst many causes of discord, there is a 
general sympathy in favour of reformation, 
the superior classes of society, by opening 
their arms to receive the people, — by giving 
to the people a signal and conspicuous proof 
of confidence, — may reasonably expect to be 
trusted in return. But to reach this end, they 
must not only be, but appear to be, liberally 
just and equitably generous. Confidence can 
be purchased by confidence alone. If the 
leading classes follow the example of many 
of their own number. — if they show, by 
gracious and cheerful concessions, — by strik- 
ing acts, not merely by specious language or 
cold formalities of law, — that they are will- 
ing to rest on the fidelity and conscience of 
the people, I do not believe that they will 
lean on a broken reed. As for those wise 
saws which teach us that there is always 
danger in trust, and that policy and genero- 
sity are at perpetual variance, I hold them 
in "little respect. Every unbending maxim 
of policy is hollow and unsafe. Base princi- 
ples are often not the more prudent because 
they are pusillanimous. I rather agree with 
the beautiful peroration of Mr. Burke's se- 
cond speech on North America : — l ' Mag- 
nanimity in politics is not seldom the truest 
wisdom": a great empire and little minds go 
ill together. If we are conscious of our 
situation, and glow with zeal to fill our place, 
as becomes our station and ourselves, we 
ought to auspicate our proceedings respect- 
ing America, with the old warning of the 
Church, — 'Sursum Corda? We ought to 
elevate our minds to the dignity of that trust, 



SPEECH ON THE REFORM BILL. 



589 



to which the order of Providence has called 
us." 

Whether we consider this measure, either 
as a scheme of reformation, or an attempt to 
form an alliance with the people, it must be 
always remembered, that it is a question of 
the comparative safety or danger of the only 
systems now before us for our option ; — that 
of undistinguishing adherence to present in- 
stitutions, — that of ample redress and bold 
reformation, — and that of niggardly, evasive, 
anil unwilling Reform. I say : ' comparative " 
safety or danger; for not one of those who 
have argued this question seem to have re- 
membered that it has two sides. They have 
thrown all the danger of the times upon the 
Reform. They load it with as much odium 
as if the age were otherwise altogether ex- 
empt from turbulence and agitation, and first 
provoked from its serene quiet by this wanton 
attempt. They make it answerable for mis- 
chiefs which it may not have the power to 
prevent, and which might have occurred if 
no such measure had ever been attempted. 
They, at least, tacitly assume that it must ag- 
gravate every evil arising from other sources. 
In short, they beg the whole question in dis- 
pute. They ask us, Whether there be not 
danger in Reform ? I answer by asking them, 
Is there no danger in not reforming'? To 
this question, to which they have never yet 
attempted to answer, I expect no answer 
now ; because a negative one would seem 
to me impossible, while an affirmative would 
reduce the whole discussion to a cool com- 
putation and calm comparison of the different 
degrees of danger opening upon us. 

A niggardly Reform, Sir, seems to me the 
most unsafe step of all systems, tt cannot 
conciliate; for it is founded in distrust. It 
practically admits an evil, of which dissatis- 
faction is a large part ; and yet it has been 
already proved by experience that it yet 
satisfied nobody. Other systems may be 
unsatisfactory: this scheme is so already. 
In the present temper of the people, and 
circumstances of the world, I can see no one 
good purpose to be answered by an evasive 
and delusive Reform. To what extent will 
they trust the determined enemies of the 
smallest step towards reformation, — who, to 
avoid the grant of the franchise to Birming- 
ham, have broken up one Administration, 
and who, if they be sincere, must try every 
expedient to render impotent a measure 
which they can no longer venture avowedly 
to oppose. 

On the other hand, Sir, the effect of the 
Bill before us has hitherto confirmed the 
opinion of those who thought that a measure 
of a conciliatory temper, and of large and 
liberal concession, would satisfy the people. 
The tone and scope of their petitions, which 
were at first extravagant, became moderate 
and pacific, as soon as the Bill was known. 
As soon as they saw so unexpected a project 
of substantial amendment, proceeding from 
sincere Reformers, they at once sacrificed all 
vague projects of indefinite perfection. No- 



thing can be more ludicrously absurd, than the 
supposition which has been hazarded among 
us, that several millions of men are such deep 
dissemblers. — such dark conspirators, — as to 
be able to conceal all their farther projects, 
till this Bill arms them with the means of 
carrj ing them into execution. The body of a 
people cannot fail to be sincere. I do not ex- 
pect any measure of legislation to work mira- 
cles. Discontent may and will continue ; but 
I believe that it will be by this measure per- 
manently abated. Others there doubtless are, 
who foretell far other effects : it seems to me, 
that the favourers of the Bill rest their pre- 
dictions on more probable foundations. 

Among the numerous assumptions of our 
opponents, there is none which appears to 
me more remarkable, than their taking for 
granted that concession is always, or even 
generally, more dangerous to the stability of 
government than resistance. As the Right 
Honourable Baronet introduced several happy 
quotations from Cicero on this subject, which 
he seemed, to address more particularly to 
me, I hope I shall not be charged with pe- 
dantry, if I begin my proofs of the contrary, 
with the testimony of that great writer. In 
the third book of his work, " De Legibus." 
after having put an excellent aristocratical 
speech, against the tribunitian power, into 
the mouth of his brother Quintus, he proceeds 
to answer him as follows: — " ConcessaPlebi 
a Patribus ista potestate, arma ceciderunt, 
restincta seditio est, inventum est tempera- 
mentum quo tenuiores cum principibus 
asquari se putarint; in quo uno fuit civitatis 
salus." It will not' be said, that Cicero was 
a radical or a demagogue, or that he had any 
personal cause to be favourable to the tri- 
bunitian power. It will not be said, that to 
grant to a few, a right to stop the progress 
of every public measure, was a slender, or 
likely to be a safe concession. The ancients 
had more experience of democracy, and a 
better knowledge of the character of dema- 
gogues, than the frame of modern society 
allows us the means of attaining. This great 
man, in spite of his natural prejudices, and 
just resentments, ascribes to this apparently 
monstrous power, not merely the spirit and 
energy which may be expected even from 
the excess of popular institutions, but what- 
ever safety and tranquillity the common- 
wealth enjoyed through a series of ages. 
He would not, therefore, have argued as has 
been argued on this occasion, that if the mul- 
titude appeal to violence, before legal privi- 
leges are conferred on them, they will be 
guilty of tenfold excesses when they become 
sharers in legitimate authority. On the con- 
trary, he lays it down in the context of the 
passage quoted, that their violence is abated, 
by allowing a legal vent to their feelings. 

But it appears. Sir, to be taken for granted, 
that concession to a people is always more 
dangerous to public quiet than resistance. Is 
there any pretence for such a doctrine ? I 
appeal to history, as a vast magazine of facts, 
all leading to the very opposite conclusion,— 
2Z 



590 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



teaching that this fatal principle has over- 
thrown more thrones and dismembered more 
empires than any other — proving that late 
reformation, — dilatory reformation, — reform- 
ation refused at the critical moment, — which 
may pass for ever, — in the twinkling of an 
eye, has been the most frequent of all causes 
of the convulsions which have shaken states, 
and for a time burst asunder the bonds of 
society. Allow me very briefly to advert to 
the earliest revolution of modern times : — 
was it by concession that Philip II. lost the 
Netherlands 1 Had he granted timely and 
equitable concessions, — had he not plotted 
the destruction of the ancient privileges of 
these flourishing provinces, under pretence 
that all popular privilege was repugnant to 
just authorit}-, would he not have continued 
to his death the master of that fair portion 
of Europe ? Did Charles I. lose his throne 
and his life by concession ? Is it not notori- 
ous, that if, before losing the confidence of 
the Parliament and the people (after that loss 
all his expedients of policy were vain, as 
in such a case all policy is unavailing), he 
had adhered to the principles of the Petition 
of Right, to which he had given his Royal 
Assent, — if he had forborne from the perse- 
cution of the Puritans, — if he had refrained 
from levying money without a grant from 
Parliament, he would, in all human proba- 
bility, have reigned prosperously to the last 
day of his life. If there be any man who 
doubts it, his doubts will be easily removed 
without pursuing his studies farther than the 
first volume of Lord Clarendon's History. 
Did the British Parliament lose North America 
by concession 1 Is not the loss of that great 
empire solely to be ascribed to the obstinate 
resistance of this House to every conciliatory 
proposition, although supported by their own 
greatest men, tendered in the loyal petitions 
of the Colonies, until they were driven into 
the arms of France, and the door was for 
ever closed against all hopes of re-union'? 
Had we yielded to the latest prayers of the 
Americans, it is hard to say how long the 
two British nations might have been held 
together : the separation, at all events, if ab- 
solutely necessary, might have been effected 
on quiet and friendly terms. Whatever may 
be thought of recent events (of which it is 
yet too early to firm a final judgment), the 
history of their origin and progress would of 
itself be enough to show the wisdom of those 
early reformations, which, as Mr. Burke 
says, "are accommodations with a friend in 
power." 

I feel, Sir, some curiosity to know how 
many of the high-principled, consistent, in- 
flexible, and hitherto unyielding opponents of 
this Bill, will continue to refuse to make a 
declaration in favour of any Reform, till the 
last moment of this discussion. Although I 
differ from them very widely in opinion, I 
know how to estimate their fidelity towards 
each other, and their general fairness to 
others, as well as their firmness under cir- 
cumstances of a discouraging and disheart- 



ening nature, calculated to sow distrust and 
disunion in any political party. What I 
dread and deprecate in their system is, that 
they offer no option but Reform or coercion. 
Let any man seriously consider what is the 
full import of this last tremendous word. Re- 
strictions will be first laid on the people, 
which will be assuredly productive of new 
discontents, provoking in turn an incensed 
Government to measures still more rigorous. 
Discontent will rankle into disaffection : dis- 
affection will break out into revolt, winch, 
supposing the most favourable termination, 
will not be quelled without spilling the blood 
of our countrymen, and will leave them in 
the end full of haired for their rulers, and 
watching for the favourable opportunity of 
renewing their attack. It is needless to con- 
sider the consequences of a still more disas- 
trous and irreparable termination of the con- 
test. It is enough for me to say, that the long- 
continuance of such wretched scuffles be- 
tween the Government and the people is abso- 
lutely incompatible with the very existence 
of the English constitution. But although a 
darkness hangs over the event, is there nothing 
in the present temper, — in the opinions, — in 
the circumstances of all European nations, 
which renders the success of popular princi- 
ples probable 1 The mode in which this mat- 
ter has been argued, will excuse me for once 
more reminding the House that the question 
is one of comparative danger. I vote for the 
present Bill, not only because I approve of it 
as a measure of Reform, but because l con- 
sider it as affording the greatest probability 
of preserving the integrity of our fundamental 
laws. Those who shut their eyes on the 
tempests which are abroad, — on the gloomy 
silence with which the extreme parties look 
at each other, may obstinately persist in 
ascribing the present agitation of mind in 
Great Britain to a new Cabinet in November, 
or to a Reform Bill in March. 

Our opponents, Sir, deal much in prophecy : 
they foretell all the evils which will spring 
from Reform. They do right: such antici- 
pations are not only legitimate arguments ; 
but they form the hinge on which the whole 
case turns. But they have two sets of weights 
and measures : — they use the probability of 
future evil resulting from Reform as their 
main stay; but when we employ the proba- 
bility of future evil from No-Reform, in sup- 
port of our opinion, they call it menace, and 
charge us with intimidation. 

In this, and indeed in every other branch 
of the case, the arguments of our opponents 
have so singular a resemblance to those em- 
ployed by Vhem on the Catholic Question, 
that we might quote as answers to them 
their own language. Then, as now, Minis- 
ters were charged with yielding to clamour 
and menace, and with attempting to frighten 
other men from their independence. As a 
brief, but conclusive answer, I have only to 
say, that all policy consists in such considera- 
tions as to whether a measure be safe and 
beneficial, — that every statesman or lawgiver 



SPEECH ON THE REFORM BILL. 



591 



ought to fear what he considers as dangerous 
to the public, — and that I avow myself a 
coward at the prospect of the civil disorders 
which I think impending over my country. 

Then, Sir, we are told, — as we were told 
in the case of the Catholics, — that this mea- 
sure is not final, and that it is sought only as 
a vantage ground from which it will be more 
easy to effect other innovations. I denied 
the disposition to encroach, with which the 
Catholics were charged ; and however afflict- 
ing the condition of Ireland may now be I 
appeal to every dispassionate man, whether 
the relief granted to them has not, on the 
whole, bettered the situation, and strength- 
ened the security of the country. I was 
then taught by the Right Honourable Baro- 
net,* that concession would divide loyal from 
disaffected opponents, and unite all friends 
of their country against those whose demands 
were manifestly insatiable. Is it not rea- 
sonable to expect some degree of the same 
benefits on the present occasion ? 

Nothing human is, in one sense of the 
word, final Of a distant futurity I know 
nothing ; and I am, therefore, altogether un- 
fitted to make laws for it. Posterity may 
rightly measure their own wants, and their 
capacity, — we cannot; the utmost that we 
can aspire to, is to remove elements of dis- 
cord from their path. But within the very- 
limited horizon to which the view of politi- 
cians can reach, I have pointed out some 
reasons why I expect that a measure of con- 
cession, made in a spirit of unsuspecting 
confidence, may inspire the like sentiments, 
and why I believe that the people will 
acquiesce in a grant of these extensive privi- 
leges to those whose interests must be al- 
ways the same as their own. After all, is it 

* Sir Robert Peel.— Ed. 



not obvious that the people already possess 
that power through their numbers, of which 
the exercise is dreaded 1 It is ours, indeed, 
to decide, whether they are to exert then- 
force in the market-place, in the street, in 
the field, or in discussion, and debate in this 
House. If we somewhat increase their legal 
privileges, we must, also, in the same mea- 
sure, abate their supposed disposition to use 
it ill. 

On the great proprietors, much of the 
grace, — of the generous character. — of the 
conciliatory effect of this measure, must cer- 
tainly depend. But its success cannot ulti- 
mately depend upon a single class. If they 
be deluded or enraged by tales of intimida- 
tion and of riot. — if they can be brought to 
doubt that there is in the public, mind on the 
necessity of Reform any more doubt than is 
necessary to show the liberty of publishing 
opinion, — whenever or wherever they act on 
these great errors, they may abate the heal- 
ing efficacy of a great measure of concilia- 
tion and improvement ; but they cannot pre- 
vent its final adoption. Above all other 
considerations, I advise these great proprie- 
tors to cast from them those reasonings which 
would involve property in the approaching 
downfall of political abuse. If they assent 
to the doctrine that political privilege is 
property, they must be prepared for the in- 
evitable consequence, — that it is no more 
unlawful to violate their possessions, than to 
resume a delegated trust. The suppression 
of dependent boroughs is at hand : it will be 
the truest wisdom of the natural guardians 
of the principle of property, to maintain, to 
inculcate, to enforce the essential distinction 
between it and political trust, — if they be 
not desirous to arm the spoilers, whom they 
dread, with arguments which they can never 
consistently answer. 



APPENDIX. 



A. 

The first article in a wise plan of reformation, 
would, in our opinion, be the immediate addition 
of twenty Members to the House of Commons, to 
be chosen by the most opulent and populous of 
the communities which are at present without di- 
rect representation ; with such varieties in the right 
of suffrage as the local circumstances of each com- 
munity might suggest, but in all of them on the 
principle of a widely diffused franchise. In Scot- 
land, Glasgow ought to be included: in Ireland 
we think there are no unrepresented communities 
to which the principle could be applied. 

In endeavouring to show that this proposal is 
strictly constitutional, according to the narrowest 
and most cautious use of that term, — that it re- 
quires only the exercise of an acknowledged right, 
and the revival of a practice observed for several 
ages, we shall abstain from those controverted 
questions which relate to the obscure and legend- 



ary part of our Parliamentary history. A very 
cursory review of the authentic annals of the 
House of Commons, is sufficient for the present 
purpose. In the writs of summons of the Uth of 
Edward I., the Sheriffs were directed (as they are 
by the present writ) to send two Members from 
each city and borough within their respective baili- 
wicks. The letter of this injunction appears, from 
the beginning, to have been disobeyed, The 
Crown was, indeed, desirous of a full attendance 
of citizens and burgesses, a class of men then sub- 
servient to the Royal pleasure, and who, it was- 
expected, would reconcile their neighbours in the 
provinces to the burthen of Parliamentary grants ; 
but to many boroughs, the wages of burgesses in 
Parliament were a heavy and sometimes an in- 
supportable burthen: and this struggle between 
the policy of the Crown and the poverty of the 
boroughs, occasioned great fluctuation in the towns 
who sent Members to the House of Commons, irs 



592 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



the course of the fourteenth century. Small bo- 
roughs were often excused by the Sheriff on ac- 
count of their poverty, and at other times neglect- 
ed or disobeyed his order. When he persisted, 
petitions were presented to the King in Parlia- 
ment, and perpetual or temporary charters of ex- 
emption were obtained by the petitioning boroughs. 
In the 1st of Edward III. the county oi Northum- 
berland, and the town of Newcastle, were ex- 
empted, on account of the devastations of the 
Scotch war. The boroughs in Lancashire sent' 
no Members from the reign of Edward III. to 
that of Henry VI.; the Sheriff stating, in his re- 
turns, that there was no borough in his bailiwick 
able to bear the expense. Of one hundred and 
eighty-four cities and boroughs, summoned to 
Parliament in the reigns of the three first Ed- 
wards, only ninety-one continued to send Mem- 
bers in the reign of Richard II. In the midst of 
this great irregularity in the composition of the 
House of Commons, we still see a manifest, 
though irregular, tendency to the establishment 
of a constitutional principle, — viz. that deputies 
from all the most important communities, with 
palpably distinct interests, should form part of a 
national assembly. The separate and sometimes 
clashing interests of the town and the country, 
were not intrusted to the same guardians. The 
Knights of the Shire were not considered as suf- 
ficient representatives even of the rude industry 
and infant commerce of that age. 

The dangerous discretion of the Sheriffs was 
taken away by the statutes for the regulation of 
elections, passed under the princes of the House 
of Lancaster. A seat in the House of Commons 
had now begun to be an object of general ambi- 
tion. Landed gentlemen, lawyers, even courtiers, 
served as burgesses, instead of those traders, — 
sometimes, if we may judge from their names, of 
humble occupation, — who filled that station in 
former times. Boroughs had already fallen under 
the influence of neighbouring proprietors: and, 
from a curious passage in the Paston Letters, (vol. 
i. p. 96,) we find, that in the middle of the fifteenth 
century, the nomination of a young gentleman to 
serve for a borough, by the proprietor, or by a 
great man of the Court, was spoken of as not an 
unusual transaction. From this time the power 
of the Crown, of granting representation to new 
boroughs, formed a part of the regular practice of 
the government, and was exercised without inter- 
ruption for two hundred years. 

In the cases of Wales, Chester, and long after 
of Durham, representation was bestowed by sta- 
tute, probably because it was thought that no in- 
ferior authority could have admitted Members 
from those territories, long subject to a distinct 
government, into the Parliament of England. In 
these ancient grants of representation, whether 
made by the King or by Parliament, we discover 
a great uniformity of principle, and an approach 
to the maxims of our present constitution. In 
Wales and Chester, as well as in England, the 
counties were distinguished from the towns; and 
the protection of their separate interests was com- 
mitted to different representatives : the rights of 
election were diversified, according to the local 
interests and municipal constitution of the several 
towns. In the preamble of the Chester Act, re- 
presentation is stated to be the means of securing 
the county from the wrong which it had suffered 
while it was unrepresented. It was bestowed on 
Wales with the other parts of the laws of Eng- 
land, of which it was thought the necessary com- 
panion : and the exercise of popular privileges is 
distinctly held out as one of the means which 
were to quiet and civilize that principality. In the 
cases of Calais and Berwick, the frontier fortresses 
against France and Scotland, — where modern poli- 
ticians would have been fearful of introducing the 
•disorders of elections, — Henry the VHIth granted 



the elective franchise, apparently for the purpose 
of strengthening the attachment, and securing the 
fidelity of their inhabitants. The Knights of the 
Shire for Northumberland were not then thought 
to represent Berwick sufficiently. 

While we thus find in these ancient examples 
so much solicitude for an adequate representation 
of the sepnrate interests of classes and districts, it 
is particularly worthy of remark, that we find no 
trace in any of them of a representation founded 
merely on numbers. The statute that gave repre- 
sentatives to Wales, was within a century of the 
act of Henry VI. for regulating the qualifications 
for the voters in counties ; and on that subject, as 
well as others, may be regarded as no inconsider- 
able evidence on the ancient state of the constitu- 
tion. Had universal suffrage prevailed till the fif- 
teenth century, it seems wholly incredible, that no 
trace of it should be found in the numerous Royal 
and Parliamentary grants of representation, which 
occur in the early part of the sixteenth. Mere ac- 
cident must have revived it in some instances ; for 
it certainly had not then become an argument of 
jealousy or apprehension. 

In the reigns of Edward the Vlth, Mary, and 
Elizabeth, the struggles between the Catholic and 
Protestant parties occasioned a great and sudden 
increase of the House of Commons. Fourteen 
boroughs were thus privileged by the first of these 
Sovereigns, ten by the second, and twenty-four 
by Elizabeth. The choice, in the reign of Edward 
and Elizabeth, was chiefly in the western and 
southern counties, where the adherents of the 
Reformation were most numerous, and the 
towns were most under the influence of the 
Crown. By this extraordinary exertion of prero- 
gative, a permanent addition of ninety-four Mem- 
bers was made to the House in little more than 
fifty years. James and Charles, perhaps, dread- 
ing the accession of strength which a more nu- 
merous House might give to the popular cause, 
made a more sparing use of this power. But 
the popular party in the House, imitating the 
policy of the ministers of Elizabeth, began to 
strengthen their Parliamentary influence by a 
similar expedient. That House had, indeed, no 
pretensions to the power of making new Parlia- 
mentary boroughs; but the same purpose was 
answered, by the revival of those which had long 
disused their privilege. Petitions were obtained 
from many towns well effected to the popular 
cause, alleging that they had, in ancient times, 
sent Members to Parliament, and had not legal- 
ly lost the right. These petitions were referred 
to the Committee of Privileges; and, on a fa- 
vourable report, the Speaker was directed to issue 
his warrant for new writs. Six towns (of which 
Mr. Hampden's borough of Wendover was one) 
were in this manner empowered to send Members 
to Parliament in the reign of James. Two were 
added in 1628 by like means, and six more by the 
Long Parliament on the very eve of the civil war. 

No further addition was made to the represen- 
tation of England except the borough of Newark, 
on which Charles II., in 1672, bestowed the pri- 
vilege of sending burgesses to the House of Com- 
mons, as a reward for the fidelity of the inhabitants 
to his father. The right of the first burgesses re- 
turned by this borough in 1673 was questioned, — 
though on what ground our scanty and confused 
accounts of the Parliamentary transactions of that 
period do not enable us to determine. The ques- 
tion was suspended for about three years; and at 
last, on the 26th of March, 1676, it was determin- 
ed by a majority of one hundred and twenty-five 
against seventy-three, that the town had a right to 
send burgesses. But on a second division, it was 
resolved, by a majority of one, that the Members 
returned were not duly elected. And thus sud- 
denly, and somewhat unaccountably, ceased the 
exercise of a prerogative which, for several centu- 



SPEECH ON THE REFORM BILL. 



593 



ries. had continued to augment, and, in some 
measure, to regulate the English representation. 

Neither this, nor any other constitutional power, 
originated in foresight and contrivance. Occa- 
sional convenience gave rise to its first exercise : 
the course of time gave it a sanction of law. It 
was more often exercised for purposes of tempo- 
rary policy, or of personal favour, than with any 
regard to the interest of the constitution. Its en- 
tire cessation is, however, to be considered as 
forming an epoch in the progress of our govern- 
ment. However its exercise misht have been 
abused, its existence might be defended, on the 
ground that it was the constitutional means of re- 
medying the defects of the representation. It was 
a tacit acknowledgment that a representative sys- 
tem must, from time to time, require amendment. 
Every constitutional reasoner must have admitted, 
that it was rightly exercised only in those cases 
where it contributed to the ends for the sake of 
which alone it could be justified. Its abuse con- 
sisted much more in granting the suffrage to in- 
significant villages, than from withholding it from 
large towns. The cases of the latter sort are very- 
few, and may be imputed to accident and negli- 
gence, which would probably have been corrected 
in process of time. No such instance occurs with 
respect to any town of the first, or even of the 
second class. An^ indeed, it cannot be supposed, 
that, before the disuse of that prerogative, four or 
five of the principal towns in the kingdom should 
have continued without representatives for more 
than a century. Whatever the motive might have 
been for granting representatives to Westminster 
by Edward VI., no reason could have been as- 
signed for the grant, but the growing importance 
of that city. Lord Clarendon's commendation of 
the constitution of Cromwell's Parliament, to 
which Manchester, Leeds, and Halifax, then towns 
of moderate size, sent representatives, may be 
considered as an indication of the general opinion 
on this subject. 

In confirmation of these remarks, we shall close 
this short review of the progress of the represen- 
tation before the Revolution, by an appeal to two 
legislative declarations of the principles by which 
it ought to be governed. 

The first is the Chester Act, (34 & 35 Hen. 8. 
c. 13,) the preamble of which is so well known as 
the basis of Mr. Burke's plan for conciliation with 
America. It was'used against him, to show that 
Parliament might legislate for unrepresented 
counties; but it was retorted by him, with much 
greater force, as a proof from experience, and an 
acknowledgment from the Legislature, that coun- 
ties in that situation had no security against mis- 
rule. The Petition of the inhabitants of Che- 
shire, which was adopted as the preamble of the 
Act, complained that they had neither knight nor 
burgess in Parliament for* the said county-pala- 
tine ; and that the said inhabitants, " for lack 
thereof, have been oftentimes touched and grieved 
with acts and statutes made within the said court." 
On this recital the Statute proceeds :—" For 
remedy thereof may it please your Highness, that 
it may be enacted, that from the end of this pre- 
sent session, the said county-palatine shall have 
two knights for the said county-palatine, and 
likewise two citizens to be burgesses for the city 
of Chester." 

The Statute enabling Durham to send knights 
and burgesses to-Parliament, which has been less 
frequently quoted, is still more explicit on the pur- 
poses of the present argument : — 

" Whereas the inhabitants of the said countv- 
palatine of Durham have not hitherto had the 
liberty and privilege of electinsr and sending any 
knights and burgesses to the High Court of Par- 
liament, although the inhabitants of the said 
county-palatine are liable to all payments, rates, 
and subsidies granted by Parliament, equally 
75 



with the inhabitants of other counties, cities, and 
boroughs in this kingdom, who have their knights 
and burgesses in the Parliament, and are there- 
fore concerned equally with others the inhabitants 
of this kingdom to have knights and burgesses 
in the said High Court of Parliament, of their 
own election, to represent the condition of their 
county, as the inhabitants of other counties, cities, 
and boroughs of this kingdom have .... Where- 
fore, be it enacted, that the said county-palatine 
of Durham may have two knights for the same 
county, and the city of Durham two citizens to 
be burgesses for the same city, for ever here- 
after, to serve in the High Court of Parliament . . . 
The elections of the knights to serve for the 
said county, from lime to time hereafter, to be 
made by the greater number of freeholders of the 
said county-palatine, which from time to time 
shall be present at such elections, accordingly as 
is used in other counties in this your Majesty's 
kingdom ; and the election of the said burgesses 
for the city of Durham, to be made from time to 
time by the major part of the mayor, aldermen, 
and freemen of the said city of Durham, which 
from time to time shall be present at such elec- 
tions." This Statute does not, like the Chester 
Act, allege that any specific evil had arisen from 
the previous want of representatives ; but it re- 
cognises, as a general principle of the English 
constitution, that the interests of every unrepre- 
sented district are in danger of being overlooked 
or sacrificed, and that the inhabitants of such dis- 
tricts are therefore interested to have knights and 
burgesses in Parliament, '' of their own election, 
to represent the condition of their country." 

The principle is, in effect, as applicable to towns 
as to counties. The town of Newcastle had then 
as evident an interest in the welfare of the county 
of Durham, as the county of Warwick can now 
have in the prosperity of the town of Birming- I 
ham ; but the members for Newcastle were not 
considered, by this statute, as sufficient guardians 
of the prosperity of the county of Durham. Even 
the knights who were to serve for the county, 
were not thought to dispense with the burgesses 
to serve for the city. As we have before observed, 
the distinct interests of country and town were 
always, on such occasions, provided for by our 
ancestors; and a principle was thereby established, 
that every great community, with distinct interest, 
ought to have separate representatives. 

It is also observable, that the right of suffrage 
is not given to all the inhabitants, nor even to all 
the taxable inhabitants, but to the freeholders of , 
the county, and freemen of the city, — who have a 
common interest and fellow-feeling with the whole. 
As these electors were likely to partake the senti- 
ments of the rest of the inhabitants, and as every 
public measure must affect both classes alike, 
the members chosen by such a part of the people 
were considered as virtually representing all. — 
The claim to representation is acknowledged as 
belonging to all districts and communities, to all 
classes and interests, — but not to all men. Some 
degree of actual election was held necessary to 
virtual representation. The guardians of the in- 
terest of the country were to be, to use the lan- 
guage of the preamble, " of their own election ;" 
though it evidently appears from the enactments, 
that these words imported only an election by a 
considerable portion of them. It is also to be 
observed, that there is no trace in this Act of a 
care to proportion the number of the new repre- 
sentatives to the population of the district, though 
a very gross deviation on either side would proba- 
bly have been avoided. 

When we speak of principles on this subject, 
we are not to be understood as ascribing to them 
the character of rules of law, or of axioms of 
science. Thev were maxims of constitutional 
policy, to which there is a visible, though not a 
2z 2 



594 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



uniform, reference in the acts of our forefathers. 
They were more or less regarded, according to 
the character of those who directed the public 
councils : the wisest and most generous men made 
the nearest approaches to their observance. But 
in the application of these, as well as of all other 
political maxims, it was often necessary to yield 
to circumstances, — to watch for opportunities, — 
to consult the temper of the people, the condition 
of the country, and the dispositions of powerful 
leaders. It is from want ot due regard to con- 
siderations like these, that the theory of the Eng- 
lish representation has, of late years, been dis- 
figured by various and opposite kinds of reasoners. 
Some refuse to acknowledge any principles on 
this subject, but those most general considera- 
tions of expediency and abstract justice, which 
are applicable to all governments, and to every 
situation of mankind. But these remote princi- 
ples shed too faint a light to guide us on our path ; 
and can seldom be directly applied with any ad- 
vantage to human affairs. Others represent the 
whole constitution, as contained in the written 
laws ; and treat every principle as vague or vision- 
ary, which is not sanctioned by some legal au- 
thority. A third class, considering (rightly) the 
representation as originating only in usage, and 
incessantly though insensibly altered in the course 
of time, erroneously infer, that it is altogether a 
matter ot coarse and confused practice, incapable 
of being reduced to any theory. The truth is, 
however, that out of the best parts of that prac- 
tice have gradually arisen a body of maxims, 
which guide our judgment in each particular case ; 
and which, though beyond the letter of the law, 
are better defined, and more near the course of 
business, than general notions of expediency or 
justice. Often disregarded, and never rigorously 
adhered to, they have no support but a genernl 
| -conviction, growing with experience, of their fit- 
ness and value. The mere speculator disdains 
them as beggarly details: the mere lawyer asks 
for the statute or case on which they rest: the 
mere practical politician scorns them as airy vi- 
sions. But these intermediate maxims constitute 
the principles of the British constitution, as dis- 
tinguished, on the one hand, from abstract notions 
of government, and, on the other, from the pro- 
visions of law, or the course of practice. " Civil 
knowledge," says Lord Bacon, "is of all others 
the most immersed in matter, and the hardliest 
reduced to axioms." Politics, therefore, if they 
should ever be reduced to a science, will require 
the greatest number of intermediate laws, to con- 
nect its most general principles with the variety 
and intricacy of the public concerns. But in every 
branch of knowledge, we are told by the same 
great Master, (Novum Organum,) "that while 
generalities are barren, and the multiplicity of 
single facts present nothing but confusion, the 
middle principles alone are solid, orderly, and 
fruitful." 

The nature of virtual representation may be illus- 
trated by the original controversy between Great 
Britain and America. The Americans alleged, 
perhaps untruly, that being unrepresented they 
could not legally be taxed. They, added, with 
truth, that being unrepresented, they ought not 
constitutionally to be taxed. But they defended 
this true position, on a ground untenable in argu- 
ment. They sought for the constitution in the 
works of abstract reasoners, instead of searching 
for it in its own ancient and uniform practice. 
They were told that virtual, not actual, represen- 
tation, was the principle of the constitution ; and 
that they were as much virtually represented as 
the majority of the people of England. In answer 
to this, they denied that virtual representation was 
a constitutional principle, instead of denying the 
fact, that they were virtually represented. Had 
they chosen the latter ground, their case would 



have been unanswerable. The unrepresented part 
of England could not be taxed, without taxing the 
represented: the laws affected alike the members 
who passed them, their constituents, and the rest 
of the people. On the contrary, separate laws 
might be, and were, made (or America: separate 
taxes might be, and were, laid on her. The case 
of that country, therefore, was the very reverse of 
virtual representation. Instead of identity, there 
was a contrariety of apparent interest. The Eng- 
lish land-holder was to be relieved by an Ameri- 
can revenue. The prosperity of the English manu- 
facturer was supposed to depend on a monopoly 
of the American market. Such a system of go- 
verning a great nation was repugnant to the princi- 
ples of a constitution which had solemnly pro- 
nounced, that the people of the small territories of 
Chester and Durham could not be virtually repre- 
sented without some share of actual representa- 
tion. — Edinburgh Review, vol. xxxiv. p. 477. 



B. 

The principle of short Parliaments was solemn- 
ly declared at the Revolution. On the 29th of 
January 1689, seven days after the Convention 
was assembled, the following resolution was adopt- 
ed by the House of Commons: — " That a com- 
mittee be appointed to bring in general heads of 
such things as are absolutely necessary to be con- 
sidered, for the better securing our Religion, Laws, 
and Liberties." Of this Committee Mr. Somers 
was one. On the 2d of February, Sir George Tre- 
by, from the Committee thus appointed, reported 
the general heads on which they had agreed. The 
11th article of these general heads was as follows : 
— " That the too long continuance of the same Par- 
liament be prevented." On the 4th of February 
it was ordered, " That it be referred to the Com- 
mittee to distinguish such general heads as are in- 
troductive of new laws, from those that are decla- 
ratory of ancient rights." On the 7th of the same 
month, the Committee made their Second Re- 
port ; and, after going through the declaratory part, 
which constitutes the Bill of Rights as it now 
stands, proposed the following, among other 
clauses, relating to the introduction of new laws: 
— " And towards the making a more firm and per- 
fect settlement of the said Religion, Laws, and 
Liberties, and for remedying several defects and 
inconveniences, it is proposed and advised by 
[blank left for 'Lords'] and Commons, that there 
be provision, by new laws, made in such manner, 
and with such limitations, as by the wisdom and 
justice of Parliament shall be considered and or- 
dained in the particulars; and in particular, and to 
the purposes following, viz. for preventing the too 
long continuance of the same Parliament." The 
articles which required new laws being thus dis- 
tinguished, it was resolved on the following day, 
on the motion of Mr. Somers, "that it be an in- 
struction to the said Committee, to connect, to 
the vote of the Lords, such parts of the heads 
passed this House yesterday as are declaratory of 
ancient rights; leaving out such parts as are intro- 
ductory of new laws." The declaratory articles 
were accordingly formed into the Declaration of 
Rights; and in that state were, by both Houses, 
presented to the Prince and Princess of Orange, 
and accepted by them, with the crown of England. 
But the articles introductive of new laws, though 
necessarily omitted in a Declaration of Rights, 
had been adopted without a division by the House 
of Commons; who thus, at the very moment of 
the Revolution, determined, " that a firm and per- 
fect settlement of the Religion, Laws, and Liber- 
ties," required provision for a new law, "for pre- 
venting the too long continuance of the same Par 
liament." 



SPEECH ON THE REFORM BILL. 



595 



But though the principle of short Parliaments 
was thus solemnly recognised at the Revolution, 
the time of introducing the new law, the means 
by which its object was to be attained, and the 
precise term to be fixed for their duration, were 
reserved for subsequent deliberation. Attempts 
were made to give effect to the principle in 1692 
and 1693, by a Triennial Bill. In the former 
year, it passed both Houses, but did not receive 
the Royal Assent : in the latier, it was rejected by 
the House of Commons. In 1694, after !Sir John 
Somers was raised to the office of Lord Keeper, 
the Triennial Bill passed into a law.* It was not 
confined, like the bills under the same title, in the 
reigns of Charles I. and Charles II., (and with 
which it is too frequently confounded,) to provisions 
for securing the frequent sitting of Parliament : it 
for the first time limited its duration. Till the 
passing of this bill, Parliament, unless dissolved 
by the King, might legally have continued till the 
demise of the Crown, — its only natural and ne- 
cessary termination. 

The Preamble is deserving of serious considera- 
tion : — "Whereas, by the ancient laws and 
statutes of this kingdom, frequent Parliaments 
ought to be held ; and whereas frequent and new 
Parliaments tend very much to the happy union 
and good agreement of the King and People." 
The Act then proceeds, in the first section, to 
provide for the frequent holding of Parliaments, 
according to the former laws ; and in the second 
and third sections, by enactments which were be- 
fore unknown to our laws, to direct, that there 
shall be a new Parliament every three years, and 
that no Parliament shall have continuance longer 
than three years at the farthest. Here, as at the 
time of the Declaration of Rights, the holding of 
Parliaments is carefully distinguished from their 
election. The two parts of the Preamble refer 
separately to each of these objects : the frequent 
holding of Parliaments is declared to be conform- 
able to the ancient laws ; but the frequent election 
of Parliament is considered only as a measure 
highly expedient on account of its tendency to 
preserve harmony between the Government and 
the People. 

The principle of the Triennial Act, therefore, 
seems to be of as high constitutional authority as 
if it had been inserted in the Bill of Rights itself, 
from which it was separated only that it might be 
afterwards carried into effect in a more convenient 
manner. The particular term of three years is an 
arrangement of expediency, to which it would be 
folly to ascribe any great importance. This Act 
continued in force only for twenty years. Its op- 
ponents have often expatiated on the corruption 
and disorder in elections, and the instability in the 
national councils which prevailed during that 
period : but the country was then so much dis- 
turbed by the weakness of a new government, 
and the agitation of a disputed succession, that it 
is impossible to ascertain whether more frequent 
elections had any share in augmenting the dis- 
order. At the accession of George I. the dura- 
tion of Parliament was extended to seven years, 
by the famous statute called the " Septennial 
Act," 1 Geo. I. st. 2. c. 38, the preamble of which 
asserts, that the last provision of the Triennial 
Act, " if it should continue, may probably at this 
juncture, when a restless and Popish faction are 
designing and endeavouring to renew the rebel- 
lion within this kingdom, and an invasion from 
abroad, be destructive to the peace and security 
of the government." This allegation is now as- 
certained to have been perfectly true. There is 
the most complete historical evidence that all the 
Tories of the kingdom were then engaged in a 
conspiracy to effect a counter-revolution, — to 
wrest from the people all the securities which they 

* 6 W. & M. c. 2. 



had obtained for liberty, — to brand them as rebels, 
and to stigmatise their rulers as usurpers, — and to 
re-establish the principles of slavery, by the resto- 
ration of a family, whose claim to power was 
founded on their pretended authority. It is beyond 
all doubt, that a general election at that period 
would have endangered all these objects. In 
these circumstances the Septennial Act was pass- 
ed, because it was necessary to secure liberty. 
But it was undoubtedly one of the highest exer- 
tions of the legislative authority. It was a devia- 
tion from the course of the constitution too exten- 
sive in its effects, and too dangerous in its exam- 
ple, to be warranted by motives of political expe- 
diency : it could be justified only by the necessity 
of preserving liberty. The Revolution itself was 
a breach of the laws ; and it was as great a devia- 
tion from the principles of monarchy, as the Sep- 
tennial Act could be from the constitution of the 
House of Commons : — and the latter can only be 
justified by the same ground of necessity, with 
that glorious Revolution of which it probably con- 
tributed to preserve — would to God we could say 
perpetuate — the inestimable blessings. 

It has been said by some, that as the danger 
was temporary, the law ought to have been passed 
only for a time, and that it should have been de- 
layed till the approach of a general election should 
ascertain, whether a change in the temper of the 
people had not rendered it unnecessary. But it 
was necessary, at the instant, to confound the 
hopes of conspirators, who were then supported 
and animated by the prospect of a general elec- 
tion : and if any period had been fixed for its du- 
ration, it might have weakened its effects, as a 
declaration of the determined resolution of Par- 
liament to stand or fall with the Revolution. 

It is now certain, that the conspiracy of the 
Tories against the House of Hanover, continued 
till the last years of the reign of George II. The 
Whigs, who had preserved the fruits of the Revo- 
lution, and upheld the tottering throne of the 
Hanoverian Family during half a century, were, 
in this state of things, unwilling to repeal a law, for 
which the reasons had not entirely ceased. The 
hostility of the Tories to the Protestant succession 
was not extinguished, till the appearance of their 
leaders at the court of King George III. proclaim- 
ed to the world their hope, that Jacobite principles 
might re-ascend the throne of England with a 
monarch of the House of Brunswick. 

The effects of the Septennial Act on the consti- 
tution were materially altered in the late reign, by 
an innovation in the exercise of the prerogative of 
dissolution. This important prerogative is the 
buckler of the monarchy : it is intended for great 
emergencies, when its exercise may be the only 
means of averting immediate danger from the 
throne : it is strictly a defensive right. As no ne- 
cessity arose, under the two first Georges, for its 
defensive exercise, it lay, during that period, in a 
state of almost total inactivity. Only one Parlia- 
ment, under these two Princes, was dissolved till 
its seventh year. The same inoffensive maxims 
were pursued during the early part of the reign 
of George III. In the year 1784, the power of 
dissolution, hitherto reserved for the defence of the 
monarchy, was, for the first time, employed to 
support the power of an Administration. The 
majority of the House of Commons had, in 1782, 
driven one Administration from office, and com- 
pelled another to retire. Its right to interpose, 
with decisive weight, in the choice of ministers, 
as well as the adoption of measures, seemed by 
these vigorous exertions to be finally established. 
George II. had, indeed, often been compelled to 
receive ministers whom he hated : but his succes- 
sor, more tenacious of his prerogative, and more 
inflexible in his resentment, did not so easily brook 
the subjection to which he thought himself about 
to be reduced. When the latter, in 1784, again 



596 



MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



saw his Ministers threatened with expulsion by a 
majority of the House of Commons, he found a 
Prime Minister who, trusting to his popularity, 
ventured to make common cause with him, and 
to brave that Parliamentary disapprobation to 
which the prudence or principle of both his prede- 
cessors had induced them to yield. Not content 
with this great viciory, he proceeded, by a disso- 
lution of Parliament, to inflict such an exemplary 
punishment on the majority, as might deter all 
future ones from following their dangerous ex- 
ample. 

The ministers of 1806 gave some countenance 
to Mr. Pitt's precedent, by a very reprehensible 
dissolution : and in 1807, its full consequences 
were unfolded. The House of Commons was 
then openly threatened with a dissolution, if a 
majority should vote against Ministers; and in 
pursuance of this threat, the Parliament was actu- 
ally dissolved. From that moment, the new pre- 
rogative of penal dissolution was added to all the 
other means of ministerial influence. 

Of all the silent revolutions which have materi- 



ally changed the English government, without 
any alteration in the latter of the law, there is, 
perhaps, none more fatal to the constitution than 
the power thus introduced by Mr. Pitt, and 
strengthened by his followers. And it is the 
more dangerous, because it is hardly capable of 
being counteracted by direct laws. The preroga- 
tive of dissolution, being a means of defence on 
sudden emergencies, is scarcely to be limited by 
law. There is, however, an indirect, but effectual 
mode of meeting its abuse: — by shortening the 
duration of Parliaments, the punishment of disso- 
lution will be divested of its terrors. While its 
defensive power will be unimpaired, its efficacy, 
as a means of influence, will be nearly destroyed. 
The attempt to reduce Parliament to a greater 
degree of dependence, will thus be defeated ; due 
reparation be made to the constitution ; and future 
ministers taught, by a useful example of just re- 
taliation, that the Crown is not likely to be finally 
the gainer, in struggles to convert a necessary 
prerogative into a means of unconstitutional influ- 
ence. — Ibid. p. 494. 



THE END. 



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CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS 
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Lord Bacon, 



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THE CRITICAL WRITINGS OF SIR 

WALTER SCOTT, complete in one volume, 8vo, 
with a Portrait, (in press.) 
We have spent a whole day in the society of his mighty 
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to our pained and heavy eyelids. We were ill, but illne 
eould not keep us away from the Magician ; for on the fol- 
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but here we have only got through with these Miscellanies 
after three days' constant reading ! Some of the papers we 
had read before; but what of that 1 They were none the 
less charming, — we should as soon think of getting wearied 
with the sight of a river, winding at its own sweet will.' " 

[JVeuj World. 

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Southey, Wilson Croker, Lockhart, 

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POETS AND POETRY OF EUROPE, 

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WORKS, in 10 volumes, 8vo, comprising 
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his Exposition," says Dr.!Wo"tton, in his Thoughts con- 
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not to *on firm and strengthen the doctrines of the church." 
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his acquaintance with the writings of the fathers and of 
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ion. the reader will seldom consult him in vain. Dr. 
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"has received more satisfaction from it, with respect to 
many difficulties, than be ever found elsewhere, or expected 
to find at all." Low man's scheme of the Seven Seals is 
also approved by the late Rev. David Simpson, in his Key 
to the Prophecies. 

0> The reader will thus see, from the authorities cited in 
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The only Complete French Dictionary. 

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